After viewing Danish director Lars von Trier's Antichrist, I was experiencing two extreme emotions: first off, my stomach was churning. I felt sick to my stomach, almost to the point of feeling physically ill. I rushed to get an antacid in hopes of relieving my sudden gastrointestinal distress.
The second emotion was that of confusion. I was literally left scratching my head, nearly burrowing a hole into my head with my fingernail. Now, I've been stumped by the meanings and subtexts of films before. I was maddened by the abrupt ending of Cast Away. The works of David Lynch left me flabbergasted. And I saw Donnie Darko three times, never to find out what was going on. But Antichrist became the new heavyweight "What the Fuck" champion of the cinematic ring.
A source of controversy since it premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where several viewers either fainted or walked out, Antichrist is truly a personal work for director von Trier, a filmmaker famous for previously practicing the avant-garde Dogme 95 moviemaking style, where practitioners followed strict rules to maintain the core "essence" of filmmaking without so-called bells and whistles of conventional cinema.
Even though the movement was ended in 2005, von Trier still maintained a reputation for creating subversive, unconventional, and seriously weird movies, such as the minimalist Dogville and the depressing Dancer in the Dark. Though not even close to being a man known for big-budget blockbusters, von Trier still amassed a cult following for his dark, stylistic vision.
Well, if you want dark and stylish, Antichrist goes to the extreme, and then some.
Willem Dafoe and British actress Charlotte Gainsbourg play a married couple (known only as "He" and "She" in the press notes) grieving from the accidental death of their toddler son. While He (a therapist) does a better job hiding his grief, She is crippled with emotional distress. Unable to help Her with conventional therapy, He takes his wife out into the woods, up to a cabin known as "Eden".
It's there that He walks Her through the grief process, hoping to help her overcome her fear and her massive sense of loss. But as the process grows more and more trying, the couple begin to experience strange visions, extrasensory phenomena, and other frightening happenings that exacerbate the couple's fears, fragile psyches, and eventually drives them to insanity.
Antichrist is definitely not your dad's psychological thriller. Hell, it's probably not even YOUR psychological thriller. Dark, bleak, and sometimes extremely confusing, Antichrist can probably be best understood by von Trier, and no one else. It makes sense, as the film was reportedly conceived while von Trier was experiencing a long bout of depression. Seeing how intensely personal his movie is, it shouldn't really be any surprise that no real answers are given at film's end, but instead lying completely open to interpretation.
But at the same time, that's the exact thing that hinders the Antichrist experience. The overuse of symbolism, the abundance of talking/dead animals, and the maddeningly ambiguous ending only produces questions that may never be answered. Does the horrific, sexually explicit violence serve as a metaphor for the suffering of women? Or does conversely serve as a metaphor for misandry? Is the film a straight-up horror picture, where nature truly comes alive to torture the two main characters? Or do the frightening, vicious proceedings mostly take place in His and Her minds? Regardless of how many times one may view the film (and I would regard such a person as one with seemingly no gag reflex), it seems as though Antichrist will always be a puzzle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
But if there is a definite positive to be taken from the film, it's the excellent lead performances by Dafoe and Gainsbourg. Dafoe, an actor whom this reviewer holds in high regard, is magnificent as the grieving father and therapist who eschews modern psychiatry and prefers to take a natural, old-school method into taking control of the mind.
But all the kudos should go to Gainsbourg, who's heartbreaking, vulnerable, and ultimately frightening as the emotionally crippled mother who succumbs to her baser, animalistic instincts in the worst way possible. It's a daring and virtuoso performance, and one that should definitely catch the attention of Stateside filmmakers.
As stated earlier, Antichrist is incredibly difficult to categorize. One school of thought would call it an examination of loss, grief, madness, and carnal instincts. Another would consider it a allegory to the plight of women (or even men). And a third school of thought would just call it one of the biggest mindfucks of all time. But while Antichrist gains high marks for its terrific performances and masterful technical attributes, in the end, its inherent ambiguity, lack of focus, and its indecisiveness of whether it wants to be an arthouse film or a shock-value extravaganza hurts the film in the long run.
Letter Grade: "C"
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