“The Boss of It All” (2006): Did You Know that Lars von Trier Made a Comedy?

Now you do. It’s an interesting attempt, although Trier’s humor, as we know, is peculiar, and therefore the comedy is atypical. I don’t know if there is a concept of “Danish/Scandinavian humor,” but both The Biggest Boss and Vinterberg’s Triumph are definite embodiments of it.

Not only is there humor in “”The Boss of It All”, but there’s also a reflection on the comedy theme. As the character Christopher (aka Sven) says, the trick to modern comedy is to expose comedy. Indeed, the comedy in the film is woven into the very fabric of what’s going on. It’s not obvious, but it’s evident in every scene and character. It has to be seen. In fact, it is what is happening, the essence of the characters, realized in certain conditions. The only question is who observes it and how they interpret it. Because if you imagine yourself in the shoes of any of the characters, none of them will see anything funny.

Each character is limited by his world, and the impossibility of understanding between them reflects the absurdity of the very “high culture” that Trier’s voiceover at the beginning speaks of mockingly. It is built on the illusion of communication, whether in the scene in the bathroom when Christopher and Raun define the purpose of their deal, or in the technical meeting when Christopher tries not to betray that he does not know what he is talking about at all.

Think about it, because almost all the time in the movie the characters speak different languages: sometimes literally, sometimes in the sense of “about nothing,” sometimes because no one understands the topic of conversation, and sometimes because they are from completely different cultural contexts. Communication is impossible, but everyone craves it so much that even the hint that someone understands us and that we are not alone in our existence blows the roof off. So when Christopher discovers that his lover, the fictional playwright Gambini, is in love with none other than him, he gives up his morals in the name of his passion for the theater and, ignoring all agreements, makes a contrary decision.

This is the absurdity of high, low, of any culture, and of life in general. And this absurdity, on which everything is based, you can be horrified, but you can also laugh at it, if you wish. The choice is yours. That’s what this film is about.