Film

The Idiots

Name: The Idiots
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1998
Cast: Bodil Jørgensen, Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Troels Lyby, Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Comedy

Lars von Trier's provocation disguised as comedy. A group of intelligent young Danes decide to fake intellectual disability as an act of social rebellion, going into the world to disrupt and humiliate. It's confrontational, often uncomfortable, sometimes hilarious, and designed to make you question your own complicity. For those willing to be challenged.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy provocation that makes you squirm and want to argue with the screen, and you're happy with a rough, handheld, improvised look if the ideas behind it are sharp.

Skip it if you need characters to like, or you find discomfort for its own sake tiresome; the deliberate mocking of disabled people sits at its center, and that may be hard to sit through.

What it asks of you: Its 110 minutes are loose and unpolished, scenes circling the same provocations amid long stretches of uncomfortable silence, so it demands patience more than it rewards it.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Celebration1998

Danish Dogma 95 masterpiece about a family gathering that spirals into confession and chaos. Like Idiots, it finds profound truths in gathering dysfunction and social collapse, but with sharper emotional stakes.

But Slower-paced and bleaker. The handheld camera work can feel deliberately ugly in ways that test patience.

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011

A mother reckons with her son's terrible act and her own complicity. Shares Idiots' willingness to make viewers uncomfortable and examine uncomfortable truths about parenting, blame, and society.

But Genuinely punishing to watch. It's a film about guilt that makes you feel guilty, which some find manipulative rather than enlightening.

Mulholland Drive2001

Lynch's Los Angeles nightmare where performance and reality blur. Like Idiots, it's fundamentally about people playing roles and the question of what's authentic beneath the performance.

But Cryptic and non-linear. If you need plot clarity, you'll leave frustrated rather than fascinated.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Idiots

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Idiocracy2006

Inverse premise: one film watches intelligent people pretend to be stupid to expose society; the other watches a stupid society realize what it's lost. Both ask what intelligence actually means.

Mike Judge sends an everyman to a future where stupidity is the norm. It's a mirror-image provocation: not intelligent people faking idiocy, but actual idiots running the world. Both interrogate society's intelligence (or lack thereof), just from opposite angles.

But Blunt satire that lands as crude. It's far less artistically ambitious than Idiots and can feel like a sneer rather than an exploration.

A Prophet2009

A young man enters prison and must navigate a brutal social hierarchy by playing roles and manipulating others. Shares Idiots' interest in performance as survival and how identity becomes strategic.

But Prison drama can feel heavy and repetitive. The French setting and slow-burn pacing won't appeal to everyone.

Antichrist2009

Von Trier again. A couple grieves their son's death in a cabin. It has the same fearlessness about taboo, the same willingness to disturb, the same ultimate interest in suffering and meaning.

But Extremely graphic and genuinely difficult. This is not entertainment; it's an ordeal. Many people should skip it entirely.

Holy Motors2012

A man travels Paris in a limousine, changing clothes and identity at each stop. Obsessed with performance, identity, and what remains real. Whimsical where Idiots is hostile, but asking the same questions.

But Surreal and plotless. It feels like a fever dream, which is deliberate but exhausting for some viewers.

Love Exposure2008

A Japanese epic about identity, performance, and religious obsession. It's chaotic, provocative, and interested in how people construct false selves to navigate society's demands.

But Four hours long. Aggressively weird. The tonal shifts can feel jarring rather than enriching.

The Seventh Seal1957

Bergman's medieval parable about faith, death, and what we owe each other. Like Idiots, it interrogates social structures and asks if we're performing our way through existence rather than living.

But Very serious and slow. The philosophical weight can feel ponderous if you're not in the mood for existentialism.

Shame2011

Michael Fassbender in NYC, drowning in addiction while maintaining a mask of professionalism. About performance, shame, and the gap between the self we show and the one we hide.

But Sexually explicit and bleak. It offers no redemption arc or comfort, which some find artistically necessary and others find punitive.

Stalker1979

Both films interrogate performance and authenticity: Idiots through aggressive provocation, Stalker through patient observation. Both suggest that how we live is a kind of performance, and asking what's underneath is the point.

Tarkovsky's three-hour meditation on desire and meaning. A guide leads two men through a mysterious zone toward a room that grants wishes. Operates in pure philosophical cinema, asking what we actually want beneath what we think we want.

But Glacially slow. Long shots of empty landscape. Requires patience bordering on asceticism. Not a single plot point lands like you expect.

The Act of Killing2012

Both explore what happens when people perform versions of themselves for the camera. Both ask whether enacting something repeatedly—whether stupidity or murder—creates truth or just reveals what was already there. But this one has actual stakes.

Documentary where a death squad leader in Indonesia is asked to recreate his murders however he wishes. He treats it as performance. The film becomes about how people construct narratives around their worst acts. Idiots makes you uncomfortable about stupidity; this destroys you about moral performance.

But It's a real documentary about real genocide. Watching a murderer play-act his crimes is ethically destabilizing in ways fiction isn't. It's not entertainment; it's a confrontation you may not want to have.