Antichrist"Therapy is not concerned with good or evil." Is it true? Are good and evil just abstractions that have no place in the healing process of overcoming loss--grief, pain, despair...the "three beggars" which gouge away at the soul? The proclamation is made by the unnamed husband played by Willem Dafoe to his unnamed wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, as he attempts to console her "atypical grief" at the loss of their son. The son had fallen out of an open window while the parents were mid-coitus, a tragedy which appears to leave her completely wrought with those three sufferings, pulling her to pieces moment by moment. Fear eats her alive.
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And yet, there is more to the story. He is a therapist--not a doctor--who takes it upon himself to attempt to restore his wife to well-being, refusing her drugs to cope, but trying to shut out his own grief to heal her. Maybe she doesn't want to be healed...maybe this suffering, this passion of hers is the punishment she feels obligated to endure. She had been studying during the past summer at the family cabin in the woods, a locale pointedly named "Eden". It is a haunted forest, embodied by spirits that lurk in the shadows of the soul. Her thesis: the chronicle of persecution of women in the dark ages, martyred as witches, victims of violence inflicted upon them by men for their sex. But she has abandoned her writing, and senses that her subject has taken a new twist. He ascertains that she has come to believe that the tortured women were evil, or at least that is the impression she lets him believe...and she does little to invalidate that conclusion at the grotesque finale. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, indeed; and the woods are a realm of either supernatural and/or psychological abnormalities, where deformed animals stalk him with menace in their hearts, and the landscape does shift, warping and wending to the distortions of the mindscape...it is a subtle, "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" kind of visual trickery. Filmmaker Lars von Trier is a highly technical artist, well-versed with filmmaking equipment and capable of manipulating both the audience and the technology needed to achieve that succinct visual flourish, accomplished periodically with the sophisticated Red One digital camera. Lars von Trier has excelled at exploiting the best qualities of digital video, lending credence to the conceit of pursuing digital filmmaking over print as the medium advances.
It should come as no surprise--especially in light of the provocative title--that Antichrist is a horror movie. However, unlike the standard fare of horror, Antichrist is deeply psychological, a cinematic manifestation of grief and the caustic dissolution of the mind and soul which comes with it. The film explores great and vast themes, while remaining surprisingly minimalist in its presentation. Although possessed of occasional--yet exceptional--special effects (usually of a highly graphic nature), many scenes are shot very simply with a cast of two characters in private with one another...it is clean as a sharp pane of ice. There is a thought regarding the philosophy of Modernist thinking which does not embrace the Romantics' idea of the benevolence of nature. Rather, nature is a dominant force, indifferent to the whims of mortal men, and frankly, not our friend. "Nature is Satan's church," the line uttered by her speaks of forces deeper at work in Eden, steeped in metaphor and allusion. Even in name, Eden is a reflection of that Old Testament garden, where Eve partook of the apple, gaining forbidden knowledge, and (depending on your point of view) encouraged Adam to do the same at the behest of the serpent, a form of Satan. Whether she has a consuming sense of religious guilt, or whether he and she are acting out some kind of macabre reenactment of the tale of Genesis could be debated. She considers herself a creature of evil, and he is oblivious to his hubris as he attempts to change her, control her into submitting to his expertise, his power. While Antichrist often portrays extreme levels of sexual violence toward women, it can be viewed as a type of feminist critique of the idea that men assume by default that they are the "fixers" of women, that they can take control when women are given to hysterics--a name which is derived from hysteria, a condition of women originally used to describe disturbances of the uterus. He attempts to subdue her passion with sterile and clinical psychotherapy, detached and resembling hypnosis, and he blindly pushes her to embrace "nature"--that loaded word--which we often associate with healthy things. She represents a kind of "Medea", bearing many similarities to the Greek myth, who is vengeful and regarded in retrospect with hostility for her actions fueled from grief; some stories have Medea mutilating her brother, and she consciously commits infanticide out of revenge. Unsurprisingly, Lars von Trier filmed an adaptation of Medea for Danish television in 1988. Antichrist is shocking and beautiful, an arresting mingling of the grotesque and poetic, angelic and demonic.
Recommended for: Fans of haunting and chilling horror, not dependent on shock, but also not adverse to displays of graphic violence. It is a film that clings like the chill of being out in the winter cold for hours, and you are unable to get warm again.
It should come as no surprise--especially in light of the provocative title--that Antichrist is a horror movie. However, unlike the standard fare of horror, Antichrist is deeply psychological, a cinematic manifestation of grief and the caustic dissolution of the mind and soul which comes with it. The film explores great and vast themes, while remaining surprisingly minimalist in its presentation. Although possessed of occasional--yet exceptional--special effects (usually of a highly graphic nature), many scenes are shot very simply with a cast of two characters in private with one another...it is clean as a sharp pane of ice. There is a thought regarding the philosophy of Modernist thinking which does not embrace the Romantics' idea of the benevolence of nature. Rather, nature is a dominant force, indifferent to the whims of mortal men, and frankly, not our friend. "Nature is Satan's church," the line uttered by her speaks of forces deeper at work in Eden, steeped in metaphor and allusion. Even in name, Eden is a reflection of that Old Testament garden, where Eve partook of the apple, gaining forbidden knowledge, and (depending on your point of view) encouraged Adam to do the same at the behest of the serpent, a form of Satan. Whether she has a consuming sense of religious guilt, or whether he and she are acting out some kind of macabre reenactment of the tale of Genesis could be debated. She considers herself a creature of evil, and he is oblivious to his hubris as he attempts to change her, control her into submitting to his expertise, his power. While Antichrist often portrays extreme levels of sexual violence toward women, it can be viewed as a type of feminist critique of the idea that men assume by default that they are the "fixers" of women, that they can take control when women are given to hysterics--a name which is derived from hysteria, a condition of women originally used to describe disturbances of the uterus. He attempts to subdue her passion with sterile and clinical psychotherapy, detached and resembling hypnosis, and he blindly pushes her to embrace "nature"--that loaded word--which we often associate with healthy things. She represents a kind of "Medea", bearing many similarities to the Greek myth, who is vengeful and regarded in retrospect with hostility for her actions fueled from grief; some stories have Medea mutilating her brother, and she consciously commits infanticide out of revenge. Unsurprisingly, Lars von Trier filmed an adaptation of Medea for Danish television in 1988. Antichrist is shocking and beautiful, an arresting mingling of the grotesque and poetic, angelic and demonic.
Recommended for: Fans of haunting and chilling horror, not dependent on shock, but also not adverse to displays of graphic violence. It is a film that clings like the chill of being out in the winter cold for hours, and you are unable to get warm again.