A Philopoetic Engagement: Deleuze and The Element of Crime

Although an unusual crime genre drives the narrative of Element – a shared mentality between the killer and the detective – the film also has a political register which emerges when one focuses on the film’s depiction of Europe as a self-forgetful dystopia rather than as an exemplar of a progressive modernity. Although for von Trier, the concept of “element” refers primarily to natural elements – the scenes are pervaded by water and sand (earth) – in this reading, element is a philosophical concept as well, indebted to Kant’s concept of transcendental subjectivity (an elemental subjectivity). The analysis also draws on Nietzsche’s concept of truth as metaphorically imposed to treat the primary natural “elements” in play in the film as figurations meant to shape inferences about subjects, places and the historical moment.