*Contains spoilers due to me having to describe some film techniques, so read at your own risk!*
I loved this film. The use of tinting in some of the scenes makes it seem like an old photograph come to life. I also enjoyed the projection of people on a back screen. For instance, in one scene, Leopold calls his wife and she is projected behind him rather than in a typical split screen. Her face is huge in the back and Leo's is in the foreground.
One of the best uses of this is when the young boys kill the Ravensteins on the train, a scene shot in an almost political poster style, with facial close ups. It reminded me of Battleship Potemkin, that intense constant style coupled with the spray of red to convey tons of horror without much gore. Same with the scene when Katharina finds her father dead in the bathtub...you can only see the red water on the side. It is one of the things I love about Von Trier, his understatement of horror, which ends up making it all the more creepy.
The use of text in the film was unique, like when Leo's character is pushed by the word, "Werewolf." I have never seen anything like that in a film.
The use of black comedy in this film was well done. Ernst-Hugo Järegård is great as Leo's uncle. It brings up the snickers I got from his role in the Kingdom (Riget.) This humor makes the plotline of absurd anal retentiveness of train conductors against the terrible backdrop of WW2 and all the chaos, easier to take. It reminds me of Riget in the way the hospital administrator is trying to maintain a normalcy at the end of part one when everything is going crazy. It shows that some people are truly oblivious to the awful things happening around them. Yet some people, like Leo, are tuned in, but do nothing positive about it.
The voice over, done expertly well by Max von Sydow, is amusing too. It draws you into the story and makes you jump into Leo's head, which at times is a scary place to be.
The movie brings up the point that one is a coward if they don't choose a side. I see the same idea used in Dancer in the Dark, where Bjork's character doesn't speak up for herself and ends up being her own destruction. Actually, at one time, Von Trier seemed anti-woman to me, by making Breaking the Waves and Dancer, but now I know his male characters don't fare well either! I found myself at the same place during the end of Dancer, when you seriously want the main character to rethink their actions, but of course, they never do!

I am stunned to discover the amount of fans this show has. Haven't said that Friends was, at best an 'average' sitcom, and not as great as others have made out. Let's face it, if it wasn't for the casting of Courtney Cox Arquette, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston and Matt Le Blanc, then who knows whether this show would've lasted as long as it has done. I very much doubt that. Although as the series progressed, Friends got more progressively predictable, lame and boring that I couldn't care less about the characters- of whom are the most overrated in TV history- or of their plight, nor of who was sleeping with whom. And it went from being funny in the first four seasons to occasionally funny. And even when it had all these A-list Hollywood actors from the movie world, I still didn't bother to tune in. The writing in Friends became stale that I lost interest in this show from the sixth season onwards and as for the ending, well it was predictable to say the least.
What was annoying though was that this lasted for ten seasons, whilst some of my favourite shows lasted for only three, four seasons for instance and were eventually cancelled and taken off the air for good. The show should've came to an immediate halt by the time the cast wanted bigger salaries. In truth, as much as the series waned, it was the show that was bigger than the actors themselves, not the other way round.
When it ended in 2004, I was so relieved to see the back of this sitcom. Now, there is talk of a friends reunion show coming to our TV screens very soon. And yet, I for one will not be looking forward to it whatsoever.