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ANTICHRIST TRAILER

“To work a little freer with the medium…” –Lars Von Trier

“A spectacularly violent film.”— Chris Alexander (Fangoria Magazine)

Lars Von Trier has always been a controversial figure in modern cinema. Known for films that break conventional form, both in plot and in his eye-popping visual style, he has already worked with such actresses as Bjork and Catherine Deneuve in his Oscar nominated film Dancer in the Dark. He developed a film movement and manifesto with a few other filmmakers, such as Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo), called Dogma 95. The Dogma rules were anarchic and free- all digital and hand-held shots, nothing fake, no props, no special effects, no credits, and often improvisation. The man used rules for almost all his films, an esoteric code he’d created that freed cinema from its usual formula.

There are no rules in Antichrist. It is its own monster. As a psychological film, it is without parallel in intensity and its power to unsettle. As a horror film, it is perhaps the most profoundly disturbing and unconventional piece since, “The Shining.”

Antichrist stars only two actors- Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It begins with a beautifully shot introduction of the two characters copulating intensely, while unbeknownst to them their toddler accidentally falls to his death from an open window. The film is divided into three chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue: Grief, Pain, Despair, and Gynocide. Willem Defoe plays the psychiatrist husband trying to help his wife out of her almost psychotic state of bereavement. In an effort to heal her, he suggests she confront her greatest fear: their small cabin in the woods named “Eden.” What transpires in that place will shake you for the rest of your life. Horror film journalist Chris Alexander (writer for Fangoria Magazine) describes his experience watching the film: “Even as someone who grew up on horror films, I was shocked. This goes above and beyond any kind of torture porn {sexploitation] horror film. This is a spectacularly violent film.” Despite the hyped violence, don’t expect some slasher flick. This is a surreal masterpiece, a nightmarish vision that concentrates on nature. “Nature is Satan’s church,” says Gainsbourg’s disturbed character in the film. But whether it is the physical nature of the forest or the nature of man, this film is an exploration of the nature of evil. Begun as a means of dealing with a crippling depression, Von Trier has said of the film, [sic]“It has no rules. There are things in the film that I cannot explain, it cannot be expected to make perfect sense.”

My own experience while watching it was one of mixed terror and intrigue. The incongruent images are hallucinatory; the entire film’s shots are either stark images of the bleak forest and the actors’ faces, or unbelievable, eerily surreal visuals reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The violence was so controversial at Cannes that it caused some people to walk out. It was a gore-fest of genital mutilation, torture, and extreme emotions, though they dominate only the last part of the film. It has been criticized as misogynistic, and it is true that the primitive and violent acts stem mostly from Gainsbourg’s character. However, I think these allegations miss the true point of the film. The violent nature is quite present in both characters. It is especially embodied in the dark forest and the strange animals around them. At one point, a fox is shown eating its own intestines, before looking up at Defoe’s character and saying in a deep and guttural voice, “Chaos reigns.” In the bizarre world that Lars Von Trier has fashioned for us, foxes, crows, and falling acorns are symbols of death, torture, and destruction. The couple is constantly accosted by visions of their tragedy at the start of the film, the child’s death, which shook the couple into their instability. All of this is suddenly brought back by the falling and dying acorns raining down from the trees, a dead fawn, a baby bird falling out of its nest. The magic of the film is Von Trier’s ability to make the benign seem horrifying, imbuing everything around us with a potential for malice.

“Who are you?”

“I am nature.”

“What do you want?”

“To hurt you as much as I possibly can.”

Themes of emotional as well as physical violence and masochism are repeated throughout the film and done with such dream-like grace that one cannot help but feel caught within a nightmare from which they cannot awake. The end product is a deeply unsettling experience; my heart was beating in my chest. I was physically affected by the film. It was sensational, at times even painful, but it was all worth the experience. It is something like a David Lynch film combined with the Marquis de Sade. Something like falling off a cliff and thinking you will die, only to wake up and realize it was a dream.

If by now you haven’t already guessed, this film is NOT for the weak of stomach. There are scenes of explicit sexual violence, but they are not gratuitous- not simply meant to shock. For the open-minded, it is not only a terrifying movie experience, but also an opportunity to enter an intellectual maze, a puzzle of psychosis and almost occult evil.  It’s a step in a direction that few dare to go. But if it’s been a while since a film scared the shit out of you, and your feeling brave…Antichrist is an hour and fifty minutes of your life that will haunt you forever.

In a good way. I hope.