Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist'
Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:51 pmI was going to post this in the Lounge, but I think von Trier is always GD-worthy, and the subject matter of this film doesn't sound especially loungy. (Besides, "nature is Satan's church" makes an appealing party topic, and who's tired yet of debating the virtue of transgression in art?)
trailer 1 and trailer 2
It just screened at Cannes, to strong reaction. (Disturbing spoilers follow.)
Roger Ebert:
There's electricity in the air. Every seat is filled, even the little fold-down seats at the end of every row. It is the first screening of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," and we are ready for anything. We'd better be. Von Trier's film goes beyond malevolence into the monstrous. Never before have a man and woman inflicted more pain upon each other in a movie. We looked in disbelief. There were piteous groans. Sometimes a voice would cry out, "No!" At certain moments there was nervous laughter. When it was all over, we staggered up the aisles. Manohla Dargis, the merry film critic of The New York Times, could be heard singing "That's Entertainment!"
Whether this is a bad, good or great film is entirely beside the point. It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. It's been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell. This is the most despairing film I've ever have seen.
If, as they say, you are not prepared for "disturbing images," I advise you to just just stop reading now.
The film involves a couple, He and She, whose infant child falls out a window and smashes to the pavement while they are making explicit love. They feel devastating grief. He, a psychologist, takes She off psychotropic medications, and they go to live in their secluded hideaway in the forest, a cottage named Eden.
He subjects her to probing questions and the discussion of the Meaning of it All, which must affect her like a needle to an inflamed tooth. Oh, He is quite intelligent and insightful, and brings passive aggression to a brutally intimate level. Then she wounds him, and while he's unconscious she used a large woodscrew to drill a hole through his leg and bolt a grindstone to it. He drags himself into the forest and tries to hide in an animal burrow. She finds him, and pounds him with a shovel to force him deeper. Then she tries to bury him alive.
What does this metaphor (with a Prologue, an Epilogue and Four Chapters) mean? The dinner conversations all over town must not have been appetizing. Some read it this way: Perhaps the world began with man evil instead of good, guilty instead of innocent. That the Garden of Eden was visited by the Antichrist, not the Lord. That man's Original Sin was not eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but not vomiting forth knowledge and purging himself.
All for this will be discussed at great length. What can be said is that von Trier, after what many found the agonizing boredom of his previous Cannes films "Dogville" and "Manderlay," 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.
Reuters:
CANNES, France (Reuters) - Danish director Lars von Trier elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos on Sunday as the credits rolled on his drama "Antichrist" at the Cannes film festival.
The film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple seeking to overcome the grief of losing their only child, has quickly become the most talked-about at this year's festival, which ends on May 24.
Cannes' notoriously picky critics and press often react audibly to films during screenings, but Sunday evening's viewing was unusually demonstrative.
Jeers and laughter broke out during scenes ranging from a talking fox to graphically-portrayed sexual mutilation.
...
In production notes for Antichrist, the 53-year-old director said that the movie was a "kind of therapy" for depression he was suffering from two years ago.
"I can offer no excuse for 'Antichrist' ... other than my absolute belief in the film -- the most important film of my entire career!"
The Daily Mail:
Another scene that had some writhing in extreme discomfort called for a heavy object to crush Dafoe's nether regions. The next moment Gainsbourge performs a sexual act on Dafoe which is too explicit to full describe.
However, after the screening it was explained that the male member displayed did not belong top the famously well-endowed actor.
"The penis was that of a German porn actor called Horst and the hand seen in that scene didn't belong to Miss Gainsbourg, it was the hand of a German porn actress", a spokeswoman for the film explained, helpfully.
The scene mentioned above will surely have trouble getting past the British film censors. And certainly a sequence where Gainsbourg's character uses a pair of scissors to mutilate herself will also most likely be well clipped.
One moment that will remain intact, for it provided a rare moment of humour, when a Basil Brush-type speaking fox utters the line "chaos reigns'.
This is a symbol of how nature influences our nightmares. It will take a team of psychologists to examine the film for its deeper meanings rather than film writers.
trailer 1 and trailer 2
It just screened at Cannes, to strong reaction. (Disturbing spoilers follow.)
Roger Ebert:
There's electricity in the air. Every seat is filled, even the little fold-down seats at the end of every row. It is the first screening of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," and we are ready for anything. We'd better be. Von Trier's film goes beyond malevolence into the monstrous. Never before have a man and woman inflicted more pain upon each other in a movie. We looked in disbelief. There were piteous groans. Sometimes a voice would cry out, "No!" At certain moments there was nervous laughter. When it was all over, we staggered up the aisles. Manohla Dargis, the merry film critic of The New York Times, could be heard singing "That's Entertainment!"
Whether this is a bad, good or great film is entirely beside the point. It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. It's been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell. This is the most despairing film I've ever have seen.
If, as they say, you are not prepared for "disturbing images," I advise you to just just stop reading now.
The film involves a couple, He and She, whose infant child falls out a window and smashes to the pavement while they are making explicit love. They feel devastating grief. He, a psychologist, takes She off psychotropic medications, and they go to live in their secluded hideaway in the forest, a cottage named Eden.
He subjects her to probing questions and the discussion of the Meaning of it All, which must affect her like a needle to an inflamed tooth. Oh, He is quite intelligent and insightful, and brings passive aggression to a brutally intimate level. Then she wounds him, and while he's unconscious she used a large woodscrew to drill a hole through his leg and bolt a grindstone to it. He drags himself into the forest and tries to hide in an animal burrow. She finds him, and pounds him with a shovel to force him deeper. Then she tries to bury him alive.
What does this metaphor (with a Prologue, an Epilogue and Four Chapters) mean? The dinner conversations all over town must not have been appetizing. Some read it this way: Perhaps the world began with man evil instead of good, guilty instead of innocent. That the Garden of Eden was visited by the Antichrist, not the Lord. That man's Original Sin was not eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but not vomiting forth knowledge and purging himself.
All for this will be discussed at great length. What can be said is that von Trier, after what many found the agonizing boredom of his previous Cannes films "Dogville" and "Manderlay," 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.
Reuters:
CANNES, France (Reuters) - Danish director Lars von Trier elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos on Sunday as the credits rolled on his drama "Antichrist" at the Cannes film festival.
The film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple seeking to overcome the grief of losing their only child, has quickly become the most talked-about at this year's festival, which ends on May 24.
Cannes' notoriously picky critics and press often react audibly to films during screenings, but Sunday evening's viewing was unusually demonstrative.
Jeers and laughter broke out during scenes ranging from a talking fox to graphically-portrayed sexual mutilation.
...
In production notes for Antichrist, the 53-year-old director said that the movie was a "kind of therapy" for depression he was suffering from two years ago.
"I can offer no excuse for 'Antichrist' ... other than my absolute belief in the film -- the most important film of my entire career!"
The Daily Mail:
Another scene that had some writhing in extreme discomfort called for a heavy object to crush Dafoe's nether regions. The next moment Gainsbourge performs a sexual act on Dafoe which is too explicit to full describe.
However, after the screening it was explained that the male member displayed did not belong top the famously well-endowed actor.
"The penis was that of a German porn actor called Horst and the hand seen in that scene didn't belong to Miss Gainsbourg, it was the hand of a German porn actress", a spokeswoman for the film explained, helpfully.
The scene mentioned above will surely have trouble getting past the British film censors. And certainly a sequence where Gainsbourg's character uses a pair of scissors to mutilate herself will also most likely be well clipped.
One moment that will remain intact, for it provided a rare moment of humour, when a Basil Brush-type speaking fox utters the line "chaos reigns'.
This is a symbol of how nature influences our nightmares. It will take a team of psychologists to examine the film for its deeper meanings rather than film writers.
