Borrowing heavily from the Dogme 95 movement and films like Lars von Trier’s “The Five Obstructions,” “The Fourth Dimension” challenged its three directors — Harmony Korine, Aleksei Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiecinski — to explore new levels of filmmaking by restricting them with a series of nonsensical, arbitrary rules (for example, “Stray dogs are good. They can be really meaningful”). Unfortunately, the film never quite lives up to its overambitious promises.
The ridiculous and arbitrary nature of these rules does not make “The Fourth Dimension” a bad film. Lars von Trier’s use of restrictive rules in “The Five Obstructions” encouraged the film’s subject, veteran director Jorgen Leth, to explore the potential of cinema as an art form as he attempted to interpret and overcome von Trier’s rules. However, the restrictions placed on the directors of “The Fourth Dimension” are either too wacky too be taken seriously or ignored wholesale by the directors.
The first film, Harmony Korine’s “Lotus Community Workshop,” stars Val Kilmer as himself in an alternate reality in which he gives inspirational speeches to a down-and-out suburban audience. As his grotesque and ethereal debut, “Gummo” proved back in 1997, Korine is a gifted artist of understated small-town drama. In “Obstructions” von Trier’s rules force Leth to explore new ideas like animation and half-second shots, while “Lotus” never feels like more than a tired remake of “Gummo” with similar characters and a nearly identical tone. Perhaps the fact that Korine’s own obstructions try so hard to be absurd precludes his own efforts to creatively interpret them.
The second film, “Chronoeye” by the Russian director, Aleksei Fedorchenko tells the story of an eccentric professor living in a state of semi-poverty who has discovered a way to time travel. It is an engaging film that allows the viewer to experience snippets of history and science fiction realized in an enchanting, home-made style reminiscent of Michel Gondry.
However, as a constituent film of “The Fourth Dimension,” “Chronoeye” is a moment of disillusionment for the audience. For all its pretensions, the creative brief had at least promised to deliver films that could not be distinguished as strictly documentary or fiction. How the directors interpreted this to mean Val Kilmer playing himself as a pathetic inspirational speaker and a science fiction movie about time travel is a mystery. If there was meant to be some documentary-style reality in these films, it is hidden under layers of artifice. What was the point in dreaming up a manifesto of 56 wacky points if they were to be flagrantly violated? At best this is false advertising and at worst it arrogantly misleads a faithful audience.
The last film “Fawns,” takes an absurd and dresses it up as reality. Perhaps a better title for the film would be, “Four Hipsters Dance Through a Polish Town Before an Apocalyptic Flood” because that is really all this film is. Eventually, the hipsters kill the father of an obese girl who is too overweight to evacuate and stays at home to await the flood (with a plate of milk and cookies — seriously). Finally, they load up the woman into a cart and drag her out of town. Why her father never thought to do this is never explained.
“The Fourth Dimension” is not without redeeming features. All of the filmmakers and their actors are clearly talented. The technical artistry of the films — especially their cinematography and production design — is impressive. It is just a pity that the directors’ creative attention to their own stories was overwhelmed by the project’s pretentious foundation.
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Ok I have not found one good review of “Fawns” yet. Everything is a stereotypical unintelligent run on sentence. I thought it was a very clever play on the concept of time. Which is, you know, the “fourth dimension”. In the beginning they are messing around as if their time before the flood was endless, and it wasn’t until they had to look at the reality of things that the SHTF. I am still confused by the end but never the less it was the best of the three regardless of it being having hipsters as the actors. Oh and for your information, I thought it quit obvious that the father couldn’t take his daughter was the fact that he had a broken arm and it took the 3 of them to get her out of the house.