‘Zentropa’ (R)

Lars von Trier's "Zentropa" is the most dazzling visual experience since Wim Wenders's "Wings of Desire" and, before that, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's "Our Hitler." The film recalls Wenders's work in its hypnotically inventive black-and-white cinematography, and Syberberg's in its experimental use of mixed media, rear projection and a whole bag of film magician's tricks.

The subject of this masterly, poetic film is the experience of an idealistic young American, Leo (Jean-Marc Barr), who comes to Germany in 1945 to help with postwar reconstruction. Under the tutelage of his uncle (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard), Leo becomes a sleeping car conductor with a Big Brother-ish rail company called Zentropa, where he also meets the mysterious Katharina (Barbara Sukowa), whose father, Max (Jorgen Reenberg), is the company's director.

Germany is a shadowy wasteland—like the postwar Vienna of Carol Reed's "The Third Man"—where the American occupiers, led by Col. Harris (Eddie Constantine), battle for power against the Werewolves, a pro-Nazi terrorist group. Through Katharina, Leo becomes involved with both groups, and caught up in a maze of espionage and counter-espionage, lost in a Kafkaesque landscape of dread ambiguity.

Though the action is set in historical time, the atmosphere of paranoia and psychological disorientation seems less specific to any time or place than to a deranged state of mind. Von Trier suggests, in fact, that the whole story is a trance induced by its mellifluous narrator (Max von Sydow), who takes his hero, and us, deeper and deeper into the film's dream realm of "Europa."

Whichever is the case, our experience is identical to that of the film's hero; we never quite find our footing in this mesmerizing, surrealistic terrain. Von Trier's visual gifts far outstrip his skills as a storyteller. The story follows its own disorienting logic and several long stretches are guaranteed to be soporific.

Still, von Trier's power as an image-maker supplies its own forward momentum. "Zentropa" is the 36-year-old Danish director's fifth feature, and it shows off his visionary mastery, if not, perhaps, a master's full personality. It's an obscure experience, partly alienating, partly enthralling; it weaves a spell that is frightening, irritating and invigorating all at once.

"Zentropa" is rated R for sensuality and language.