Antichrist

An eerie yet gorgeous tapestry of lingering close-ups; parallels, cuts and slow-motion photography, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist is a gruelling tale of mythical grandeur: a bizarre yet beautiful film chock full of sadism and shagging, Satanic dogma and similes. Most of which, I don't understand. So you'll be pleased to know that I have no intention of harping on about the director's bent meditation on gender, nature, genocide, motherhood, misogyny and astronomy. I find all that stuff interesting, don't get me wrong, but when things get Freudian I'm way out of my league. Therefore, I'll stick to what I know.

Albeit seething with emotion, Antichrist refuses to adhere to some of the general "rules" of the classical Hollywood narrative, meaning it lacks clarity, unity and closure. For example, there're only two characters, both of which remain nameless and have indefinite; pasts, motives and are somewhat difficult to identify with. The film rejects conventional morality. It is a difficult and uncomfortable experience that'll unnerve even the most robust of film fans. So if you like your films light, clear and conservative, stay away. If, however, you're a fan of, say, Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, director David Lynch or you just dig a bit of alternative cinema, then brace yourself for a hugely demanding tableau that film critic Anita Singh of the Sunday Telegraph dubbed "the most shocking film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival." Willem Dafoe plays "he", a therapist and husband to "she" (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the female half of the cast whose line of work we never really learn. After a quite miraculous opening montage that juxtaposes the couple making love with the accidental death of their child, the embedded tale follows the pair as they flee to "Eden", their isolated cabin in the woods, where "he" attempts to aid a severely grief stricken "she" through her bereavement.

Book-ended by a masterfully conceived prologue and epilogue and split into four focal chapters entitled "Grief", "Pain", "Despair" and "The Three Beggars" (don't ask), the film takes on a ghostlike tone from the outset as the boundaries between the real and surreal become blurred. Alas, things get weird, edgy and very, very nasty. The sheer mass and rate of dense motifs and metaphors at hand regarding sex, Freud, the devil and the soul is a little overwhelming. Not to mention the force and intensity of both Dafoe and Gainsbourg's turns in addition to the film's strong, emotional undercurrent.

In spite of large and sustained periods of quite brilliant film-making, Antichrist contains some of the most violent and deplorable images ever committed to celluloid. For the ladies there's self mutilation. For the gents there's…I, I, I can't even say it. Put it this way, it ain't good lads…Anyway, add to the unthinkable gore a whole host of outlandish set-ups, half a dozen scenes of a sexual nature and one or two jolts in tone and you'll be scared silly. Remember- sometimes in cinema, you fear what you don't understand, especially when the camera is an unflinching eye inside the head of a disturbed, Danish poet. Lars Von Trier is an excellent filmmaker, but even his biggest fans will find it hard to swallow this, never mind stomach it.

Dedicated to the memory of legendary soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Antichrist is truly as haunting, delicate and poetic a film as you're ever bound to see. Though shrouded in scenes of unspeakable cruelty, the film eludes to the work of Tarkovsky in a big way: Von Trier's warped Adam and Eve parable is a moody, metaphysical affair cloaked in hypnotic, dreamlike imagery that calls to mind the likes of Mirror, Solaris and the brilliant Stalker. The trancelike photography; sound, score, and editing demonstrate a predilection for atmospheric, art-theatre sensibility. Tarkovsky would have loved it. This, after all, is a film that simply has to be seen to be believed. Not necessarily for its aesthetic grandeur, gore or technique, but for its harrowing portrayal of a soul in torment.

What's it all about? Who cares?! Antichrist is an unusual, atmospheric horror film that's guaranteed to provoke. The performances are honest and strong, the aesthetics are bold, the direction is brilliant and the outcome is something that is ultimately hard to come by these days: authentic film-making.

Jack Harding

This movie drained me...

Without a doubt the most unpleasant and despairing movie I've ever watched. It's not just the graphic imagery that got to me, but the overall tone of the movie was incredibly dreadful and you could almost feel a presence of some sort of "evil".

This is a hard movie to review. It crosses all barriers when it comes to movie making...ALL. It makes you question yourself about what art is and if there's anything as going "too far"?

But don't dismiss this. It's certainly much more than just being graphic for the sake of it. First off, the cinematography is absolutely flawless. The opening scene had me in absolute awe. Beautiful... And my deepest respect to Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsburg. I could only imagine how much this would drain the actors both mentally and physically. They are amazing and deserve Oscars.

I have to mention the violence too, since it's a critical aspect. This isn't "torture porn" of any kind. It's natural (it's looks almost too realistic), physical sexual violence. That's why it works so effective on the audience. You can almost feel their pain. Never before have I watched a movie where I felt the urge to look away. You would think that, in the end, all this violence and self molestation is just a shock tactic, but I assure you it's not. There is actually a plot and a sensible progression of the movie. I of course won't say too much. People need to see it.

I can understand why some people wouldn't like it, and that's okay. This is most definitely not for everyone.

It may not be a movie that made me feel good, but it made feel something and had an effect on me. It's beautiful, sad, poetic, horrific and in the end, oddly uplifting. A genre masterpiece.

A must see.

10/10.

Lars Von Trier is a director who's always been going his own ways, and this can definitely be seen in this movie. Antichrist is a movie that doesn't hold anything back when it comes to gore, and the stuff that you see in the film won't leave your mind the next couple of days. But the movie itself is much more than that... The movie is beautifully shot, the story and setting extremely uncomfortable and the acting is fantastic. The movie is sometime painful to watch, not in a "Saw" or "Hostel" kind of way, but when you leave the theater you feel genuinely uncomfortable, and that is one of the reasons why i liked this movie. It's a movie like nothing i've experienced and I'm glad that we have directors like Lars Von Trier that dares to make a film like this. It's nothing like the mainstream movies that are being made nowadays, and it makes your mind race when you leave the theater, something very few movies does. You aren't served with facts, as with any other movies, but are left to interpret and think for yourself. It's a bizarre movie and not one for the faint of heart, but if you dare to be provoked and see a movie like nothing you've ever seen, then go see Antichrist.

Antichrist (2009)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Thought provoking but highly controversial film from von Trier has a husband (Willem Dafoe) and wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) making love while their young son gets out of his crib and falls from a window to his death. After the grief sets in the couple head off to a cabin in the woods to try and cure the wife from her state but once there things take a turn for the worse. This film has a prologue, an epilogue and four chapters in between. Three of the chapters deal with grief, pain and despair. What the director was trying to say or do with this film is going to be in the mind of the viewer watching and I'm positive you could show this film to a hundred people and fifty would probably walk out. The other fifty would each have a different idea on the events in the film and that's probably why von Trier continues to be one of the most interesting directors out there. You might love him or you might hate him but no matter how you feel you're going to be feeling something, which is a lot more than most directors could have said about their work. This movie will certainly bring on debate and I'm sure it's going to bring on some strong feelings of hatred among those who see it but at the end of the day there's no doubt that the film will leave people thinking and questioning their own thoughts.

Writing this minutes after finishing the film, my mind is still all over the place on what exactly it was that I watched. I do feel disturbed, which is saying quite a bit considering some of the films I've seen in my life. The atmosphere created by von Trier is extremely disturbing and this is before we get to any of the controversial stuff. That stuff I won't ruin but all the hype you've read is certainly lived up to and von Trier takes on a new form of sexual violence that most people haven't seen. The bizarre sex scenes are never erotic but at the same time there's a level of love to them. This will leave people will more things to debate but I think the title refers to nothing here as the movie isn't about the antichrist but instead about human emotions to one level or another. Another thing I do know is that the two actors turn in incredibly brave performances and they're names should certainly be remembered at Oscar time but I have a feeling they won't be. Both are challenged physically to be brave because of the nudity, sex scenes and some extremely bizarre situations both are put in. You applaud them for that but they also take it to another level and deliver complete and haunting characters. The pain both actors display is quite amazing to watch but at the same time you almost hate to watch because of how painful they make it. There isn't another actor in the film so it's up to these two to carry everything and they pull that off without a problem. The visual style of von Trier is something else that people love and he turns in another real beauty here. The opening prologue is in B&W and it's perhaps one of the most haunting, tragic and beautiful images I've seen from a film in quite a while. The masterful music score playing over this sequence makes it even more haunting but there are other great visual touches throughout the film.

Some have made people believe that this is a porn film hidden behind the label of art but I think that's quite unfair. While there are hardcore sequences I think most people still look at them as being taboo. I, on the other hand, have become very familiar with this type of stuff since I'm a fan of the likes of Jess Franco so I don't mind this type of thing. I think it does add a lot of realism to the movie but people shouldn't think it's non-stop sex and torture from start to finish. The first few minutes feature some sex and then the rest of the movie is pretty clean up to the final thirty-minutes. In the middle is a lot of dialogue, which is perfectly written and delivered by the actors. You'll certainly have a lot to take in as, again, we're asked countless questions about what's going on but then your senses will be attacked when the actual torture does set in. This isn't an easy movie to watch and I'm sure many will walk away needing a shower but it does bring out emotions, feelings and thoughts, which is something not too many films can do. Love it or hate it this is a pretty unique movie.

John Doe says in "Se7en": "Wanting people to pay attention, you can't just tap them on the shoulder. You have to hit them in the head with a sledgehammer." L. von Trier was tapping on the shoulder with "Dogville". He turns to a sledgehammer with "Antichrist". The problem is that when you have been hit by the extremities of his latest endeavor the most appropriate question you may want to ask seems to be suggested by the next line of the late detective Mills: "What makes you so special that people should pay attention?"

This movie doesn't strike as an overt emotional manipulation like "Dancer in the Dark" (the fact that the latter is really something that can be described in such a way was eventually admitted even by the director himself). The cinematography is stunning - in a good sense of the word. Several frames with Willem Dafoe's face will certainly enter the gallery of iconic images provided by modern cinema. Even the dedication to Tarkovsky was not vain. But von Trier is neither stupid/ talentless nor childish/egocentric - hopefully, at least - to the extent to actually consider making movies a kind of therapy, and the screening room his own private couch at a shrink's. So he is trying to bring in a meaning here after all. If so what is it?

What is that point he is trying to deliver? Human nature is far from being perfect? It's hardly new news. The aesthetic audacity and harshness of images in "Dogville" were fully justified by a consistency of its message, which they conveyed in a completely adequate way. As far as I can see, von Trier was talking then about the unbearable hypocrisy of our modern civilization and an inevitable catastrophe this civilization is heading for (while his account made I'm afraid a pretty accurate description of the actual situation). What does he have to add with this feature? Is it that all evil which falls upon people is intrinsically immanent in human nature? Having experienced or witnessed a critical amount of grief, pain and despair man comes to some point when even a concept of good, God, hope or whatever you call it is becoming virtually inconceivable? And after that chaos reigns? That to fight that man has to kill an evil in himself which he might love? But this fight is doomed anyway if a natural arena for it happens to be a world "issued by Satan"? It's a kindergarten philosophy. Some of these things may very well be true and correct, but to make all these daring assumptions and observations it's quite sufficient to have read a dozen of books or had just one good look around. There can be several more interpretations - some somewhat less coherent, some even more banal. What are justifications of all this excruciating imagery we encounter in "Antichrist" then? It's not quite clear.

So I should say that it is a bit surprising that the audience has happened to be so polarized. In fact, this movie is neither too good, nor too bad. And I might be missing something but I have a strong feeling that von Trier can be quite justly accused on this particular occasion of doing something he was quite wrongly accused of doing on some previous ones - of trying to compensate in a badly provocative manner a certain shallowness of his work and its half-baked message by the extremities of the way in which they are presented.