AntiChrist (2009)

A provocative title for a provocative film. Cresting on a wage of indignant outrage and faux concern at the disintegration of the pillars of civilisation and claims of an assault on common human decency, Lars Von Trier, the self proclaimed ‘greatest film director alive‘ new film ‘Antichrist‘ opened in London this week and I took a quick trip down to Greenwich to see what all the fuss was about. In an opening which has more than a small debt to ‘Don’t Look Now‘, a psychiatrist husband (Willem Dafoe, listed simply as ‘he’) is making love to his academic wife Charlotte Gainsbourg (referred to simply as ‘she’), a supposedly tender moment which Von Trier brutally intercuts with their infant son escaping the confines of his crib and falling to his death, a sequence rendered almost beautiful with crisp black & white photography, a Handel soundtrack and expressive slow motion timing – a montage clearly designed to offend some sensibilities especially considering one graphic penetration shot. In mourning and paralysed with guilt the couple retreat to an abandoned cottage out in the woods to recuperate as the film veers into a very unsettling, narcotic fairy tale territory, ‘she’ becoming increasingly distraught and as the animals and woods themselves come to life around her, nature itself infected with the elusive evil that the death has released. He is a psychiatrist who intends to talk their way through a successful recuperation, a symbol of rationality and male authority, She is an academic who it is revealed has been working on a demented thesis on the nature of evil and the mythic female throughout history entitled ‘Gynocide’, thus they are both ciphers, they are the only characters in the picture and they remain nameless, a theatrical conceit which Von Trier employs to achieve a timeless, amorphous, nightmarish constitution to the film. The discussions and arguments descend into insanity, emotional rape and sexual violence as the nightmare psychosis overflows from the man and woman’s bruised psyche into the world….

For me its clearest antecedent is ‘The Company Of Wolves‘, a film I’m surprised not to have seen mentioned in the handful of reviews I’ve read but then again I don’t think that movie developed much of a cult in the States. It goes further of course, ‘Antichrist‘ can certainly be pigeon-holed as a so-called torture porn art-film which but it doesn’t quite match the notorious reviews it has already attracted, quite brilliantly from people who haven’t even seen the film, Von Trier must be overjoyed. Films which generate outrage and disgust amongst the right-wing press tend to be actually pretty good, don’t you think? It’s taken a few days to percolate and after reading some reviews from both sides of the fence, not matter how well written and argued (Bradshaw turned in a high quality account I think) I ultimately think that it is a genuine, anguished, celluloid howl of despair, when you disregard the publicity stunts and marketing around the project there is a terrible, diabolic centre to the film that has slithered out from Von Triers wretched imagination.

 Hmm, that sounds derogatory doesn’t it? That’s not my intention, I mean words like ‘wretched’ in their ‘biblical’ sense, not the terrible, inept sense – the film is positively saturated with religious symbolism, the woods in which the majority of the film takes place is a fallen Eden, one of many binary oppositions inserted into the film (the opening life/death, male/female), which can also be observed in the films structure. The film is divided into four sections – a prologue, epilogue and two central sections, separated by cue cards which reinforces its artificial, allegorical flavour. In terms of the horror it is all internal, there are no manifestations of the id in monstrous form, no ancient allegorical monsters to defeat, the film is so utterly nihilistic that the films most memorable line – ‘nature is Satan’s playground’ – delivers up its central motif. Aside from the painful finale for me the truly unsettling sequences are derived from what I can best describe as the animal moments, it’s difficult to remain spoiler free but there are a collection of sequences that bookend the different chapters of the film and it is during these brief moments where I got a real sense of discomfort at the notion of nature, the natural as inherently evil in terms of our irrelevant moral code. I can’t summarise this unsettling and disturbing work better than Nina Power who concludes ‘Antichrist is disturbing because ultimately there is no separating the natural from the unnatural, right from wrong. There is trauma because there is life and then death, and none of it means anything’.

 Is Von Trier a fraud? A hoaxer on the international film community who strives to elicit some false controversy through his empty, hollow movies? A deliberate purveyor of cruel punishment on his female characters? He is a founder member of the Dogme  movement which, whatever your opinion of the movies themselves, proved in the 1990’s that world cinema remained a viable and evolving art form as an unexpected, organic film movement emerged in reaction to a conflation of cultural, economic and social forces just like German Expressionism did in the 1920’s, French Poetic Realism in the 1930’s or Italian Neo-Realism immediately after the war emerged before them. I happen to think that most of the Dogme films are actually pretty dull but that’s just me, it may be in part due to the hegemony of verite, reality themed material seizing and infecting all forms of audio visual communication over the past ten, fifteen years. When it comes to Von Trier’s oeuvre I’ve sat through the many hours of his Brechtian ‘Manderlay‘ and ‘Dogville‘ and I actually quite liked them both but can’t see myself ever watching them again, the same with ‘Dancer In The Dark’ and ‘Breaking The Waves’ which are all tough, challenging movies on the audience and his characters alike. He does put his female characters through absolute hell in every one of his movies and has attracted many accusations of misogyny as does Neil Labute, as did Hitchcock, as did Kubrick. I guess its subjective, Hitchcock’s women are actually fairly heroic outside many of the better known films (think of Grace Kelly in ‘Rear Window’ or Ingrid Bergman in ‘Notorious‘), in Labute the men are portrayed as so venomously cruel and duplicitous the women come out almost angelic in comparison. Von Trier has voiced his admiration of Strindberg which dissipates any lingering doubts for me. Maybe I’m being shallow but give me a Vincent Gallo, Von Trier or Abel Ferrera any day over a Ron Howard, Ed Zwick or Bruce Ratner picture, they may not always be good films but at least you’re not bored.

 Anyone dedicating such a film to Tarkovsky, perhaps cinema’s greatest poet on spiritualism and faith (even a rabid atheist like me can appreciate these elements) is quite clearly aiming to induce an epidemic of apoplectic seizures amongst the world cinema critical intelligentsia, in any case the film has a beautiful visual texture provided by one of the worlds leading DP’s Anthony Dod Mantle. I kind of admire him for that controversial inclusion, having seen the film there are sequences which have clearly been filmed as homage’s to Tarkovsky’s unique style and as expected it was this dedication appearing on screen at Canne which resulted in more disgust and revulsion than the graphic nudity, genital mutilation and overwhelming cruelty. Whether he is being honest or not (I think he is) it’s a masterstroke of marketing guaranteed to result in hundreds of column inches of outraged hyperbole. I’ve read and heard a couple of interviews with Von Trier over the past week or so and I think it’s fair to say that he’s a fairly screwed up bloke. He’s suffered near nervous breakdowns, depression, has a series of crippling phobias and wrestled with a number of faith related ideologies, converting to Catholicism, engaging in drug induced shamanistic (experiences that Von Trier injected into ‘Antichrist‘ with the talking fox) practices as a teenager and suffered a life changing revelation on his mothers deathbed when she revealed that his biological father was not the man who nurtured and raised him in the family home – if you’re artistically inclined that has got to be quite a game changer and I’d say that he has poured his anguish into ‘Antichrist’, by far his most gruelling movie yet.

  Here’s a quite infuriating list of some peoples ‘best‘ worst films (yes I’m still seething at the appearance of ‘Big Trouble In Little China‘ on that list, Erik Bryan you will face my wrath) which has led to a few more additions to my lovefilm.com list, I’m really looking forward to ‘The Last Boy Scout‘ again and a first look at ‘Liquid Sky‘. To keep things binary here’s a link to some ‘worst‘ best films, I disagree with ‘The Searchers‘ assertion – its a great film – but it is truly refreshing to see someone lay into ‘Jules Et Jim‘, a film which I thoroughly detested and hey, I like Truffaut. If you want to see, genuine, Class A, state of the art, inept film-making then you must see the underground classic ‘Manos, Hands Of Fate’, a film made by a farmer due to a drunken bet that anyone can be a film-maker. It’s sublime.

July 29, 2009 | Categories: Art, Current Affairs, Film | Tags: Antichrist, charlotte gainsburg, Cinema, controversy, Dogme, Film, Movies, Von Trier, willem dafoe | 4 Comments