Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

(This comment is for the combined volumes 1 & 2. I'll copy/paste this comment for both films)

Wow, what a great movie.
(...although, it is worth mentioning that I CANNOT recommend this movie for the 'average' movie watcher)

My favorite Lars von Trier movie (to-date), beating out Anti-Christ; my previous favorite. I won't say too much here, for fear of spoiling things (even with the spoiler filter on). Despite the length of the film(s), I found that it was still captivating and enthralling. I'm almost sad to see it end, to be honest. I have mixed feelings about the ending (which I'll refrain from commenting about). A great movie, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Also worth noting/warning... there are scenes of full penetration, and gratuitous/graphic nudity. None of this is new for a Lars von Trier movie, and given that the title of the movie is "Nymphomaniac", you certainly shouldn't be surprised by it. Basically, Lars doesn't hold back (LoL).

I almost didn't watch Vol 2 after watching this Vol 1, Vol 1 was so slow and boring and crude/lude just for the sake of it. But honestly just fast forward through (get the gist of it) then watch Vol 2, it's a much better film, with real in depth thought provoking ideas.

So I would say that the movie (volume 1&2) tells a good story but man, five and a half hours! That’s a lot of time to tell a story. Over all I liked the first one a little more than the second one, and to be honest I’m not to impressed with the way they ended the movie. I think the finale scene with the behavior from the old man was too out of character for the type of character they gave him throughout the whole movie. This is also a type of movie that once you see it once, there’s really no need to ever go back and see it again.

Possibly even more bizarre and degrading than the first volume (and I mean it as a compliment). However, I must confess that it got quite tedious in the long run. Perhaps it's just the extended version, but I would have saved only three, if not less, out of the total five and a half hours. K’s episode was dull as hell and could have been omitted altogether.

another female lead focus by Lars. the main character have through the society problem. and the last thing is revenge.

Second part of the nymphomaniac.

_This is about Volume I & II combined, since I watched them one after the other._

A man finds a woman passed out in the street, and takes her in. As she rests in his spare bed, she recounts tales from her life as a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac.

I’ll brace myself for emails calling me a philistine, but my tolerance for pretentious bullshit has been tested here. Perhaps I’m taking it all the wrong way and this is a 5 1/2 hour masterpiece about human sexuality, but I just can’t get on board. It’s a really long artsy softcore porn-fest with some naff philosophising spliced in.

The episodic structure initially provides a good way to get us hooked. Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) tells a story, then she sits with Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) and he relates it back to something he has seen in his life or read in literature. About three hours in you realise it’s not going anywhere but at that point you might as well stick it out.

There’s a lot of ‘shock’ material in Nymphomaniac but it’s so oddly clinical that it fails to provoke any sort of reaction, no matter how disturbing the content. The one thing I truly couldn’t watch was Shia LaBoeuf attempting a Dick Van Dyke level British accent.

Some interesting performances (notably Stacy Martin as young Joe) don’t save this from being a tedious gimmicky mess strictly for von Trier completionists.

http://benoliver999.com/film/2016/08/29/nymphomaniac/

Around five minutes prior to the end I thought the whole of this movie was decent enough, with both volumes being of equal quality.

But then came the final scene, in which nearly six hours of character development are thrown completely in the bin. Skarsgard's final action is absolutely out of nowhere, and not in a good way. I cannot for the sake of me comprehend why Lars von Trier kept this in the movie aside from some shitty "lol wouldn't this be fun" plot twist, which discards the theme of the movie entirely.