REEL NEWS:Oh those Danes. What with Nicolas Winding Refn slinging around the F-word on morning TV and Lars von Trier backtracking violently, they really are doing everything possible to supply us with trivial filler.
Yes, Mr von Trier has retracted his apology for those comments about Hitler during the Cannes Film Festival. (As you knew he would.) To be clear, von Trier has decided that – to return again to his misguided gags – he really isn’t a Nazi and that he doesn’t “understand” Hitler. The director makes it clear that he was joking, but regrets being bullied into making a public retraction.
"I'm not sorry. I am not sorry for what I said," he told GQ Magazine. "I'm sorry that it didn't come out more clearly. I'm not sorry that I made a joke. But I'm sorry that I didn't make it clear that it was a joke."
Speaking to this writer, John Hurt, who stars in von Trier’s Melancholia, which is released next week, made light of the scandal. “People have been saying: ‘Oh, you are in that Nazi film?’ What the fuck are they talking about? The difficulty was it started off as a joke – one he might make at a party. It didn’t get a laugh, so he said something else and in order to get out dug the hole deeper and deeper.”
Well, he’s still digging.
