Antichrist

Haven't seen this yet but have been looking at the coverage it has been receiving and have been baffled by the the amount of people that take Von Trier at his world – I love his films because the guy is not to be trusted.

Written by Wynter on July 24th, 2009 at 09:42

I finally (well it is the day of release) saw this today. Absolutely loved it. After all the fuss it seemed incredibly tame.

Written by doug1482 on July 24th, 2009 at 17:16

CHAOS REIGNS

If one of the most authoritative voices of British film criticism is in the (superficial) position to say that all Von Trier’s films are rubbish and that his latest Antichrist is a mere “cine-prank” realized by a man of “giggling insincerity” willing to stir some “pointless controversy” then yes, chaos does reign for real! I understand that the normative and prescriptive tendency of film criticism is the only alternative to pandering admiration, but the fact that observations of such stupid mediocrity find space on ‘The Newspaper of the Year’ is a rather worrying coincidence…
Let us start by saying that the violent biodiversity of this film averts any accommodating univocal reading whilst simultaneously liberating numerous fields of enquiry, which are not necessarily pleasant to explore.
Those who detect misogyny are self-evidently limiting their perfunctory looks on the epidermal appearance of Von Trier’s film, or, even more impairing, refusing to explore the complex gaze of the Danish director on the feminine universe. As always in Von Trier we have the unreconciled dichotomy executioner/victim hence, author/spectator.
More than ever, the director’s irreverent empathy is dramatically siding with the female character, with Bess and Grace the process of victimization subtended a stubborn opposition towards the (cinematographic) world besieging their femininity, with Charlotte Gainsbourg sexuality is not intended as guilt anymore, it is guiltiness itself that is experienced as a castrating form of sexuality. Chaos reigns these days, sexual repression grows furious. If cinema for Von Trier has been a psychic flux of energies flowing in the firing channel of melodrama, with Antichrist he hijacks his poetics on the murky paths of horror where the victim transcends into headsman, salvation into guilt, good into evil. Only pain is left untouched. Everything (else) is inverted. The deer symbolizes fertility and is giving death from its sex; the fox embodies lucidity and instead announces chaos; the crow is the symbol of the regenerating power of death through decomposition but in the Antichrist refuses to die, even when buried…The therapist feels the chaos (through the fox), the witch halts it.
Willem Dafoe’s arrogation to lead his wife through the road of mental healing, his psychoanalytic academic exercises and mournful sexuality are the clear traits of a moral inquisitor whose adamancy ends up triggering the liberation of primordial pulses. If this is a film about the woman as antichrist then it configures itself as the protracted and provocative representation of a male vision of society. Why do people accuse Von Trier of being sexist and absolve our rotten society? The sweet and caring rationality that this obtuse and considerate husband opposes to the irrational fear(s) and carnal pain of his wife embodies the patriarchal will of purification that uses ‘love’, instead of fire, as a torture tool. Von Trier offers a cognitive map of pain where the equation woman/nature and evil (re)lies on the biological origin of suffering. Pain, is represented in its unbearable absoluteness by a mother watching her child dying. Unfathomable pain, unimaginable grief. The affliction comes from the maternal womb and the scission of a biological bond, under this logic pain is conceived as “natural”, that is why nature is Satan’s church.
In any Saw or Hostel the spectator witnesses countless mutilations but never invocate the scandal, why? Because that is cinema. Fiction. Von Trier is almost snuff: the soul is tested, there is no catharsis, the psychosis is explicated. And we refuse to watch, to believe, to face the squalor of our miserable lives. We zealously affirm that Von Trier likes to exaggerate and that there is no need to be so cruel and so, illusory, forth. The world, after all, is not that bad…
The same malign magnitude with which the wood roars its ancestral fellness to the outlandish bodies violating its gate, in one of the most profoundly evocative scenes of the film, shall echo in our deaf consciences and unhinge our blind bigotry.
Amen.

Celluloid Liberation Front

Written by CLF on July 25th, 2009 at 12:18

Am I the only person who took it as showing men's fear of women rather than just women are evil? Even if Von Trier was just going for the latter, in the conversation where She says this, it is after He has been saying that 'Human Nature (in reference to man) is evil'.

Written by doug1482 on July 25th, 2009 at 12:36

is this for real…?

might I propound a unequivocally peremptory, not to mention comprehensively amateur opinion based on above synopsis:

stop taking shit so seriously.

Written by craig on July 27th, 2009 at 08:50

I am worried because I wasn't enough shocked or touched by the film.

I was expecting a mindfuck and honestly, for me it wasn't enough.

Maybe its a sign there is something wrong with me.

And yes, I think it shows man's fears over women, and yes, culpability can kill.

Written by gabi dwo on July 27th, 2009 at 17:21

Celluloid Liberation Front –

You made that same long-winded and impenetrable comment on the Electric Sheep review of Antichrist as well. I'm guessing you either want people to acknowledge how clever you are, either by flattering you or professing confusion at your ridiculous academic writing; or you genuinely want to provoke debate, in which case it might help writing in a style that doesn't bore or repel people.

There's nothing special about academic writing if it doesn't communicate its points effectively.

Written by Graimito on July 28th, 2009 at 11:25

Boredom and repulsion are extremely welcome reactions in these days of emotional and cerebral constipation!
Thanks a lot also for the "ridiculous academic writing", that's really flattering!
Keep us updated with your insightful and thought-provoking considerations, they are really appreciated.

Yours (un)faithfully

Celluloid Liberation Front

Written by CellFront on July 28th, 2009 at 13:14

I had no interest in this film until I saw that the Daily Mail was freaking out about it.

If it upsets those bunch of reactionary cunts, then I'm all of a sudden interested in seeing it. I hear the sound of a foot being accidentally shot by it's owner.

Written by adhesif on July 28th, 2009 at 15:12

The following review is a take on the treatment of subject in the film and not a comprehensive review of the film in itself. The review does not signify the concrete views of the reviewer, merely collected thoughts at this time.

Film is quite hard to review without context.
Horror, beauty, violence, all are descriptions that have little meaning alone.
In the context of the adverts with “shock” hyped reviews I had seen previous to the film, I can only think the context must be a little tongue in cheek.
And in the context of Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, the tragedy is never conveyed with the same depth nor is there the same level of emotional engagement we have in the characters.
The opening scenes, if they are beautiful, are not in the same way that Pan’s Labyrinth, for instance, might be considered is beautiful. There is a black humour, a nod to the fact that all tragedy is a slow motion conclusion made inevitable by the fact we have named it a tragedy.
As the film has just started, we have no emotional engagement with the couple we see making love and therefore what we see is a blow by blow account of what happened, we experience the tragedy of the event through the reaction of Gainsbourg’s character as the film unfolds.
That said, the film is graphic and it does shock, but to me it deals with horror and violence more as a concept than in their visual state.
I am quite squeamish, and yet I didn’t find this film as horrifying nor violent as I had expected, and where the gore is depicted it feels restrained, tame even. The scenes are more shocking when described than they are when seen, something I doubt escaped Von trier.
Unlike most “horror” genres, the violence is depicted with realism, happening in a type of unreality. In terms of being hyped as a film that uses shock for shock's sake, actually it wasn't (thankfully!) and it didn't upset nor shock me in the same way that the recent remake of Last Turn on the Left did, a film I found far more violent, distuburbing and unrelenting, a film that in my mind went too far.
For me the most shocking moments in Antichrist were the moments of realisation, like when Dafoe is in the outhouse/shed and discovers what is at the top of Gainsbourg's list of fears, and we begin to piece together why that might be.
That spine chilling moment when the lines of sanity and madness, grief and horror are blurred and you ask yourself, "is she actually evil? Did she put the shoes on wrong by mistake, or deliberately?"
In that second, where what you think you know about her character is replaced by a doubt, you ask yourself "would she do that?".
And I suppose that question becomes the crux of the film, could you do that?, "that" being whatever it is that you are afraid you could be capable of. That, which whilst in the throes of grief and despair, especially of depression, it is so much easier to believe, "yes I probably would".
Gainsbourg becomes what she believes she really is, overtaken and at the mercy of her grief and despair. A monster, a kind of antichrist. All ability to rationally consider the pain of others is overwhelmed by her own, overblown, emotional state. Despair, grief, depression, they rob you of your humanity.
And in trying to bury his own pain and grief in an attempt to help heal hers, Dafoe also loses his humanity and ends up snuffing her out.
This surely alludes to the common situation whereby no matter how much someone may protest to want to be there for another during their grief or depression, in reality it is often impossible to bear with them as they hit the lows and all too often we want to hurry them toward wellness in an attempt to keep our sanity.

And that is just it, horror, violence, tragedy, they live in primarily in our minds and in the sense of the context we give them.
Who would have gone to see a film about the tragedy of loss and the de-humanisation caused by grief, depair and pain, if it had not been given the context of shocking, sexualised violence?
Perhaps to be depressed or stricken with despair is a modern condition that has become almost stereotypical and one which the audience cannot emotionally engage with. Or perhaps that cynicism is the context that Von Trier found himself in whilst writing this film, in bed isolated and suffering from a depressed state.

Honey Monroe

Written by Honey Monroe on July 28th, 2009 at 16:42

Contrary to Graimito's opinion I found the CLF's assessment to be emotionally perceptive, analytically precise and genuinely evocative (like all of the best film criticism in its authentic form).

Graimito is right when he/she says academic writing is not special if it doesn't communicate its points effectively but this passionate thought piece by the CLF does quite the opposite (for me), despite not being a piece of academic writing anyway.

The CLF makes many, many relevant and astute points. Bradshaw should be held to account for forsaking constructive analysis for flexing his lexicon, the wider mediated reception of Von Trier and this film go a long way to justifying von Trier's clearly satirical communication strategies outside of the film and Von Trier's rigorous, inventive and multi-faceted unpacking of 'misogyny' does not make him the misogynist the sulphuric reviews would have you believe.

Von Trier is demonstrating and articulating through this film not only an intimidating awareness of the different audience segments involved, his own psychological make-up and career, but the confluence of debates surrounding film theory/making/viewing (Mulvey looms large does she not), film canons and genre, cinema history and heritage, theology, adaptation and tragedy. That is a hell of a list and I'm probably not even touching the sides.

Written by PinkThinks on July 29th, 2009 at 12:23

Despite CLF’s rather overblown style, he/she makes one good point about critics who have dismissed Antichrist as a practical joke. It’s not only Bradshaw but Kermode too, and Andrew O’Hagan in the Standard. It does seem like a bit of a cop-out, but I think this would be a very difficult film to critique for the general public. Simply saying Von Trier has created something no more meaningful than a joke avoids a complex academic reading of the film which might be unpalatable to a mainstream audience.

Written by DanStewart on July 29th, 2009 at 14:57

Having said that, I’m not sure that the film deserves academic scrutiny. I think Von Trier has picked up bits and pieces of gender theory, written down some of his negative experiences in therapy and muddled it together with some horror film tropes. I struggled to find anything coherent about it, and you have to suspect some of the pyschosexual horror setpieces of the last 20 minutes were put in simply to shock the audience into a reaction. Would we really be talking so much about this film if it wasn’t for those scenes?

Written by DanStewart on July 29th, 2009 at 14:57

None of this will stop people like CLF sounding off on whatever academic theory strikes them as being Von Trier’s main thesis. To them I would say this: the man’s not an academic, he’s a showman. Why else do you think his films go on widespread release? He’s like every other mainstream director in that he makes films to elicit emotions from his audience, whether it’s laughter, shock or gasps of fear. There weren’t enough of any of these in Antichrist, in my opinion.

(sorry, server made me split my comment into three parts!)

Written by DanStewart on July 29th, 2009 at 14:58

But posting exactly the same piece on different websites is a bit lame though, right? A bit attention grabbing. And if anyone is going to be "held to account for forsaking constructive analysis for flexing his lexicon…", I think I know who I'll start with. Clue: it wont be Peter Bradshaw.

Written by Jonny B on July 29th, 2009 at 15:08

But posting exactly the same piece on different websites is a bit lame though, right? A bit attention grabbing. And if anyone is going to be "held to account for forsaking constructive analysis for flexing his lexicon…", I think I know who I'll start with. Clue: it wont be Peter Bradshaw.

Written by Jonny B on July 29th, 2009 at 15:08

Hi JB. Ha – yep, fair point re: the lex-flex yet – on the whole I find CLF fundamentally constructive in their fire stoking. It is good, isn't it, to see rallying against mediocrity in its forms both critical and cinematic when it's as thoughtful and wideranging as that? I don't feel they're elitist nor 'academic' (it's quite patently not – look at the style for one) and I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to admit attention grabbing is a necessary part of their agenda no?

Written by PinkThinks on July 29th, 2009 at 15:54

As a film goer I was equally horrified and fascinated by Antichrist, as an artist repelled and consumed by the imagery. As a film maker, astounded that any director could inspire such trust from his actors and as someone who has experienced a lot of grief, moved to tears by the films earlier scenes. I'm still too busy thinking about it in all its paradoxical, irreverent, demented and wickedly provocative glory to criticize it, yet………..DOCTOR MY BRAIN HURTS!

Written by gibbering fool on July 31st, 2009 at 00:16

Tottally agree……….!

Written by Julián Abreu on September 2nd, 2009 at 21:14