Antichrist (2009)

There are two memorable lines of dialogue in the middle of Lars von Trier’s provocative film Antichrist that are significant from the moment they’re uttered: “Nature is Satan’s church,” and “A crying woman is a scheming woman.”  Both lines are spoken by the unnamed female (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who comprises half of the film’s entire cast; her fragile emotional landscape, and the deeper layers of meaning behind those two spoken lines, fuel this hypnotic, shocking, and incredibly graphic film.

It begins with a startling prologue beautifully filmed in black and white, in which the woman and her husband (Willem Dafoe) have sex while their toddler son manages to climb out of his crib and through an open window, falling to his death in the snow below.  The woman understandably descends into a deep state of grief, so much that she is hospitalized for over a month.  However, the husband is a therapist who has misgivings about her doctor’s drug-heavy course of treatment.  He takes her home and, despite their acknowledgment that a patient should never sleep with their therapist, devotes himself to helping her talk through her grief.  He also gets her to flush her remaining medicine down the toilet.  Based on later events, this is what he should’ve had misgivings about.

Insistent on pursuing her therapy rather than dealing with his own repressed emotions, he endures her occasional physical assaults as he eventually gets her to talk about what she fears most, addressing it as a way to work through her grief.  She tells him she fears “the woods,” specifically “Eden,” a cabin where she spent the previous summer with her son — but away from her husband — while working on her thesis.  So her husband takes her there, ostensibly so she can face her fears rationally and work through her grief.  Instead, this cabin in the woods becomes the backdrop for both characters to experience a personal journey past grief, through pain and despair, and to even darker depths beyond.

One of the weirdest, yet most hypnotic movies I’ve ever seen, it makes Eraserhead seem almost logical by comparison.  The cabin and the woods create an unnerving sense of isolation, and images, details, and symbolic references range from unsettling, to disturbing, to profoundly shocking.  Dropping acorns pound the corrugated tin roof of the cabin at night, an act the woman views as tree propagation.  Animals — and pointedly, their newborns — play a strange and increasing role in the imagery and story as it progresses.  All forms of nature take part in the tale, including the most volatile of all…human nature.

It soon becomes obvious that the husband is just as much of a psychological wreck as his wife, he’s just better at repressing it.  Despite her wildly fluctuating emotional state, the things she says about her husband often have the ring of truth, and his too-measured tone of voice and his inquisitive nature contribute in large degree to the agonizing later stages of the film.

And take my word for it, Antichrist is physically agonizing the longer it goes.  There are moments of graphic violence and nudity in this film, and I cannot emphasize that strongly enough.  Viewers, myself included, were screaming and shielding their eyes during multiple scenes.  Remember Kathy Bates taking the sledgehammer to James Caan’s feet in Misery?  That was nothing.  The closest comparison I can make is to Takashi Miike’s graphically painful Japanese film Audition, or the early Paul Verhoeven work The Fourth Man.  If you’ve winced through the mutilation scenes in those movies, you have a hint of what to expect, though the violence and terror in this one seems even worse, and is dealt and endured by both characters.  This is not a film for the faint of heart, and my screening included a number of disgusted and/or shaken audience members heading for the exits prior to the conclusion.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this movie is like The Omen or other conventional horror movies.  The title Antichrist is symbolic, as is much of what is seen, heard, and spoken throughout.  It is truly provocative in that the film’s content and symbolism are open to wide interpretation and speculation, and it provokes much discussion afterward.   

I’ll give credit to writer and director Lars von Trier–this is the fifth movie of his that I’ve seen, and in every one he’s delivered a unique vision and a film experience unlike any other. (My favorite is Breaking The Waves, a startling masterpiece that made a star of Emily Watson.)  My highest criteria for a film is to show me a story I’ve never seen before, and Antichrist certainly fulfills that requirement.  Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are also to be commended for baring themselves so physically and emotionally, and their performances remain some of the bravest in recent memory. 

Unlike von Trier’s other movies, I’m not sure I’ll ever want to watch this one again, but I appreciate the thought-provoking experience of seeing it at least once.  Some of its images, for better or worse, will linger in my memory for years to come.

If you enjoyed the review of Antichrist, you may also like:

• The Wicker Man
• Calvaire