Lars Von Trier is giving political correctness another, well, try.
The Danish director, who famously sparked outrage over his flippant comments about sympathizing with Hitler at the Cannes film festival earlier this year, revisited his provocative comments at a public Q&A in Berlin this weekend.
"There was a point to this whole thing," he said of his inexplicable Nazi remarks. "I think history shows that we are all Nazis somewhere, and there are a lot of things that can be suddenly set free, and the mechanics behind this setting-free is something we really should really investigate, and the way we do not investigate it is to make it a taboo to talk about it."
In May, Von Trier, 55, told a startled audience that he "understood" Hitler's Nazi mindset in response to a press conference question about his casting choices.
"I thought I was a Jew for a long time and was very happy being a Jew," said Von Trier, who, according to biographies was told by his mother on her death bed that the father he'd grown up with was not his biological father.
"What can I say?" he continued, much to the chagrin of Kirsten Dunst, who sat next to him on the panel. "I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end.
"He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit."
The ensuing outrage prompted Von Trier to issue an immediate apology for his off-color jokes, but it proved to be too late.
The director was banned from the Cannes film festival because the festival goers and organizers "cannot look into Von Trier's heart to judge the sincereity of the 'apology' he issued," the vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors said at the time.
Dunst, who starred in his end-of-the-world drama "Melancholia," took home an award for her role despite Von Trier's ban.
On Saturday, Von Trier tried to make amends once more by emphasizing his sincerity in embracing his Jewish heritage.
"After all this nonsense in Cannes, I am claiming that since [the man who raised him] was Jewish and gave me a cultural Jewish upbringing, I am as good a Jew as any," he said. "Maybe he didn't give the sperm but he gave me a family and a background.
Not that Trier feels completely censored following the May incident.
"Some German journalists interviewed me, and I told them the French are the real Nazis, and they really liked that," he said on Saturday.
No word yet on whether Von Trier's expulsion and Cannes ban still stands.
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