TIFF Review: Antichrist

Antichrist

OPENING: 10/23/2009

STUDIO: IFC Films

ACCOMPLICES:
, Official Site

The Charge
“Chaos reigns”.

Opening Statement
Antichrist, the newest film by auteur Lars von Trier, debuted at Cannes this year to a decisively mixed reaction, kind of the way that a Ferrari going at 60 miles per hour and a brick wall “mix” after one too many martinis. Audiences were polarized, incensed, alarmed, disgusted and horrified. Some fainted, while others walked out in protest. The film was derided as misogynistic, hateful, offensive and excessively violent, even perverse. One could argue it was a rousing success, because there is no doubt von Trier (who wrote the film during a fit of crippling depression) set out to do exactly this. Even the title borders on the scandalous and inflammatory.

Is it all of these things and more? Oh yes. It is even worse, more horrible and unsettling, more soul-crushingly bleak and despondent than mere words can articulate. It may be the saddest and cruelest film ever made. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely it is.

Speaking of things worth seeing, here’s hoping you like the idea of seeing Willem Dafoe’s penis, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of it.

Facts of the Case
After the death of their young son, who tumbles out their apartment window while they make love in the next room, an unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) struggle through their grief. The woman ends up hospitalized over her grief, and the man (a psychologist) sets out to help his wife work through the pain and loss. He throws her medicines away, takes her into a reclusive cabin in the woods named Eden—a place she is terrified of—and slowly, painfully breaks down her mental defenses and emotional barriers.

As the woman grows more despondent and irrational, the environment around them changes; nature becomes foreboding and dangerous, animals behave strangely. As the man and woman try and work through their pain, destruction and torment slowly seep into their lives, causing them to lash out in increasingly sexual and violent ways.

The Evidence
There are good films, and there are bad films. A third, more dangerous category of film is one that belies such conformist categorization, opting to lay eggs in your brain that gestate, grow and explode, tearing your skull wide open. Antichrist may be the first film I have ever encountered to easily satisfy the criteria of all three categories, and in that order. The raw power and emotion contained in this film, the sheer ferocity and fury of its convictions and ideology is almost frightening. Antichrist is a dangerous film unlike any before it, full of vitriol and bile, contempt and hatred, depression and angst and a penchant for genetic mutilation that will knock you off your chair and into the fetal position faster than you can cry out for your mother. And you will be.

To observe that Antichrist is a film loaded with strong opinions on religion would be an understatement. The title is no joke. This is a film about Sin, with a capital “s”, usually preceded by “Original”; this is a film about evil and good, of mankind itself, in all its hideous cruelty and glorious debauchery. There are two characters in the film, each archetypal representative of the origins of Man and Women. When they are not screaming and causing horrible violence to themselves and to each other, they are having wild, animalistic sex. Most of the best sequences in Antichrist have them doing both at the same time. This is the Garden of Eden tale in horrible reverse, by way of pain and misery and sexual dysfunction. Those raised with Catholic ideological values are in for a serious kick in the teeth with this film. One might argue that the notion of Satan is not an abstract concept here, but a third cast member.

It is difficult to put one into the head space of von Trier. Much of Antichrist is straightforward; the plot at its core is simplistic, but so much of the film is metaphorical that any (and all) interpretation of the film is subjective at best. The film is divided into four chapters: grief, pain, despair, and The Three Beggars (an allegorical combination of the aforementioned three), which sound self-explanatory, but in actuality are just as vexing. The Eden and biblical elements are the easiest to appreciate, but perhaps the most challenging to truly comprehend, especially in the epilogue. Antichrist is a film about the nature of the world, both literal and pejorative: the nature of humanity, the nature of good and evil, Mother Nature, human nature, et al. The very elements of nature seem poised to strike out at any moment: forests hang full of darkness and dread, hailstones and acorns pummel the man and woman at every opportunity, and foxes have surprisingly profound statements on the subject of chaos.

This is a film that will haunt audiences brave enough to see it. The sexual and violent imagery is shocking, make no mistake—people fainted during the screening at Cannes, and I hardly blame them—but the true discontent in the film is subcutaneous, just below the surface, suggesting darker evils and deeper currents than we can truly fathom. There is no hope of any kind in Antichrist, only a vicious kind of sadness that is sharpened at the molecular level and wielded like a broadsword, slicing through all in its path. Nature itself bends to the grief and nihilism of the man and woman, foreboding and monstrous. The film is fascinating from an academic level, and lovers of the cinematic art will find this one of the most curious and debatable films in the last decade. On a personal level, do not expect to enjoy the experience: Antichrist is like a viral infection, feverish and clammy and nauseating; a deep sense of wrongness occurring at a level beyond our rational understanding. It is the cinematic equivalent of being shaken like a child, of sheer loss of control, of being hoisted up by our collar by forces larger and stronger than us, and being throttled within an inch of our emotional and spiritual life.

Women will find this film particularly challenging. Many have observed elements of misogyny in Antichrist, and I find it hard to rebuke them entirely, although I have faith in the artist that things are not quite as they seem. On first glance, things look grim: the woman has been working on a thesis about gynocide, or gendercide, and even suggests that the nature of women may be intrinsically evil. It is one thing to feel this way about women, say after a bad break up and a few beers, but another entirely to set the emotional premise of a film around it. As reality undulates and the allegorical metaphors pile up in Antichrist, the woman begins to behave oddly, erratically, violently towards herself and to the man in increasingly explicit ways. It would be easy to give a cursory glance towards Antichrist and criticize it on these elements. A film about the nature of evil and the intrinsic worth of humanity as a parable to the Garden of Eden mythology is, by its very nature, not going to be particularly flattering towards women.

There is something important here in Antichrist, a window into a kind of madness and passion that few films have ever approached. The film will terrify and alarm audiences to the core of their being, especially for those squeamish of constitution and faith, but the beauty in the craft cannot be denied. The performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are two of the finest performances ever put to camera, a career-topping tour-de-force of emotion and fury. This is the kind of role that could kill a lesser film career, but for a venerable actor like Dafoe, it merely cements his places as a master of the craft. Gainsbourgh walked out of Cannes with a Best Actress award, which is a testament to exactly how good her performance was. Despite all the controversy and disgust towards von Trier and the film itself, no one can overlook her. A stripped-down, emotionally bearing performance from both, their performances are horribly believable, tearing away at body and mind alike, with humongous commitments of emotional damage and full frontal nudity that would destroy lesser actors and actresses. An Oscar nod for Gainsbourgh is virtually assured.

A lyrical and enigmatic film shot with cutting-edge high definition digital cameras, the first five minutes alone of Antichrist are elegant and stunningly beautiful composition and cinematography. It sounds ironic, but Lars von Trier has crafted the most beautiful ugly film in the world, a film rotten and viscous at its core, but elegant and artistic in appearance and direction. Slow motion sequences of incredible depth and profundity give way to beautiful compositions of color, light and shadow. Eden alternates between earthy paradise of lush greens, bubbling brooks and drifting fog to the stuff of nightmare. Hands drift up from the roots of trees, animals become horrifying monsters, and shadows loom ominously. There is no score to speak of, save for an operatic piece from Rinaldo in the prologue and epilogue, but the film is far from silent. Chaotic and cacophonous ambient noises buzz and hiss ominously during key moments, alarming and unsettling in their pitch and fervor—only suddenly to vanish, and the silence is somehow worse.

Closing Statement
Antichrist is a beautiful and terrifying tapestry of immense complexity, full of spiritual and sexual dysfunction and unapologetic rage. To participate in its viewing is akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. We can sense the greater picture, we can feel the edges, and we can even snap something into place now and again, but the true understanding of the project eludes our senses.

Critics will rail against the cruelty and excess expressed in this film, as they should. The ideas being communicated to audiences in this film are almost entirely negative, full of spite and anger, sadness and repulsion, but it is how Antichrist communicates these ideas that will fascinate audiences and make this film one of the most talked-about of the year. Painfully nihilistic, Antichrist is a triumph of artistic cinema, a film that strives and communicates on levels that transcend the film, beyond sight and sound, beyond man and women, and beyond good and evil.

The Verdict
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, watching Antichrist is unpleasantly like being drunk. Ask a glass of water how that feels.

9/10

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