Antichrist

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Horrorphile - November 2009

Antichrist

November 26th 2009 00:16

Let me weep over
my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!
And that I long,
and that I long for freedom!
Let me weep over
my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!

The duel infringes
these images
of my sufferings
I pray for mercy,
for my sufferances,
I pray for mercy …

Grief, pain, despair … The Three Beggars will arrive eventually to claim what is rightfully theirs, but in the meantime, let chaos reign, let Nature run her wicked, malevolent course, let love be ruined, let the witches of contempt strangle the life-force from your battered, mutilated body, may you drown amongst the faceless hordes, and may the line between misogyny and misanthropy become as blurred and distorted as the knotted roots and cruel winds that writhe and howl through Eden’s wilderness …

Charlotte Gainsbourg as She

Married couple He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) are making love, first in the shower, then up against the washing machine, then to the bed, where their mutual orgasms build … whilst their baby son, Nick (Storm Acheche Sahlstrom) manages to slip over the side of his cot, push open his babysafe gate, is briefly amused by the image of his parents rollicking around, then distracted by the open window and the snowflakes drifting in, climbs up onto the adjacent table, stands on the window sill, still clutching his teddy bear, and slips and falls two storeys to his death …

Willem Dafoe as He

She is entrenched in mourning, unable to help herself. He is a therapist and makes it his mission to heal her, despite the conflicting work ethic. She was trying to complete her thesis which was angled on historical witch hunts, genocide and misogyny, He insists they return to her place of fear, Eden; their cabin in the woods where she wrote, to confront Nature, both inside and out. It is here that the demons inside profligate with the demons outside and the true nature of evil; what is real and imagined is revealed, yet remains hidden …

Antichrist Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe

Love

She is suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a form of child abuse in which a parent induces symptoms of affliction on a child in order to seek attention and obtain sympathy from elsewhere. She allows her child to die so that she will receive the attention she craves from her husband. The true nature of her state of mind, her request to work alone accompanied by her son and her acute grief is revealed later through photographs, a medical examiner’s letter and a flashback. He greatest fear is realised, her husband becomes the scapegoat – the Antichrist …

Storm Acheche Sahlstrom as Nick

But He discovers her journal in the cabin’s attic which reveals explicitly the damage already done by something far more frightening; an oppressive infiltration of ancient superstition and mythology that has caused irreparable injury to Her well-being. He is not skilled enough in his therapy to deal with her moral distortion and rational disintegration. The darkness of nature, both human and animal, closes in …

Eden

Lars Von Trier continues his steady assault on modern cinema by fusing elements of pure storytelling with abstract expressionism; the art film as cinematic emotional, psychological and physical purge, entwined within traditional narrative structures that have been twisted, bent, re-tooled and re-built. He is a maverick; indulgent and visionary, he is an artist; confused and compelled, and he polarises audiences and critics like only the bravest and most interesting filmmakers can.

Nature

Antichrist (2009), which takes its name from a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, is Lars Von Trier’s horror movie. He wanted to make something that would shock his dead mother. He was suffering from depression and the process of making the movie was his own form of therapy. He watched numerous Japanese horror movies (some I’m sure more visceral and disturbing than Antichrist) and researched grief, therapy, and misogyny. Like previous films, most notably Breaking the Waves (another movie saturated in the ruins of despair and the power of healing) he separates the narrative into chapters, complete with prologue and epilogue. He breaks cinematic convention by injecting literary and artistic devices; he dedicates Antichrist to the late Russian master of existentialist grief, Andrei Tarkovsky.

Mourning

Much controversy surrounds Antichrist for a moment depicting graphic genital mutilation and it’s supposed pre-occupation with misogyny. It received a special anti-award from the ecumenical jury at Cannes, which typically awards a film that promotes spiritual and humanist values, yet decided to award Antichrist an anti-award for its misogynistic views … go figure. It also awarded Gainsbourg with the Best Actress award, which she definitely deserved.

The Three Beggars

The violence is confronting and unusual for mainstream cinema, but Lars Von Trier has specifically made a horror movie, a genre deliberately designed to manipulate and shock, horrify and mortify. But Antichrist is less about misogyny and more about the unconditional realm of tragedy and base human nature: personal suffering and misanthropy. The focus is dual-split; She is the wife, the mother, a manipulator, and a victim. He is the husband, the father, a manipulator, and the villain. Lars Von Trier twists the genre into a fascinating perversion where She first appears to be the most damaged soul and He the healer, but later He becomes victimised and She becomes the attacker, but by movie’s end the roles have been reversed again into something complex and disturbing, fractured, yet creepily cyclic …

Paradise lost

Lars Von Trier layers his movie with symbolism (the unsettling anamorphic shifts), drenches it in atmosphere (the Gaspar Noe-influenced use of subsonic sound), pushes the mainstream envelope by including graphic sexual intercourse, female masturbation, an erect penis ejaculating blood, and clitoral circumcision, but also fills it with images and sequences of sublime beauty. Antichrist is not designed to titillate in the conventional way that horror movies do, it doesn’t scarify in the usual way that horror movies do, but it paints a profoundly affecting portrait of nightmarish imagery and emotion, an insular, claustrophobic study of desperation and violence, a compelling reflection of light and shadow diffused by the fragility of love, the spectre of death, and the duplicity of Nature.

Antichrist is the year’s most intriguing and provocative movie; by all means not to everyone’s taste, but certainly not reprehensible as the controversy suggests. Like Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible (2002), Antichrist will challenge your sensibilities, disturb with its unflinching descent into the darkness of the soul, but all within the framework of powerful, artistic filmmaking.

Here's the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

8 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by JohnDoe

November 26th 2009 00:23

Film & TV on DVD

This has been one of my most anticipated films of the year and your favorable review seals it Bryn,

As usual I only read the first and last paragraph for fear of spoilers, but that is more than enough to get me eager.

Comment by Bryn

November 26th 2009 00:33

Horrorphile

JD, sigh, I should probably put a spoiler alert on this one ... nah, fuck it.

Comment by David O'Connell

November 27th 2009 00:05

Screen Fanatic

Great coverage of this one Bryn, it's a much-anticipated film for me too, even if Von Trier is something of a sore point. I think Breaking of the Waves is the only film of his I've been able to sit through and actually like. Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville especially, I never quite made it through. I found them pretty near unwatchable. But the fact that this is unquestionably a horror film has me hanging out to see it!

Comment by Bryn

November 27th 2009 00:25

Horrorphile

David, curious to know what you think, we're usually on the same page. The visual conceit of Dogville beguiled me enough to watch it all, but I think I fell asleep during Dancer in the Dark ... I still need to watch The Element of Crime.

Comment by Catherine Stebbins

November 29th 2009 01:27

Cinema Enthusiast
Thoughts from a Cinephile
Thoughts from a TV Watcher

Fantastic review. I really think you did a great job of addressing the issues of the film and giving your take on them. I really do have a lot of problems with it just because I do not thinik his ideas translated the way he wanted them to, at least for me. I had no problems with the violence or the way events progressed. For me, I was just bored during a lot of it and I do not think I needed to be. It simply felt like something empty with the director attempting to fill the films running time. And I do think that the misogyny issue is severely complicated. I am not resigned to any opinion on the matter and I find all arguments for or against it intriguing. I still just do not think there is as much going on in the film as people think there is. Still though, I find myself willing to defend the film in a second from the people who outright hate the film. Really impressive and complex review! Great job!

Comment by Bryn

November 30th 2009 00:49

Horrorphile

Catherine, how could you be bored?? True it's only a two-hander and large sections without dialogue, but the atmosphere and mood was so compelling, I admire "mainstream" cinema transcends the limitations of conventional narrative. David Lynch gets criticized for it all the time. Did you seen Inland Empire?

Comment by Catherine Stebbins

November 30th 2009 01:16

Cinema Enthusiast
Thoughts from a Cinephile
Thoughts from a TV Watcher

i agree about the atmosphere and mood. i am a big fan of minimalism in cinema and i love films with long stretches without dialogue. believe me i am not programmed to need heavy story with my films. but that does not mean i think it works all the time and i don't think it works with this film, at least the way he he handles it. have not seen Inland Empire but i am a big David Lynch fan and i've seen everything of his (including his short films and of course twin peaks) except for that and dune. for me, just because something is trying to transcend conventional narrative does not mean it is successful just because its being unconventional. and that was what antichrist was for me. a film with amazing moments and shots but an ultimate failure because it just felt like an empty exercise. but that's just me.

Comment by Bryn

November 30th 2009 01:37

Horrorphile

I totally agree that a movie that is unconventional in narrative will by no means be a successful narrative. But too often contemporary filmmakers are forced to comply to standardized techniques. I don't think that the New Wave was always successful in the way they approached film narrative, but their freeform approach, and attention to the moment is still refreshing. Lars von Trier attempted to make a horror movie. It's not wholly successful as a horror movie, but as a descent into a a human darkness of the soul I enjoyed the abstract-expressionist textured ride. I don't think it was an empty exercise at all. If you're to argue that, then every Lars von Trier movie is an exercise of some kind, because he's always pushing the sound and vision narrative boundaries, and often to the detriment of the movie as a whole, although the most experimental of all The Five Obstructions, is one of my favourites of his. Character empathy levels I think are very important, and I frequently don't warm to his characters. Breaking the Waves is the exception; both experimental in visual narrative and possessing profound empathy with characters. Have you seen the Dogme film Festen, made by one of his contemporaries, Thomas Vinterberg?

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