Review
Antichrist
Director: Lars Von Trier
Release Date: 24 July 2009
If Lars Von Trier’s aim was to shock then so far he’s been successful. Yet Antichrist has already been watered down as word travels from Cannes. By the time of its release anyone who’s read anything about it will know what to expect, meaning his oh-so-shocking scenes will lose their impact and become little more than an example of cinema’s capabilities and the realism of special effects.
Antichrist gets an unnecessary dedication to Tarkovsky as the credits roll. From the title to this insultingly obvious homage it seems Von Trier just wants to aggravate. It is a sadistic, unoriginal melding of Mirror - visually, some scenes are almost identical - and I Spit On Your Grave (even minimising emotional engagement by removing any score from the majority of the film). Of course it will provoke debate - an erect penis! Female genital mutilation! - and invariably will become the focus of critique, theories and fierce arguments.
As a piece of art, Antichrist is stunning, though it is hard to shake the sense of familiarity throughout. Opening with the beautifully monochrome, slow motion scene of He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsberg) having sex while their toddler falls (jumps?) to his death from the window, Von Trier utilises the delicacy of the Phantom camera to capture the ecstasy of passion and the achingly crisp, almost romanticised tumble from the window ledge to the mattress-like snow-covered ground. Divided into chapters, each section of Antichrist has its own style, each deserving of analysis. Yet this is not enough to compensate for the mediocre, irritating story, the unnecessary sadism or the flat characters that are, quite simply, an insult to both actors’ abilities.
Problematically, Von Trier’s efforts to shock come at a time when viewers are confronted with ultra-realistic gore on a constant, mainstream basis. Today’s cinemagoers are savvy to special effects and CGI, and know that the legislation enforced on film sets does not allow for the liberties older films could enjoy. Basically, we know that these uncompromising scenes are not real - even the “real” sex is performed by body doubles.
In parts, Antichrist is successful, and infuriating because of it. Though the couple have suffered a devastating loss, there is no effort made to empathise, and as such it is almost impossible to care about the horrors they inflict upon each other. This must surely be intentional, and highlights the unpleasantness of the last act - the brutality inflicted comes at a time when viewers are so detached that all that remains is a bitter aftertaste.
So has Von Trier done what any director with dubious morals would do and realised that by making a mediocre film controversial, it is guaranteed success? Or is his film a haunting, thought-provoking and lingering piece of horror? Antichrist seems specifically designed to split audiences, as was proven at the press screening at Edinburgh International Film Festival - as the credits rolled, this reviewer turned to colleagues sitting behind and enquired whether anyone else thought it was little more than a video nasty disguised as an art film, to which a stranger turned angrily, responded “No, I don’t think that at all” and stormed off. Annoyingly, it seems Von Trier has achieved his goal.
Becky Bartlett