Lars von Trier steps over the line

“The villain,” reads the caption of a photograph of film-maker Lars von Trier in the Danish daily Berlingske. Reacting to comments made by the enfant terrible of Danish cinema at the Cannes Film Festival that he “understands Hitler a little”, the paper writes that von Triers “is probably not a Nazi [but] this type of statement is so offensive, stupid and tasteless that it cannot just be ignored”. Yet the Danish press didn’t react to von Trier’s comments until he was excluded from the festival. Festival management has “drawn a welcome red line which signals – even for so-called geniuses—that there is a limit to the nonsense and insults one can proffer,” writes the daily Jyllands-Posten, which, in 2005 defended freedom of speech after it published some controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.