[Ed. Sam’s review is up and I wholeheartedly endorse it, but wanted to get some of my thoughts across as well. We’re basically on the same page as usual, though, perhaps coming from different angles. Plus it gives me a chance to perhaps go a little bit more loose, But don’t worry, no spoilers].
Oh, Lars Von Trier what have you done? Gone too far into the brink and burned what starts out as an incredibly evocative and creepy psychological horror but that goes off the rails and into button-pushing histrionics and ridiculousness? In a word, yes.
Chaptered into four acts, with a gorgeous bookending prologue-epilogue, “Antichrist” is arguably successful for three of these four sections, and at times stunningly bone-chilling, genuinely horrifying and acridly despairing. However insanity and the temptation to provoke gets the best of the visionary Danish director, and what eventually transpires just feels childish and unnecessary.
When we ran into AMC critic James Rocchi yesterday, he described the picture as like a child — an enfante terrible, naturally — not just button pushing, but maliciously hitting every button on the elevator as a crowd has surged aboard and he’s done his trip, which pretty much nails it. Von Trier constructs a supernatural fable gone wrong, almost gracefully leads the audience to the theater and then impishly cackles in the last act for the audience to choke on this bilious and outrageous finale.
Anyone who finds the film detestable is fully within their rights and anyone who finds the imperfect film a masterwork has probably been intoxicated by its sheer, batshit audacity, and/or the energy of Cannes (or just simply too much imbibing); but if it happened to win the Palme (which it won’t), the Palais Royale would likely implode into a violent riot the likes of which have never been witnessed at the Croisette (one would assume the building would be burned down and the festival would be canceled for one year to rebuild, rethink their jurors and implement a new rigorous mental health screening process for all judges).
It’s unfortunate (and disappointing) that Von Trier cannot stay with the moody and hauntingly atmospheric film of the first half which depicts grief as an amazingly visceral and excruciating experience and suggests the director’s immature provocative days are behind him.
Charlotte Gainsbourg is outstanding and her pain – and the foreboding forest cutaways that tremble with an ominous, storms-on-the-rise quality – are much more exacting and powerful than any blood leaking penis can achieve. In a more focused picture, a deeper, more honest examination of disparity would have surely scored Gainsbourg an acting award as her performance is raw, naked (literally and figuratively) and open-nerved. But this is a Lars Von Trier film, perhaps his darkly twisted version of Bergman’s “Scenes From A Marriage” so there are declarative statements to be made and audiences to recoil.
We digress. A black and white prologue commences in glorious slow-motion to a beautifully operatic Handel aria. A couple (Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) enjoy a flesh for fantasy tryst that oozes eroticism. They writhe away on one another while their child slowly gets up from his crib, dangles upon a snowy ledge with a teddy bear and, well, you can imagine. While this prologue is rather arresting, it’s fetishized slow-motion nature — enjoying every last thrust, moan and snowflake that falls while a child, smile on his face, falls to his doom — is also borderline ludicrous. However, this is the madcap genius of Von Trier that is wildly cinematic and intensely creepy stuff (the teddy bear gently crashing to the ground first is the piece de resistance).
Cut to Chapter 1: Grief. Gainsbourg’s “She” character (no names please) has been hospitalized for a month subsequent to her son’s funeral. Playing the role of a doctor although he’s only a therapist (or wait, is he playing God?) Dafoe’s “He” decides his wife is hopped up on too many meds and discharges her, hubristically deciding he’ll treat her himself at home. Gainsbourg’s anguish is hard to watch and gut-wrenching, and the therapist attempts to surface her pains by asking her to discuss them at length which leads to hurtful and bitterly resentful words. He’s a practical, almost ice-cold machine, whereas she is full of rage at the world. Throughout these scenes, the picture keeps cutting back to the forest, foreshadowing the terror therein with ominously surreal imagery and a tremulously eerie soundscape score (it’s more sound design than “music,” but lord, it burns and seethes with evocative disquietude; hat tip to Kristian Eidnes Anderson credited with sound).
Gainsbourg’s She cannot face any emotion, let alone frank discussions of fear, and uses sexual abandon as her escape, much to Dafoe’s chagrin. He decides to escape to their cabin in the woods, dubbed “Eden,” because she has admitted that it is her greatest fear and in his mind confrontation is the only psychological remedy (in a recent Dutch interview we can’t find, Von Trier says of the character, “like all my male characters, he’s an idiot”). The idea is to mend their broken hearts and succor a full-on psychic collapse. Of course, it only gets worse.
Chapter 2: Pain (Chaos Reigns). On their way to the woods, Dafoe’s character begins to see troubling visions or have nightmarish day dreams that are angelically dream-like and profoundly creepy. A wounded fox eats away at itself (and, umm, talks), a doe greets him in the forest, and her unborn fawn grotesquely hangs out of her behind. The couple begin to try little exercises together, talking about the hierarchy of fears, imagining painful scenarios, etc.; all the while the forest seems to be encroaching, raining acorns on them at night from the trees and leeches attacking a hand that drowsily hangs out a window. The handheld camera moves with an unnerving, quivering quality that’s not quite shaky, and the sound still scratches, wails and whooshes like a creature trapped in a furious inferno.
The film then kindly makes an announcement at the end of chapter two which basically says: “hold on, we’re about to jump the shark soon,” when the fox in another vision creaks to Dafoe, “Chaos reigns!” These moments, and a few others later on, are so preposterous they produce unintentional spurts of laughter.
Chapter 3: Despair (Genocide). In trying to discover the source of Gainsbourg’s fears by discussing human nature, she suddenly reveals to Dafoe that “Nature is Satan’s Church,” and shortly thereafter declares herself “cured” of her despondency. Unconvinced, the psycho-analyst begins digging for clues which leads to numerous pictures of their child with his shoes consistently on backwards as well as Satanic, day of reckoning imagery of She’s dissertation, revealed to be on the 18th century cruelty towards women. And this is where the picture really begins to run off the rails and perhaps whatever Von Trier is trying to say begins to coalesce, though perhaps rottenly congeal is the better term for it. And what he appears to be saying is…women are evil? There are definitely allusions to witchcraft and specific misogynistic moments, but the statement is muddled and ambiguity doesn’t cut it here. He doesn’t hide from the misogynistic tones of what transpires, including violent sex where Gainsbourg asks, no begs to be hit and suggests she’s been asking for it all along (a misogyny consultant is actually given a film credit, as Vulture points out, and mad, gynophobic scrawls are found in Gainsbourg’s characters notes).
Chapter 4: The Three Beggars: Somewhere along the lines of her growing insanity or perhaps demonic possession, Gainsbourg spots off the line, “when the three beggars arrive, someone must die.” And these beggars turn out to be the aforementioned fox, the doe and a crow who appears later. One can’t really get into the details of the film without spoiling it (though some have suggested Vulture already has in their headlines), but suffice to say, and as you’ve probably read, there’s masturbation in the woods and genital mutilation (both masochistic and sadomasochistic). This section of the film is just too outrageous and contemptible to contain any of the resonant, stunning shock of Von Trier’s best work (there’s also moments that border on torture porn, but they’re way less fetishized). These provocations are facile, absurd and juvenile and they expressly betray the masterful touch evinced in the first half of the film. It’s disappointing and even disheartening. Von Trier is a wonderful agitator in cinema, but he loses the plot with aplomb in this final act.
The Epilogue: The end, depending on how you read it, is either the coupe de grace for his distrust of women and grief manifesto or it’s actually some kind of mea culpa that suggests, because we are all born from the suffering of the female womb, the female form (nature, eden, women, etc.) will inherit the earth. And or make you rue the day, you stupid fucking men. Who really knows what the fuck Lars Von Trier is trying to say at this point. One can only shake their head or shed a tear. Or perhaps like many other less forgiving critics, completely eviscerate the film. Not something we’re about to do, but like justifiable homicide, we fully understand the defensible temptation to do so. [B-]