We forget sometimes that cinema can be challenging – not everything we watch needs to conform to the rules.
Yet, for all its faults, Antichrist is somehow immensely compelling, and, most important of all, dares to do something different. How can a fox disembowelling itself and then saying “chaos reigns” be seen as anything other than an absurd, macabre gag? Dafoe’s satanic looks contrast with Gainsbourg’s Virgin Mary-esque appearance, the dialogue flits from the poetic to hackneyed corn, the peaceful surroundings and brutality of nature, the intense subject matter and darkly comic intent. The intense contradictions are everywhere in this film. Don’t, whatever you do, wait to see this on DVD – if you want to watch it’s the cinema or nothing.
The experience is like being asphyxiated in dense nightmares, and totally immersive. Von Trier shrouds his Garden of Eden in esoteric mists, filmed through nebulous fish-eye lenses, underscored with swelling, corrupt orchestration and cut with serrated edits. However, Antichrist remains visually stunning throughout. These are so unsophisticated they can’t be taken seriously, and shouldn’t, even if they are spun into the plot later on. Antichrist (natch) is full of them, from the cabin called Eden (double natch) to the twisted vision of the Three Wise Men (triple natch). The joke is on us – we’re paying him for this experience.Īnother example: the cheap Christian symbolism. By including scenes like this, and the rest, he knows Antichrist will be known as the film where a crazy women cuts off her own clitoris with a pair of scissors etc… And by extension, that anyone going to watch such sordid fair is an idiot. Von Trier has accelerated this to terminal velocity. Horror has always been an extension of our inbuilt voyeurism: the ability to explore darker sides of the psyche, in a sterilised surrounding, guilt free. If anything, it distracts from the overall resonance.
Von Trier has included it for no other purpose but to provoke a reaction. However, the infamous full penetration shot is totally unnecessary. It’s a wafer-thin premise – just one big MacGuffin for the money shots – but no more so than most schlock horror films. He (Willem Dafoe) is a douche bag psychotherapist who turns his wife into his patient, while She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is an emotional wreck going through a severe mental breakdown. The plot, as far as it stretches, is this: after the death of their child, two (unnamed) characters retreat to a secluded cabin in the woods to deal with their loss – with horrifying consequences. But, as the saying goes, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. It’s just one big hoax, a giant prank by a man whose career has been defined by being the boldest, brazen and extreme director of them all. So what is it, masterpiece or grot-shocker? Well, the truth is Antichrist is neither. But for every fuming denouncement there’s a self-satisfied critic ready to gush that anyone too prudish to see past the explicit candour is a short sighted, Daily Mail-reading zealot. Exploitative, grotesque, vaudevillian – all indignation-fuelled adjectives levelled at Antichrist. Not unsurprisingly, it’s the unsimulated sex and genital self-mutilation that’s been grabbing the headlines. You will probably have heard about Antichrist by now, Danish director Lars von Trier’s latest controversy-baiting masterpiece/grot-shocker (delete as appropriate).
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