Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum lays it down, “The movie looks almost tauntingly great, of course, with von Trier’s longtime collaborator (and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Oscar winner) Anthony Dod Mantle as cinematographer. So it’s one good-looking, publicity-grabbing provocation, with an overlay of pseudo-Christian allegory thrown in to deflect a reasonable person’s accusations of misogyny. As a kicker, the director dedicates the picture to the memory of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky – a final flip of the bird to the Cannes audience.”
Anne Thompson gets to the heart of why certain critics might have been put off by von Trier’s provocative ways, “He knows how to manipulate an audience. I was enthralled at the start of the film, an extraordinary slow-motion sequence. And the movie does hang together. He knows where he’s going. It’s just that much like Ken Russell in ‘The Devils,’ he’s taking you to horrifying, hallucinatory places where anything can happen. And where most people don’t want to go.”
Roger Ebert: ” This is the most despairing film I’ve ever have seen, noting how von Trier “has made a film that is not boring. Unendurable, perhaps, but not boring. For relief I am looking forward to the overnight reviews of those who think they can explain exactly what it means. In this case, perhaps, a film should not mean, but be.”
Charles Ealey, “It’s not often that you leave a movie and feel like you’ve just experience a moment in cinematic history. “Antichrist,” which premiered Sunday night at the Cannes Film Festival, made me feel that way. Director Lars Von Trier has made a movie that looks like it will be more controversial than anything he’s ever done, and that’s saying quite a bit. I can’t imagine how he’ll deal with the press tomorrow. At the end of the screening, half of the room was applauding and the other half was booing.”
Polar opposite to Ealey is Jeffrey Wells, unabashedly calling “Antichrist” “one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist,” in a post titled “Antichrist = Fartbomb” and he doesn’t stop his harsh criticism there, “It’s an out-and-out disaster – one of the most absurdly heavy-handed and over-the-top calamities I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The ever graceful Todd McCarthy starts off his review with a money line if there ever was one, “Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with ‘Antichrist.’…“As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images that might have impressed even Hieronymus Bosch, as the director pursues personal demons of sexual, religious and esoteric bodily harm, as well as feelings about women that must be a comfort to those closest to him.”
Wesley Morris is a clear supporter of “Antichrist,” explaining how “Von Trier is also the movie’s great deranged joker. From one movie to the next, it’s tough to tell whether we’re being had (seriously: a misogyny consultant?). Should we take his bait and express shock or outrage or disgust. Do you pick the wailing baby up or let him cry himself to sleep? With von Trier you’re talking as much about him and dysfunction as you are the movies themselves. The difference between this new movie and something like “The Kingdom,” “Breaking the Waves,” “Dancer in the Dark,” or even “Dogville” is that for all its formal excellence, it’s a work of depression that’s missing a hint of even diabolical joy.”
Anthony Kaufman comments on how, with “Antichrist,” von Trier “fully lives up to his reputation as an outrageous provocateur and master image-maker,” recalling the likes of “David Lynch” he continues, “while one can’t begin to dissect the film’s attitude towards women – long a subject of contention for the accused sadist director – “Antichrist” probably won’t do much to change the mind of those who question his sympathies towards the opposite sex. But this is Von Trier, after all. You got to take the brilliance with the pathologies.”
Stephen Gerrest goes as far as to say that von Trier’s provocations “stand as some of the most reliably satisfying in cinema today. This is gonzo drama at its most feral, an instinctive and wry mashup of dreamlike images (lusciously lensed by the talented Anthony Dod Mantle) and fairy-tale logic. It touches on primal nerves while stubbornly exuding a childish petulance for conventional resolution. Be shocked. Be awed. But don’t forget to laugh, wickedly.”
In conclusion, we give you Mary and Richard Corliss: “His last picture, The Boss of It All, was a comedy with a sour taste, so you can’t be sure that Antichrist is as dead-serious as it appears. Maybe the movie is a big deadpan joke, an antic-hrist. What’s certain is that serious film people on several continents will be talking about von Trier’s latest affront, defending or deriding it, finding it hard to ignore. Short of an flat-out masterpiece, what more can movies offer?”
