Vancouver 09: ANTICHRIST Review
[Our thanks to Teresa Nieman for the following review.]
So much has already been written about Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, here on ScreenAnarchy and otherwise, and responses have been extremely divided. That's why it's so strange to me that I feel mostly ambivalent about the film. There are things I like about it, and things I very much don't. Nevertheless, I do find it has a lot of stimulating things to think about and pick apart, even if what I conclude from it may not add up to the masterpiece I hoped I would see.
By now you probably all know the story--just as surely as you know about the infamous female genital mutilation scene--a woman and a man, never identified as more than "she and he", lose their young son. This event causes She to spiral out of control with grief, and He, being a psychiatrist by trade, takes it upon himself to fix her. One of his brilliant strategies is to whisk them off to their remote cabin, "Eden", despite she being deathly afraid of going there. As you likely know, it doesn't go so well.
Antichrist, from the very first frame, has a thick sense of dread hanging over it unlike any other movie I've seen. Though, that could be partly because I'm female and I was quite literally dreading that scene the entire time, and wondering when it would pop up (I must confess that when it did, I covered my eyes). But I digress; with or without the extreme violence, Von Trier uses every trick up his sleeve to make the viewer uneasy throughout.
Some of the film's images are successfully disturbing in a deep, psychological way. Two examples are the one involving the fawn's first appearance, and also the baby eagle. Both are renderings of parents utterly failing or literally killing their spawn, just as She feels she has done. Then, naturally, there's one that doesn't quite work, and that's the "Chaos Reigns!" fox. Lars Von Trier is a smart man, and I wouldn't completely put it past him that this moment was intentionally funny in a dark, absurdist way. However, judging by the tone of the rest of the film, it seems more likely that it just ended up accidentally being silly instead of frightening.
Eventually, and this is where I thought things went overboard, the mounting nausea the movie has built up gives way to some truly grisly, visceral violence. And if you think it's just one quick little, artsy genital mutilation scene, boy are you in for an unpleasant surprise! I'm not surprised to hear reports of people puking, or even having seizures in theaters around the world. Even in my screening, the man directly beside me was breathing heavily and cradling his head in his hands for about ten minutes, until he finally got up and left.
What I didn't like about this latter half is that I suddenly felt like I was watching a Saw flick, something that felt very out of place for an otherwise graceful movie of implied horror rather than in-your-face brutality. Granted, it is much more affecting to see these things happening to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, in stunningly fearless portrayals, than it was to see a hammy Cary Elwes crawling across a rusty bathroom floor. Still, I'm not sure if it needed to be shown so relentlessly.
The end of the movie, probably even for those that loved it, comes as a huge relief. While I would say I'm lukewarm on it as a cinematic success, I still think it's a fascinating experience, and I wholly admire Von Trier's ability to transcend the limitations of the media in order to get under people's skin like few other directors can. I even overheard a timid, middle-aged, mullet-wearing blond lady remarking on it afterwards in the ladies room: "I've never seen anything like that before. I want to see it again".
Review by Teresa Nieman
So much has already been written about Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, here on ScreenAnarchy and otherwise, and responses have been extremely divided. That's why it's so strange to me that I feel mostly ambivalent about the film. There are things I like about it, and things I very much don't. Nevertheless, I do find it has a lot of stimulating things to think about and pick apart, even if what I conclude from it may not add up to the masterpiece I hoped I would see.
By now you probably all know the story--just as surely as you know about the infamous female genital mutilation scene--a woman and a man, never identified as more than "she and he", lose their young son. This event causes She to spiral out of control with grief, and He, being a psychiatrist by trade, takes it upon himself to fix her. One of his brilliant strategies is to whisk them off to their remote cabin, "Eden", despite she being deathly afraid of going there. As you likely know, it doesn't go so well.
Antichrist, from the very first frame, has a thick sense of dread hanging over it unlike any other movie I've seen. Though, that could be partly because I'm female and I was quite literally dreading that scene the entire time, and wondering when it would pop up (I must confess that when it did, I covered my eyes). But I digress; with or without the extreme violence, Von Trier uses every trick up his sleeve to make the viewer uneasy throughout.
Some of the film's images are successfully disturbing in a deep, psychological way. Two examples are the one involving the fawn's first appearance, and also the baby eagle. Both are renderings of parents utterly failing or literally killing their spawn, just as She feels she has done. Then, naturally, there's one that doesn't quite work, and that's the "Chaos Reigns!" fox. Lars Von Trier is a smart man, and I wouldn't completely put it past him that this moment was intentionally funny in a dark, absurdist way. However, judging by the tone of the rest of the film, it seems more likely that it just ended up accidentally being silly instead of frightening.
Eventually, and this is where I thought things went overboard, the mounting nausea the movie has built up gives way to some truly grisly, visceral violence. And if you think it's just one quick little, artsy genital mutilation scene, boy are you in for an unpleasant surprise! I'm not surprised to hear reports of people puking, or even having seizures in theaters around the world. Even in my screening, the man directly beside me was breathing heavily and cradling his head in his hands for about ten minutes, until he finally got up and left.
What I didn't like about this latter half is that I suddenly felt like I was watching a Saw flick, something that felt very out of place for an otherwise graceful movie of implied horror rather than in-your-face brutality. Granted, it is much more affecting to see these things happening to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, in stunningly fearless portrayals, than it was to see a hammy Cary Elwes crawling across a rusty bathroom floor. Still, I'm not sure if it needed to be shown so relentlessly.
The end of the movie, probably even for those that loved it, comes as a huge relief. While I would say I'm lukewarm on it as a cinematic success, I still think it's a fascinating experience, and I wholly admire Von Trier's ability to transcend the limitations of the media in order to get under people's skin like few other directors can. I even overheard a timid, middle-aged, mullet-wearing blond lady remarking on it afterwards in the ladies room: "I've never seen anything like that before. I want to see it again".
Review by Teresa Nieman
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