The 'Antichrist' Cometh

As you might have surmised from our Film Issue interview with Lars von Trier, his new movie Antichrist is partially an exercise in the unthinkably graphic and disturbing. Yes, it features a talking, possibly demonic fox and a closeup of Serge Gainsbourg's daughter shearing off her clit with a pair of rusty scissors, but those are the last two things people should be squawking about. For those who haven't been keeping up, the movie features a cast of just four: He (Willem Dafoe as a self-assured psychotherapist), She (Charlotte Gainsbourg as his wife), their young son (some baby actor), and Satan. You never see the fourth guy, or know for sure if he's behind all the horrible shit that happens throughout the story, but just the same he's there. The prologue consists of He and She vigorously fucking in slow-motion black-and-white while an operatic score blares.

While his parents are distracted by orgasms, their toddler makes his way up onto a table and falls to his death out of a two-story window. She gets sad, He tries to console her with psychobabble (against his own advice that he should not be treating his wife), they realize her greatest fear is a wooded area called Eden where She retreated last summer with the baby to work on her thesis about gynocide, and so they go to conquer her inner-demons. Under the pretense of shock therapy, He directs She to roll in the grass, cross a scary bridge, sleep in a cabin that is constantly pelted by acorns, and generally succumb to the revolting baseness of nature. After a few unsettling incidents with weird, slime-covered animals and other foreshadowing spookiness, He receives their son's autopsy report, which reveals that the child's feet were strangely deformed. He then digs up some Polaroids from the previous summer that show his son wearing his shoes on the wrong feet. I won't spoil the rest, but will say that this is where the bitch goes completely psycho after a overly drawn-out build-up.

My dream scenario for watching Antichrist is a first date--it would immediately determine if the girl I was with had the mettle to deal with me on a larger scale. If she balked or was offended, I'd sneak off "to the bathroom" ten minutes before the end of the movie and go home. Which brings me to the main dilemma critics and audiences have with Antichrist and Lars von Trier in general: misogyny. You know what? If you think this movie is misogynistic in any way you are the epitome of a daft cunt. I've known many women who were completely fucking out of their minds--to the point that I've questioned if they were possessed. And I've known many men who are so smug and self-centered that it would take a beaker of acid to the face to make them think otherwise.

This movie uses generalized gender roles as a vehicle of terror. And try as you might to subvert them, they will still exist whether or not we are presented with a third type of restroom. What's more, I'm pretty sure von Trier isn't trying to push people's sexist-sensitive buttons (at least in this particular instance). He is just presenting dark thoughts and observations from deep within his mind as honestly and naturally as he can. If you can't keep up, stay at home and watch My Little Pony with a bucket of Hägen-Daz strapped to your face. You don't have to like this movie or even be sure one way or the other, but if you're calling foul because of who directed it and its subject matter, just know that people talk behind your back about how desperately you need to get laid.

All that crap aside, I was invited to a prescreening of Antichrist about a month and a half ago, and I still can't decide if I liked what I saw. But one thing is for sure: If you're looking for a truly scary Halloween-time movie, you might want to skip Saw VI and give this a whirl. It is the first movie I've seen since I was 11 that made me turn away and cover my eyes. (If you're wondering, the last one was the original Halloween, and the demented uncle who made me watch it while he was babysitting me showed up later that night outside the living room sliding-glass door dressed in a Michael Myers mask and blue coveralls, tapping on the window with a butcher knife.) It is a film worth seeing, especially if you are of the opinion that good cinema must contain imagery that has never been seen before.