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Tuesday, November 03, 1998 10:28:28 AM EST

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- This is pretty fundamental, I'll admit, but an artist is supposed to have already spoken when you view the work of art itself. If critics want to break down the technique applied to a particular film, or even coerce the filmmaker himself into dissecting his methods during an interview, that's great. I very much enjoy that type of discussion; if I didn't, I wouldn't have this job. What I don't like is directors who take it upon themselves to announce in advance why their new movie is so daring and provocative.

Not too long ago, Danish director Lars von Triers (the reigning king of cinematic pretentiousness) sat down with his friend, Thomas Vinterberg, and wrote up a filmmaker's oath, a document they call "Dogme 95." Translated, that means -- gulp -- "Vow of Chastity." In it, the two directors describe how they've decided to stay true to the moment by shooting their movies with a minimum of fancy editing, no sound work or added music, all cameras handheld, etc. This, I guess, is a bold gesture that puts them above the philistine-initiated fray ... even though what they're talking about has been around for 40 or so years, usually under the name "cinema verite."

I plain old don't have time for von Triers anymore (I know Emily Watson was great in "Breaking the Waves," but it sure wasn't courtesy of the director's palsied camera-jiggling), and I was pretty sure during the first 10 or so minutes of Vinterberg's first movie, "The Celebration," that I was getting an unwanted second dose of Danish excess.

The story of a large family (including cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas) reuniting for what's supposed to be the patriarch's 60th birthday bash made me nauseous at first. The camera zooms and zips all over the place, in extremely tight close-ups, skitting around like you're watching everything through the eyes of a hyperactive 4-year-old. I'm not kidding -- it gave me a splitting headache.

Imagine how hugely surprised I was, then, to see Vinterberg cool off after a while and deliver perhaps the most consistently devastating film of 1998. That's not to say that it's the year's best movie -- you can't draw this much unneeded attention to the guy behind the camera and expect everyone to pretend it's perfect -- but Vinterberg never flinches while unraveling this family's ever-more grotesque web of lifelong deceptions.

What starts out as a black comedy eventually splinters, then repeatedly splinters some more, until you're left with an inextricable void of anger and despair. I don't know when the last time was that I heard this much well-earned gasping in a movie theater.

There's a large cast swirling through this, but the moral divining rod belongs to the son, Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) a successful restaurateur who gets up in the middle of his father's formal dinner celebration and delivers a horrifying toast. It all starts out well enough, with the guests laughing and smiling through Christian's stories. That changes pretty quickly, though, when he casually describes to them (in almost clinical detail) how the old man repeatedly raped him and his sister during their childhood.

That sister committed suicide (her funeral took place just days before this "celebration"), so Christian has finally decided to unload with both barrels. This sets off a chain of events that passes through class elitism, racism, adultery, and all the other nonchalant back-stabbings that the pre-boring Elvis Costello once succinctly termed "emotional fascism." What's fascinating is how Vinterberg reveals just the right amount of information about an individual character at just the right time; your opinion of those characters changes almost from scene to scene.

There's the black sheep brother, Michael (Thomas Bo Larson), who has evidently had an affair with one of the servants and lives in mortal terror of disappointing his dad; Helene (Paprika Steen, and how's that for a name) the sister who is met in the middle of the dinner by her late-arriving, and highly unwelcome, black boyfriend (Gbatokai Dakinah); the falsely cheery mother (Birthe Neumann) who may or may not have been privy to her husband's unspeakable indiscretions from the very beginning; and a wide assortment of doddering old fools who can never fully convince themselves that the party is over.

This is more than a little bit like a Luis Bunuel film called "The Exterminating Angel," during which a collection of rich dinner guests get locked in a banquet room and slowly starve to death, though "The Celebration" is thankfully missing Bunuel's often annoying insistence on poke-in-the-ribs surrealism.

You do have to set aside some situational quibbles (it's unlikely that any of the guests would hang around as long as they do once the fireworks begin), but I'll be thinking about this movie for a long time to come. Vow of chastity or not, Vinterberg's film is teeming with monstrous life.

"The Celebration," besides being based around sexual and emotional abuse, doesn't shy away from nudity and violence. There's one coupling that looks like a porno film outtake. The "wish you felt good" movie of the year, but well worth the temporary depression. Rated R. 105 minutes. In Danish and English with English subtitles.