As a whole, this is still a von Trier film, so it works more as an exercise than a narrative work still, I was surprised by how effective – regardless of shock value – the ending was. It's this plotline that turns the last half hour of Antichrist into an engrossing, provoking, surrealist horror-thriller. Afterwards, you may feel this was a horribly misogynistic film, but that's just von Trier's biting sarcasm in regards to the usual horror-movie devices. It's the one thing we can grasp on to here, involving She and the son at Eden some months ago, a novel she was trying to write, and nothing less than the evil nature of women. Then, lo and behold, a plot develops I was more surprised at this than anything else in the movie.
An hour into the film, it's all talk with little to maintain interest outside gorgeous cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle (who won an Oscar last year for Slumdog Millionaire) and surrealistic flourishes, including a talking fox who mouths “ chaos…reigns.” It would all be unbearable if not for the slow-burn dread, the knowledge that something shocking is coming up ahead. It's called Eden I wonder if that's a clue.
So naturally, He takes her to an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods to begin the healing process. He makes a triangle chart of her fears: in the middle is nature, at the top a big question mark. He thinks the doctor is drowning her in pills he'll be able to cure her better. She seems to be taking it worse than He, who is a therapist. Now begins the grieving process, presented in four chapters: Grief, Pain, Despair, and The Three Beggars. Antichrist opens with a prologue in wonderful extreme-slow-motion B&W: He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) make love in the shower, while their son plays with a teddy bear, opens his bedroom window as snow falls in front of him, and falls to his death. Until then, however, you'll be wondering what all the fuss is about. Lest anyone wander into a screening unknowingly (spoiler alert), there are two shots towards the end of the film that few will forget, even though they may want to: an ejaculation of blood, and genital mutilation with a pair of scissors. You hear about these things and you're reminded of the reception of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, which shocked audiences in 1929 with surrealist editing and an eye-slicing scene surely, after all these years and everything that cinema has produced, no film could be so bad or offensive or shocking.Īnd Antichrist isn't. Lars von Trier's Antichrist gained instant notoriety after a Cannes screening that ended in hisses and boos and everything short of vegetables hitting the screen.
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