(“Nature is Satan’s church,” the wife utters apocalyptically at one point.) This focus on nature subsequently gets conflated with human nature and finally with female nature, where von Trier’s careerlong misogyny comes into fullest bloom. The film’s most successful thematic confrontation is that between frail reason (embodied in the pathetic, infantilizing attempt by the husband, who’s a psychotherapist, to treat his deeply disturbed wife with cognitive therapy) and the uncontrollable forces of emotion and mystery that emerge victorious.Īnother powerful idea, that nature is cruel and vicious and completely antithetical to human welfare, seems to align von Trier with the German visionary director Werner Herzog. Or horror, as when genitals are scissored off, masturbation produces blood rather than semen and holes are drilled into legs. Released May 29th, 2009, 'Antichrist' stars Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Storm Acheche Sahlstrm The NR movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 48 min, and received a user score of 67 (out of. Hence, many of von Trier’s more outrageous, ultra-serious symbolic moments (such as a talking fox, its guts half ripped out, muttering “chaos reigns” in an “Exorcist” voice) will - and did, in the press screening - undoubtedly provoke unintended laughter. Clearly, or rather not so clearly, von Trier is working in a full-out symbolic vein here, as did Strindberg late in his career, but alas, the film medium inevitably carries with it, like an albatross, a heavy charge of realism. In discussing this self-styled “most important film of my career,” von Trier has referred to the forbidding Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The fact that the first three are “Pain,” “Grief” and “Despair” does not bode well.
At this point, von Trier switches to color and his signature chapter headings. Bereft, they retreat to Eden, their ironically named cabin in the woods, to recuperate from their loss. As we learn in a rather pretentious prologue shot in slow-motion and black and white, their toddler son has fallen to his death through an open window while they were making love.
“Antichrist” is relentlessly and solely focused on a married couple, played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
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