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Web-Exclusive Review: Antichrist

Alternative Press - Tim Karan on 10/21/09 @ 8:12 PM - altpress.com

HORROR
ANTICHRIST (IFC Films)
STARS > Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe
DIRECTOR > Lars von Trier
RATING > 4/5
OPENS > Oct. 23
Many, many people will say many, many things about Antichrist, but it seems unlikely that any of them will ever forget what they've seen when they walk out of the theater. That's because it's hard to forget stuff like Charlotte Gainsbourg jerking off a penis that spurts blood. Or cutting her clitoris off with a giant pair of rusty scissors. At least I think that's what happened. After the bloody ejaculation scene, I had to cover my eyes. (I haven't covered my eyes in a movie theater since I was 10.) And while this brutally graphic sequence will undoubtedly be the film's most talked about, most controversial and most reviled, it is all the more remarkable in that director Lars von Trier (Dancer In The Dark, Breaking The Waves) has coupled these images--arguably some of the most disturbing in the history of cinema--with an insanely goofy non-sequitur in the form of a talking fox (really, Lars?) and an opening tableau that could easily be mistaken for a high-end shampoo commercial--that is, right up until the moment von Trier confronts us with a close-up of Willem Dafoe's body double's penis entering Gainsbourg's body double's vagina. But by the time the couple's young son walks out of an upper-level window and falls to his death while they're having sex in the shower, it's pretty obvious that the director isn't selling hair products.

What happens from there is a slow, inexorable plunge into the darkest recesses of despair, a convoluted psychic maze of religious symbolism in which Old Testament archetypes are both invoked and manipulated as the couple retreat to an isolated cabin in a forested locale called Eden, a place where, as the film's title indicates, all hell breaks loose. As He and She (the characters' names, according to the closing credits) attempt to work through the pronounced and interminable grief of the latter, Gainsbourg's character undergoes a bizarre and frightening psychic transformation in which She attempts to exact a savage revenge on her husband. Demonic possession is alluded to but not fully revealed, at least not outright, and Gainsbourg's performance as such is nothing short of un-fucking-believable. For a role in which she spends much of her time naked, screaming, or both, her violence (both inner and outer) is palpable, the havoc she wreaks is monumental, and the primeval bat-shit terror with which commands the screen is visceral.

For that reason, chief among lesser ones concerning the fascinating and endlessly debatable allegorical veracity of the story itself, whether you or I or anyone likes the film is largely irrelevant. That Antichrist is unforgettable and profoundly provocative is proof enough of its artistic merit. In that sense, it has transcended star ratings, rotten tomatoes and even the "anti-award" that the generally astute jury at Cannes saw fit to grace it with, citing its "misogynistic views." Their attitude perhaps derives from a single line delivered for maximum effect by Gainsbourg: "A crying woman is a scheming woman." But don't let them--or any of the other squeamish knee-jerk reactionaries--sway you. Truth be told, the graphic genital mutilations and talking animals add nothing to the film except the irrepressible inclination to look away. With or without them, Antichrist demands to be seen. --J. Bennett

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