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THE ELEMENT OF CRIME
(Forbrydelsens Element)
Rating: 
Denmark. 1984.
Director – Lars von Trier, Screenplay – Lars von Trier & Niels Vørsel, Producer – Per Holst, Photography – Tom Elling, Music – Bo Holton, Special Effects/Production Design – Peter Holmark. Production Company – Per Holst Filmproduction.
Cast:
Michael Elphick (Inspector Fisher), Me Me Lai (Kim), Esmond Knight (Osborne), Herold Wells (Chief Kramer), Ahmed El Shenawi (Therapist)
Plot: After many years absence police inspector Fisher returns from Cairo to a decayed, half-drowned near future Europe to take up a case at the request of his chief. The case involves a killer who is leaving the bodies of victims in a pattern across the countryside. In order to trace the killer, Fisher must use the methods of his old mentor Osborne who, in his book ‘The Element of Crime’, advocated a unique method of detection wherein the detective psychologically identifies with the killer.
The Element of Crime was the first full-length film from Lars von Trier. These days the enigmatic von Trier is in this author’s opinion the finest currently working director in the world with works like the visually enthralling Zentropa (1991), the haunted hospital saga The Kingdom (1994) and Breaking the Waves (1986), Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Dogville (2003).
The Element of Crime is set in a futuristic Europe. (One where Europe is merely referred to as though it were a single country). It is a future where cities lie in flooded ruins and von Trier suggests a perpetual sense of decay. There are some striking images here – Michael Elphick wandering through a flooded office searching for files in drowned cabinets and then the gorgeously decadent image of him floating through the office on a makeshift raft tossing the read pages of the report into the water. And von Trier conducts the unique visual experiment of shooting the whole film in a baleful, mustard yellow light. You think for a long time that maybe von Trier is using yellow tinted stock or filters but then suddenly suddenly, infrequently he throws in something blue – a black-and-white tv screen, a neon light – with striking effect and you realize that the entire film has been deliberately lit that way. von Trier is operating on a much lower budget than his later films and his visual schemes are not as elaborate. Nevertheless there are still some moments that give indication of the extravagances von Trier would ascend to with Zentropa – like a flashback narration of a chase where momentarily we see windscreen wipers and an explosion superimposed over the teller’s face. (And like Zentropa the film also begins with someone being placed under hypnosis).
On the other hand the film is also incredibly dull. There is a long drawn-out plot where von Trier seems almost determined to make as little happen as possible. Nothing interesting happens, let alone anything approaching suspense. The actual Element of Crime methodology about entering a suspect’s frame of mind sounds intriguing but what this involves in actuality is rather vague and never particularly clear. Moreover the whole fascination with forensic psychology that later came with The Silence of the Lambs (1991) makes The Element of Crime seem like only a rudimentary stab in the same direction, but one that goes nowhere. Some of the dialogue is incredibly pretentious: “I’m going to fuck you back to The Stone Age” or “Why do you keep torturing yourself?” “I believe in joy,” and in regard to sex “I’ll get God in there as fast as I can,” “And He’ll only stay until I get up.”
The Element of Crime played some international film festivals when it came out and even received a technical award at Cannes but received a very mixed response. It’s certainly impossible to guess back then that von Trier would emerge as one of the finest directors in the world today.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2001
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