Thomas Vinterberg is an outstanding film-maker, whose first movie fulfilled the terms of the Dogme95 ultra-minimalist manifesto. There's something of the Dogme vibe about 'The Commune' as well, although it may be just that I'm reminded of Lars van Trier's Dogme effort, 'The Idiots', which was also set in a commune of sorts. That was a deliberately provocative film: this is a much more understated kind of movie, an account of a collection of disparate individuals trying to set up home together. The film is set in the 1970s when such efforts were more common than they are now, and in some senses, it tells a familliar story of the loss of privacy, the breakdown of one-to-one relationships, and conflicts of interest. But it's a better film than the summary would suggest, notably because its characters are not obviously hippies, but also because they are all highly flawed but in supremely normal ways - their world and its inhabitants might be unfamilliar in some respects, but in others, it's just the same as ours. In spite of dealing with highly emotional subjects, I found 'The Commune' a little less intense than Vinterberg's finest works, but the detail with which he renders everyday life is compelling nonetheless.
Review of The Commune
