Antichrist: 4.5/10
Antichrist (2009): 4.5/10
After viewing Lars Von Trier's newest controversial film Antichrist, I had no idea what I felt about it. I certainly did not love it. Did I even like it? Did I hate it? It was hard to formulate thoughts. After sleeping on it and attempting to figure out a more coherent opinion on the film I am pretty sure this review is going to tilt to the slightly negative side of things.
As a film major I am ashamed to say that this is my first Lars von Trier film. I have been meaning to see his other films for years now and I have put them off because I am actually afraid of the potential emotional trauma. This is coming from someone who takes a masochistic pleasure with being put through the ringer when it comes to emotional trauma in films. I had Breaking the Waves from Netflix for about a month this summer before sending it back. I could not get up the nerve to watch it. Von Trier declared himself the world's greatest director at Cannes this year. Obviously he has an ego. Obviously this means he is like any other film director. He is very off putting in interviews. This is hard to overcome but I have realized that I would not want to know any of my favorite directors dead or alive. Ever - except maybe Truffaut because he had the most adorable face. Since Breaking the Waves he has been dealing with accusations of extreme misogyny within his films. In a self aware ironic twist from the Cannes film festival, they gave Charlotte Gainsbourg the Best Actress award this year for Antichrist and then gave the film a special award for misogyny. It does not seem to me that anyone can write off his work this easily. If his Golden Hearts trilogy, 3 films von Trier made about good women in a bad world (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark) aren't these women overcome by forces outside of their control. Is this an exposure of gender issues in society? I have no idea since I have not seen the films. People find issues with the performances von Trier gets out of women. They are too raw and too uncomfortable. There is a ton of controlling going on that adds a sick twist and an additional layer of discomfort to the proceeding. Von Trier apparently bullied Bjork to the point where her sanity was tested. She refers to the performance von Trier got out of her as "emotional porn" (not a good thing). It is like Hitchcock and women taken to another level. The issue is that if this is indeed misogyny then it is quite reprehensible. We should move onto this film though because it is the only one of his I have actually seen.
Heavy Spoilers:
Antichrist, for anyone who does not know, is about He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The opening scene depicts the death of their child Nic who climbs out of his crib and out the window, falling to his death as He and She have sex. She is having issues dealing with her grief. He is a therapist and wants to take her off medication. He claims that her feelings are natural and they should be dealt with that way. His therapeutic approach is to have her confront her fears head on. Her fears lie in Eden, their cottage where she took their son without He last summer. From there, omens or warnings or representations of emotions like grief, pain and despair appear in the form of a deer, fox and bird. Everything slowly devolves as we see that She has come to believe through research on her unfinished thesis on misogyny (which she researched at the cottage the last summer) that the crimes committed against women hundreds of years ago were actually proof that women are inherently evil. Other minor revelations expose themselves as we, along with He discover through looking at Polaroid photos that She would put Nic's shoes on the wrong feet resulting in her son having slightly deformed feet (which we learn from the autopsy report). We also learn very late in the film that She saw Nic climb out the window and continued to allow herself pleasure in spite of this. The last part of the film features some extreme violence as He and She punish each other.
Something I need to clear out right now is that any claims that this film is torture porn is completely misguided, naive and ignorant of the definition of the subgenre. This is not torture porn. The claims are seriously pissing me off. While sex and violence are paired up in this film quite a bit, nothing in the film is sexualized outside of the opening scene. Even outside of that, the film simply does not fit the category. There is a lot of sex but none of it (again, outside of the opening scene) is sexualized. There is no catering to some sort of pain filled fantasy others might have. It is all just laid out for the viewer. These films have nothing in common. I know even that subgenre is less simplistic than that but I need to disclaim these absurd labels.
Overall, the film is a bit of an empty exercise. I understand that this is supposed to represent the depression he went through. I understand that he could barely function on set at times. I also understand that this is not supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to be enjoyable, entertaining or rewarding in any sort of way. At first I thought a lot of what was going on was going over my head. The I started thinking “What if there is not much to get?” While I do feel that this film is so personal that much of it can only be understood by the filmmaker, Antichrist felt too thin and too empty for me. The descent taken by the two characters is marred by a lack of difference between a lot of the scenes with He and She especially in the first hour. Maybe this is purposeful but it felt like we were getting nowhere instead of slowly descending into something extremely dark. Once we get to Eden, I did admire the foreboding elements that come into play. By the time the end of the film comes around it feels like even those scenes cannot sustain themselves completely. When She is looking for He she just keeps repeating that same two lines for about 5 minutes as he desperately tries to kill the bird representing despair that will not die. The film could have done a better job of slowly slipping the audience into the nightmare of this film instead of repeating itself for too long and then coming to more standstills along the way.
There are though, parts and/or elements of the film that I really liked. When the opening scene, which is titled Prologue, began I thought I was watching a very pretentious piece of work. Lars von Trier pushes pretentious to the extreme here though, allowing it to surpass that and to actually be beautiful. I ended up being completely sucked in by its beauty. The opera piece from Rinaldo by Handel that he uses is stunning and it allows you to flow with the scene. This and the Epilogue are in black and white and they both feature the opera piece. These serve as nice bookends to the film. He goes past slow motion and uses extreme slow motion in the Prologue and von Trier throws in a hard core penetration shot in slo mo for good measure (using body doubles).
There are some shots in this that are truly remarkable. Von Trier creates a very distinct feel with this film and the various effects that his shots create, for me, worked for the most part and served the film nicely. The film was sprinkled with great moments, shots and occasionally scenes but was surrounded by a struggling story that simply could not sustain itself. My favorite shot of the film is the one at Nic’s funeral when She falls down. His exercise with her on the train was great. I know for a lot of people that the animals were jump the shark moments but for me they were highlights. I am definitely on the ‘chaos reigns’ bandwagon. As I said the opening scene was my favorite in the film. There is a strangling late in the film that effected me more than the other violence because it could be the most realistic (I would guess) strangling in a film I have seen. That image has stayed with me.
The question remains though; is the film misogynistic? I think it is impossible to truly answer. Honestly the way She is depicted in this and the ideas that she subscribes to is no more offensive than the way I see women being depicted in mainstream media with the constant male gaze. This has no “male” gaze, or at least von Trier does not employ it, which gives it points right off. Gainsbourg appears naked in it many times but nothing is glorified and nothing is appealing. He gets some nudity as well although they had to use someone else’s penis because Dafoe’s was too big. That could be the greatest piece of trivia from a film ever. Getting back to the point though, the ideas are what are so disturbing here. Her research makes her think women are inherently evil which is what drives her insane. He is really disturbed by this revelation of what she feels so at first we are prompted to feel what He feels which is confusion and horror. However when she fulfills her own beliefs by adhering to the opinions she has subscribed to, the film is essentially telling us that She is right. Could it be that the film believes it to be true or that her belief is reflective of societal power on conceptions about women and the ability to believe anything ourselves if society tells us to think one thing or another? I could see it going either way until I think about 2 things. The first is that the film itself takes this idea of women being evil to the next level by having Eden be a dangerous place for She. The ground burns She’s feet but not He’s. She going back to Eden is very clearly (very clearly) representative of women going back to the place of original sin where Woman prevented Man from living in paradise. The last shot as well is so unbelievably troubling in favor of this misogyny. Want me to spoil it? I will. It literally ends with He in the woods and making his way out as he is then surrounded by hundreds of women with blurred out faces that are approaching to overtake him in the last shot. It is nearly impossible to defend.
Von Trier will not defend his own work but he has said that he feels that the female characters he has created are a lot more interesting than the usually asshole male characters and why is that a bad thing? Personally I think it goes a bit deeper than this. Also Gainsbourg said that she feels these claims are much too simplistic because she personally felt that She was supposed to be von Trier himself; interesting claim. Since she is the one who both inflicts the pain on He and herself it did admittedly seem that way to me. It would make little sense if He was meant to be von Trier. I do not think it is that easy either. I think there is no answer. However I think it makes for great discussion and I do feel that at least there is that discussion as opposed to the consistently submissive treatment of women in mainstream media and film. It is no better forgive me if I think it is no worse.
Last but not least I need to speak briefly on the two performances to come out of this film. It is very amusing and unfortunate that Charlotte Gainsbourg will not be nominated for the film because of the nature of it. At least Cannes stood by the performance and rightfully too. Dafoe is really great here because he is always great to watch. I have never been uninterested by a performance of his. Gainsbourg is the one that knocks it out of the park here. It has all been heard before; it’s a brave performance, raw, emotional and naked both literally and figuratively. All of these things are true. She just dominates here and even though it is impossible to penetrate the character she made a lot of the point A to B material plausible for me through her performance. She is remarkable and does some truly sick stuff in this. She will be on my personal Oscar list.
Antichrist has some powerful moments, scenes and performances. It has some remarkable shots and ideas. However the film feels like an empty exercise for von Trier. A lot of people are taking issue with the violence which amazingly I took no issue with despite its extremities which were admittedly very hard to take really only because of a couple of key shots which I did actually see. His intense depressive and suicidal emotional state is represented by a thin film that cannot sustain the story that he wants to put behind those emotions. There is room for a lot of interesting discussion and debate here which is always great fun but the discussion that will undoubtedly come after the film with whoever you see this with is going to be much more interesting than the film itself.
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I've seen almost every Lars von Trier movie.
Breaking the Waves is a masterpiece.
I didn't like Zentropa.
I didn't like The Idiots.
I didn't like Dancer in the Dark.
I sort of liked Dogville. Well, the stylistic impressed me.
I have yet to watch The Element of Crime.
I really like The Five Obstructions.
Lars is an idiot for claiming to be a genius. Probably the stupidest thing you can do. It killed Terence Trent D'arby's pop music career ...
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It looks like you really do not like the majority of his work but have seen most of it regardless. I feel like he is that kind of director. After seeing Antichrist one would think I would want to sort of avoid his other work but it actually makes me want to see everything he has done regardless of whether or not I hate it or love it. i'm actually dying to see dancer in the dark, as my films to see this decade list confirmed. maybe its because i'm a big bjork and catherine deneuve fan...
have you seen his horror TV/miniseries The Kingdom from '94? Its supposed to be incredible. I've been meaning to watch it for years.
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While you're at it, watch it Festen by Trier's friend and fellow Dogme '95 manifestee Thomas Vinterburg. First ever Dogme film and man it's a doozy. Shows what you can do with not much money but a powerful script and a brilliant cast.
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All this Festen talk is making me itch to watch it again.
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