Antichrist
One of the things I rarely realise is given the number of movies we reviewers get through, we sometimes forget that not everyone sees the same amount of eclectic randomness that we are subjected to. By our very nature, we love movies and will, for the most part, consuime as many as feasibly possible in the line of of our duties, recompensed for it or otherwise.
So when something like 'Antichrist' comes along with just another batch of films released on DVD that week, your initial reaction is blase, forgetting that this will pass most people, (and by most, I mean the Harry Potter and Fast and Furious fans, as two examples) by. Having missed the cinematic release of Lars Von Trier's latest venture, I was keen to see for myself what all the fuss was about.
It had been suggested to me beforehand that the film was not an easy watch, uncomfortable in places and downright artistically painful in others. Given that I usually base my level of satisfaction of any artists by how much effort they have put into their job, or suffered at the hands of art to produce it, I was expeting blood, sweat and tears from everyone involved in the film. Like the trees that adorn the cabin in these woods, the film feels forbidding, spiky, barren and decidedly unfriendly.
Given that the film is openly broken down into three main acts, being 'grief', 'pain' and 'despair', you begin to wonder if this isn't inspired by Dante Alighieri, such is overwhelming sense of death, confusion, fear, dread, loss and vulnerability throughout.
Opening with some shots of 'he' (Willem Dafoe) and 'she' (Charlotte Gainsbourg) having sex in the shower, intermingled with the telling of their only childs' untimely end, the plot unwinds seamlessly into scenes of her grief, both at the funeral and in the days that follow. He takes it upon himself to 'fix' her. To take her mentally by the hand and help her through her loss. A loss which she seems to suffer from far more than he does. A comment which she herself alludes to before the film is more than half an hour old.
When, after what seems like perhpas a deliberately drawn out and tiresome episode of grieving and treatment of such, the couple finally travel to the cabin, in order to get away from the perils that recognition and memory can provide in such circumstances. The psychology continues and it appears the she is getting better, even if the woods seem to be having the opposite effect on him. Visions of a doe during the stillbirth of it's fawn, a crow that refuses to die and the appearance of a talking fox that only knows two words, 'chaos reigns' (or it coud easily be 'rains' given the inclemency of the weather we are subjected to) suggest that he is suffering more than he may care to admit. Upon receiving the autopsy report of his child which suggests a particular deformity, he stumbles across some some interesting evidence of her mental reality.
By this time, if the wanton sex, masturbation, death, prophesising wildlife, potential matricide, rain, drills, dodgy symbolism, very graphic clitoral castration and penis abuse hasn't rendered you truly white with shock, then you probably haven't got a soul. Or at least you have got one, but advisedly left it at the front gate when you walked in.
Von Trier has a habit of pushing the boundaries of what can be shown to an audience, and Antichrist is no different in this respect. There is not a massive amount of blood involved and the scenes of torture and mutilation are not gratuitous, although they are extremely graphic. Credit must go to both Dafoe and Gainsbourg as they have both clearly earnt their keep on this film, having been put through the acting ringer by Von Trier on several occasions. This must have taken an immense amount out of both of them.
Many people will watch this for a number of different reasons, but most will come away feeling disappointed. The gore hounds and torture monkeys will be left feeling short-changed. This is not 'Saw' or 'Hostel'. Whilst the scenes of violence do contain content that will thrill this type of audience, there is no glory to the actions we see. There is only anger and pain, loss and fear. It is neither abstract enough for arthouse, nor complicated enough for those that view it only as a study in the human, and partisularly female, psyche.
So what are we left with? By the end of this film you are both horribly depressed and more than a little bit sick. Like the bile in the back of your throat that refuses to go away until you have thrown up, you feel the film getting more and more invovled, heightened and urgent until it can no longer contain itself. This inevitably brings us to the final act, where both characters and audience get at least some kind of closure. Shot exquisitely if not always comfortably, this is indeed a laboured viewing. My main critiscism being that my patience was wearing thin in places and that at times, Von Trier seemed to have difficulty deciding what to tell or show us next. Every so often, the film lost it's way telling a story that it really wanted to get across, sometimes losing it's audience participation. Compelling at times, aggravating at others, but consistently painful throughout.
"What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve" - Napoleon Hill
