Danish provocateur Lars von Trier has staged some sadistic bits of
filmmaking in his time. Little blind Björk hanged at the end of
Dancer in the Dark. Lovely Nicole Kidman raped in
Dogville. Every excruciating minute of Manderlay. But
the opening sequence of his new movie, Antichrist, which
screened to gasps, guffaws, and a dry heave or two at Cannes last May,
makes his previous work look like a Sunday stroll. Shot in voluptuous
black-and-white slo-mo and set to a gorgeous Handel aria, von Trier
shows us a couple—Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, named in
the credits as “He” and “She”—having shower sex (cue close-up of
anal penetration). It looks like some kind of sumptuous pornographic
perfume commercial… until the director cuts to the couple’s toddler
jumping off a several-
story-high window ledge. Never one for
subtlety, von Trier films the kid’s fluffy brown teddy bear hitting the
snow-covered ground—just in case we missed the tragedy in an
innocent child falling to his death.
The remainder of Antichrist deals with the aftermath of
this event—if “deals with” is even the right terminology for what
von Trier does, which is test not just the audience’s tolerance for
blood-soaked images of genital mutilation, but also our ability to stay
awake during some colossally boring and pretentious stretches of
filmmaking. The story’s basic starting point—Dafoe, a
psychologist, decides to take his grieving wife’s therapy into his own
hands—is itself rife with red flags. Still, the implausibility of
the setup and von Trier’s disdain for psychotherapy wouldn’t be
bothersome if the filmmaker explored the Dafoe character’s creepy,
damaging plan with fitting attention. But no, Dafoe is meant to be the
comforting, stable force in the film, the thing we can latch on to amid
a clusterfuck of female-driven gore and hysteria.
Even this might have been tolerable had the therapy scenes inspired
some kind of perverse fascination. No such luck: Dafoe subjects
Gainsbourg—and us—to drawn-out, portentous sessions filled
with intro-psych-level platitudes. I suspect von Trier is striving for
some kind of searing psychological realism here, but the characters’
feelings are never connected to any reality. Though the film is set in
the Seattle area, we know little else of these people, their marriage,
or their bond with their son, and many of the things they do and say
are so off-the-wall that it’s hard not to giggle. Von Trier has
revealed that he made Antichrist during a deep depression, but
there’s not an authentic sentiment in sight. The film uses emotional
pain as a pretext for trafficking wacko behavior.
When He and She decide to continue therapy in their cabin
(definitely one of the least comfy-looking country houses in film
history), Gainsbourg’s character morphs into a howling nymphomaniac
shrew and the movie becomes a hallucinatory freak show. Unfortunately,
the horror is just as dull as the drama that came before—only
even more unwatchable because every five minutes someone is butchering
someone else’s private parts. Von Trier never achieves true terror
because he’s too busy trying to shock, confuse, and gross us out with
his grab bag of twisted symbols: deer miscarriages, leaky animal
intestines, falling acorns, masturbation, bloody ejaculation, and a fox
who appears out of nowhere to announce apocalyptically, “Chaos reigns.”
Antichrist finally looks like it’s going somewhere worth
following when we learn that Gainsbourg used to make her child wear his
shoes on the wrong feet—creepy! But before von Trier can even say
“boo!” the film disintegrates into a graphically violent but visually
uninspired sexual massacre that will have you peeking at your watch as
you cover your eyes.
Overeager film nerds will probably find all this brilliant, and some
would argue that Antichrist is a work of ideas. Unfortunately,
none of those ideas jell in any remotely coherent way. Von Trier
bypasses potentially riveting stories—the demented therapist, a
woman possessed by the subjects of her thesis, the way grief turns
people into monsters—instead dragging the material through
unnavigable thickets of half-baked implications and Freudian and
biblical mumbo jumbo that culminate (this being a Lars von Trier film)
in a woman being punished. The director crafts one genuinely gutsy,
fabulous moment: the film’s final shot. The rest leaves you grasping
for something sincere beyond the stunts. I don’t think anyone denies
this filmmaker has talent, but ever since Breaking the
Waves—his best film by a long shot—he’s been too busy
thumbing his nose at the world and trying to be a rascally genius to
make a movie that actually hangs together. Antichrist works
only as a cautionary tale about therapists treating their spouses. I
know von Trier likes confounding viewers, but somehow I don’t think
that’s what he was going for. 
You must admit it wasn’t like a film you’ve ever seen, Mr. Frosch; that is worth something alone, even though the film may or may not be brilliant. Boredom certainly didn’t enter the picture for me.
This film was definitely hard to follow as it assumed viewers would grasp all the biblical references displayed.
Although frustrating at times, the drawn out dialogue was never boring for me as I was always visually stimulated. There are more than a few beautiful screen captures I had to go back and save.
I wonder when there’s going to be a Chaos Reigns t-shirt with that Ouroboros fox. I’d buy one.
Got to give the old misogynist credit, he gets people talking. I feel like this movie has been out for a year already and it’s still making news.
Loved it.
I fucking hate Von Trier. Incapable of subtlety and bottomlessly cruel, he regularly puts his audiences through pain without payoff and fails to achieve anything that even approaches emotional resonance or casarsis. Breaking the Waves was OK, but everything else, particularly the unforgivable, execrable Dancer in the Dark, has been unadulturated shite.
That’s “catharsis”…
i did really like ‘the boss of it all’, probably more than ‘breaking the waves’…if only he had taken himself (physically) out of the movie.
I think I understood you’re take on the film, but I was distracted by your poor writing.
@8 – Those who live in glass houses…
@2 – “I wonder when there’s going to be a Chaos Reigns t-shirt with that Ouroboros fox. I’d buy one.”
It seems the universe provides.
I loved his “The Kingdom.”
yeah, pass. and i’ve only seen Dogville…
What shocked me most about this film — given that it was made by Lars von Trier — is how beautifully shot it was. I guess the Dogme 95 manifesto is out the window.
Arse von Rear has been torturing women and subjecting audiences to his tedious pretensions for a long time now. I’m glad people are finally starting to figure out this emperor never had any clothes.
The only thing I remotely enjoyed of his was the Kingdom, which put his Dogme 95 shaky camera crap and freakshow sensibilities to good use. Everything else has been boring, hateful tripe, including Breaking the Waves.
I’ve liked all of his films. The thing about his films is that you really feel the emotion. I feel the pain the women and it puts you in a rage. I would rather see his style of pain than any glossed over numbed out killing you see in 3/4s of our movies and TV today.
it is really the most awful machista film I have ever seen. BUT it is a great film, really makes you feel the anxiety of the characters. that is something you don’t usually find.
and btw, don’t be such prudes. there are only a few graphic scenes (tthree I think) in the movie (quite disgusting ok…) but nothing compared to what people see in hollywood flicks like saw, hostel, rambo, elm street nightmare or the like. the only difference is that in this movie there is no sugar like the knwon excuse ‘let’s torture people because we are good americans and they are terrorists’ o psycopathic crap like saw..
loved dogville.
his other movies — kind of interminable.
but a closeup of anal intercourse? i’m there!
I’m not actually defending the film, and there are a lot of problems with what it seems to say about LVT’s ideas about women, but the line “Dafoe is meant to be the comforting, stable force in the film” in the review is just a flat-out falsehood. If anything, the cynical semi-satirical view of the psychological profession suggested by the Dafoe character’s Really Bad Idea is the closest to defensible the film comes.
Or some say:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/ant…
Jon, did you really think Gainsbourg’s character was the crazy one and Defoes’ “stable”???
God, you’re a useless idiot! (You’ve never seen a Tarkovsky film have you?!?)
Sorry @17: Like everything else in Frosch’s review, he’s to busy being self-rightously indignant to pause and notice details. (Or he’s never seen vaginal sex before!)
when i saw the film, someone in the audience got all huffy and walked out of the theater because defoe’s character was punching a mechanical crow. eeewwwwww.
I think frosch’s review is interesting. most critics seem scared to give von trier a bad review, at least frosch sticks it to him. @20: first of all, you can’t spell. Dafoe’s character is CLEARLY the stable one in the film, compared to Gainsbourg, who runs around like a maniac and is the originator of destruction. and I think you’ve never seen anal penetration before, it was clearly anal, even though it doesn’t really matter. And how can you compare Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier? just because von trier dedicated the film to him? or did you come to that connection all by yourself?
Definitely nutty. What’s the message – seemingly sympathetic women are actually evil and seemingly sinister forests/forest creatures are actually nice? Seemed like kind of an attempt at a manifesto for the men’s movement (does that still exist?). Visually stunning but man the dialog was pretty stinky. I got so tired of the Willem Defoe character’s tedious psychobabble I was looking forward to bad things happening to him.
I hate Lars Von Triers films. They are pretentious and overbearing. I find them unwatchable – and it isn’t because he’s “challenging my middle class sensibilities” – it’s because his movies all eat ass. They are masturbation masquerading as serious art. The fact that he’s still taken so seriously in world cinema baffles beyond belief. Enough already. And he often sets his films in America – though he’s never been there – as some sort of “critique” of our culture.
Horseshit.
They’ve all been crap. I LOATHED “Breaking the Waves.” Absoulute heavy-handed garbage, despite Roger Ebert’s platitudes. And “Dancer in the Dark” was one of the lowest forms of fecalform I’ve yet had the misfortune to sit through in my entire movie-viewing life.
Hate hate hate hate.