Antichrist (2009)

I always brace myself for a new Lars von Trier movie. It won't be easy, I know, but the challenge of experiencing his very peculiar genius is usually more than worthwhile. I can safely say that von Trier has changed the way I watch movies. Medea (1991) is an astonishing re-creation of the intense mythic story, and Breaking the Waves (1996) is still unlike anything else I've seen. There are others, to be sure.

By the same token, von Trier can become a tiresome browbeater. Dogville (2003), which was a kind of Our Town gone bad, flogged its point so incessantly it became irritating, ultimately spoiling the impression it made on me. Given the cast and interesting setting (theatrically minimal, to put it mildly), that was all the more of a disappointment.

I read plenty about his newest one, Antichrist, before checking it out. It apparently caused some consternation at Cannes, which, I assume, is rather hard to pull off these days. The reviews were divided, with critics seemingly bunching up on the "wow" end and the "rubbish" end, with very few in the middle. Interesting.

Now that I've seen it, I can see why. There is no way to have a "middling" reaction to Antichrist; I can honestly say that I like it and hate it, both. There are moments of artistic brilliance; there are also explicit scenes that add nothing to the film but a sense of mild shock, just enough to break the spell the film has cast—at least from where I sit.

The film's setup is simple enough: On a stormy night a couple is making love in their expansive apartment. (Warning: one quick scene is explicit, in fact.) While that is going on, the camera jumps to the bedroom of their young son, who—lured by something never seen by us—finds a way to climb up to the window, open it, step onto the sill, then slip and fall to his death.

The mother, simply referred to as She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is beyond grief-stricken. Her husband (Willem Dafoe as, yep, He), a psychologist, doesn't approve of the heavy drug regimen her psychiatrist has her on. Instead, she should be led through her grief therapeutically, and he will help her with that; it's his job and calling, after all. They head for a beloved cabin in the woods, which they call Eden. (If you see metaphors building steadily here, oh yeah. They run ragged, in fact.) What begins as intensive therapy devolves into mutual barbarity, as He learns that her prior trips to Eden to work on her thesis (the role of the occult in the harsh treatment of women in the West in centuries past) resulted in no mere academic exercise.

It all spins out of control with several scenes of shocky-horrific cruelty, all explicitly documented on film. In a film that has such artistic reach, these scenes are worse than jarring.

Both Gainsbourg and Dafoe are astonishing in this film, in part because of the demands von Trier makes upon them—especially Gainsbourg. There are several scenes that are absolutely barbaric, clearly intended to shock; they come across as silly, laughable excesses. The shocks shatter the frightening seduction that von Trier builds through the subtle shifts in wind, falling acorns, forest animals seen in the midst of nature's cruel traumas (a doe still half-carrying her stillborn fawn, its body not fully expelled; a crow eating her dead young). It obliterated my desire to reflect upon the images and metaphors that give the film real gravity; if that was von Trier's goal, it worked with me.

So who should see this? Only the most adventurous movie lovers who can tolerate explicit sex and sexual violence. All others, avoid. Antichrist has merit as a work of art, but even for a jaded viewer such as I, the efforts to shock cheapen the serious exploration of good and evil that von Trier attempted here. That's a real shame, because the film works so well as both very subtle horror and serious drama without the nitwit excesses.

I couldn't help but be reminded of a better film, if not an exact comparison: Begotten, E. Elias Merhige's creation myth on film that has distressing scenes all its own. There they have their place, however; shocks come, but the whole look of the film shakes my viewing.

In what may be one of his famous ruses, von Trier says he was working through diagnosed clinical depression with this film, one he had been planning to make for years. I can't believe that. Depression makes work very difficult, something I know from extensive experience with the condition (diagnosed long ago in me); creating a film of this magnitude, with the performance von Trier had to coax from his actors, strains credulity. I'm not calling the man a liar; I'm saying that, given his utter lack of sincerity in statements he's made in the past, it's hard to believe that story.

An interesting experience, to be sure, Antichrist is ultimately a disappointment.