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The Boss of It All

The Boss of It All
Release date: 2006-12-08
Rating: 6.601
Votes: 298
Genres: Comedy
For years, company director Ravn has led his staff to believe that the firm head is an absentee named Svend. Now Ravn wants to sell out to Finnur, but Finnur will deal only with Svend. Ravn hires actor Kristoffer to portray Svend in order for the deal to go through, but complications arise when Kristoffer must extend the performance.

Reviews

badelf

badelf

The Boss of It All: Lars von Trier's Comedic Deconstruction of Control Who knew Lars von Trier could make us laugh? In "The Boss of It All", he doesn't just satirize corporate culture - he dismantles artistic pretension with surgical comedic precision. The film opens with von Trier himself, reflected in a window, perched in a cherry picker camera dolly - a literal deus ex machina, playing God while simultaneously mocking the very concept of directorial omnipotence. Here, he's gleefully playing God and immediately undermining himself. Using Automavision, a computer program that randomly determines camera angles, von Trier literally relinquishes directorial control. It's a brilliant mirror of the film's narrative: Ravn hiring an actor to be a fictional boss, thus avoiding personal responsibility. The director becomes just another actor in his own absurdist play. Kristoffer, the hired "boss", embodies this perfectly. "I have to consult my character," he says - a line that skewers both corporate role-playing and Dogme 95's Rule 6, which demands that action must be motivated solely by character emotion. It's a delicious mockery of the very artistic constraints von Trier champions. Ultimately, von Trier's message is disarmingly simple: Don't take life - or art - so seriously. It's only life, after all. It may even mirror the "senior six" throwing the beloved Teddy Bear over the cliff. A comedy that's also a profound philosophical joke? This is vintage Lars von Trier!

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