Try to find another director in the world that has such a unique and distinctive voice. What people often do not see beyond the theatrics is that his films are often genuinely emotionally shattering – see Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000). von Trier is confrontational – his films have an extraordinary amount to say and not many of them come with happy endings.
Lars von Trier is also an eminent stylist – see the extraordinary visuals of Zentropa/Europa (1991) – but on the other side of the coin is the director who devised the Dogme manifesto that threw all visual style out the window and issued filmmakers a challenge that took filmmaking back to raw essentials stripped of all artifice, while Dogville (2003) and Manderlay are films made without any sets, just bare stages with props and chalk marks. He has a finely tuned sense of black humour and loves to make films for the sheer outrage that will result – see The Idiots (1998), a black comedy about people who pretend to be mentally handicapped, or his delve into US slavery in Manderlay (2006). The Danish von Trier is one of cinema’s constant tricksters. For the better part of a decade now, whenever someone has asked me the question “who is the best director in the world?” I have always nominated Lars von Trier (at least among living directors).