List Price: $14.98You Pay Only: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 (13%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: VINTERBERG,THOMAS
EAN: 0025192548222
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 27, 2004
Running Time: 106 minutes
Sales Rank: 12137
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: 1998
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 8-FEB-2005
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com:
Rising to the challenge of Dogma 95's self-imposed restrictions on aesthetic freedom, Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration is a remarkable example of the way limits can give rise to creative opportunity. (Dogma 95 is a Danish filmmakers collective that also includes Lars von Trier, director of Breaking the Waves. The group crafted a manifesto in which its members vow to eschew special lighting, optical effects, props, and the visible imprint of a director's personality in order to attain higher truths yielded by characters.) The Celebration, shot with a small video camera and transferred to 35mm film, concerns a black-tie birthday gathering for a family patriarch, Helge (Henning Moritzen), which erodes into a battle after long-suppressed secrets are revealed and the chance to settle old scores presents itself. Among the grievances are an accusation of incest and the responsibility for the death of a child--gruesome stuff, but Vinterberg doesn't characterize the partying crowd's reaction in quite the way one might have expected. In fact, the whole of The Celebration is about unexpected perspectives and vantage points emerging from out of nowhere, largely due to Vinterberg's free hand at editing the film in such a way as to yank truth from every corner. This is a strong work that belies skepticism over Dogma 95's bare-bones trendiness, and is perhaps a harbinger of great work to come from Vinterberg. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Family Implosion...
Danish film with English subtitles. Set in late 1990's. Family and friends return to the family run hotel for the wealthy patriarch's 60th birthday party. Over the birthday dinner, the eldest son, like a calm and cool assassin, shocks the audience with a toast to his Father with the darkest of possible revelations. His Father and Mother make attempts to discredit him. Rather than leaving it at that, he brings more, and then more - - taking his painful revenge and leaving everyone numb. Accusations get traded back and forth. Dysfunctional family secrets fly out in the open. The film is a tense, emotionally tragic journey that eventually finds a glimmer of peace in its conclusion.
Rating: - Regardless of Dogma, great film - period!
Has all the elements of a great film. Should be required viewing for family therapists and therapists-in-training; this is a great depiction of a family system in action. Every family member has been (or will be) irrevocably changed by the surfacing of this family "secret." The private and public ways individuals in a family collude to maintain system stasis become obvious. A great artistic achievement, The Celebration happens to serve as a great teaching tool as well.
Could be quite difficult for children; parental supervision/judgment advised.
Rating:  - A great film, despite being a "Dogma" film....
This is a great film, but it's because of its great acting, writing, and subject matter, not because it was one of the first "Dogma '95" films. Lars von Trier started the Dogma movement in order to get back to "real cinema". As much as I admire Von Trier, this was a boneheaded move, as it forces undue restrictions on filmmakers. There were only a handful of films that were released under this moniker. Von Trier's The Idiots (the only film of his that was approved under Dogma rules), Harmony Korine's julien donkey-boy (the most artistic of the bunch, and one that bent the Dogma rules a bit), and this film were the only 3, as far as I know. This one is the most intense, as it is a party of a 60 year old man who is a financially successful businessman, but who also was a monster who molested his own children. The film has sometimes been billed as a dark comedy, and there are a few moments where there is humour, but overall the film is very brooding, depressing, sad, and angry. I think it was just portrayed as a "comedy" in this country because over the last decade or so everything we see has to be funny and light. Heaven forbid we take anything seriously.
I saw this in a theater. The digitial video detracted considerably from my enjoyment. It wasn't shot on high definition, but the cheaper digital video, and when blown up to 35mm, it looked like garbage. But on DVD, it looks better, and you won't get so distracted from having to strain your eyes to see what's going on. This ... Read More
Rating: - Great
If you haven't ever seen a Dogma film, watch this one first, but I am told that you might not like the rest; This is arguably the best.
Rating: - Dogme #1: the first, and remains the best
One quickly forgets about the camera work or thoughts of video vs. film because the story is so compeling. It's back to the basics of good filmmaking with the twist of handheld DV photography done with great skill.
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