Movie review: 'Antichrist'

10/22/09 By Mina Hochberg

Movie review: 'Antichrist'

2 stars
Written and directed by Lars von Trier
Starring Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

“Antichrist” features one genital mutilation (not to be confused with the scene of genital battering), one stone wheel-and-axel bored into a man’s shin, several scissor stabbings, one toddler death, and one talking fox. It’s like David Lynch meets Michael Haneke (“Funny Games”).

Lars von Trier’s horrific new film opens with a sex scene between an unnamed couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It’s shot in slow motion to the tune of an operatic aria. What you take away from their love-making is not so much the graphic details (of which there are plenty), but the danger that the couple is oblivious to. They knock over and shatter a glass, and then another, but the alarm bells really go off when the camera rack-focuses to the crescendoing audio bars on a baby monitor. Next thing you know, you’re watching in horror as their toddler boy suffers a fatal accident.

That virtuosic aria is the last shred of harmony you’ll get for most of the next 100 minutes. As grief descends on the childless couple, cacophonous and ambient sounds firmly cast the story into a nightmarish realm. The mother is more stricken than the father, who is a therapist and maintains a stoic appearance. Crazed with grief, she remains in a hospital, on medication, until her husband overrules her doctor’s orders and decides to treat her with his own therapy techniques, sans meds.

The couple retreats to their cabin in the forest, a place they call Eden. At times she seems grateful for his attentiveness. Other times, though, her emotions turn bitter and accusatory: You think you’re always right, you’re always so distant, you weren’t there for me and the baby. He tunes out her indictments, determined to prod her through the stages of grief by getting her to confront her fears.

Eden is an awful place that only a warped couple would consider a getaway. It attracts dying animals, acorns continually pelt the cabin roof, ticks feast on your skin, fog hovers with a preternatural opacity. As the therapist trespasses into his wife’s psyche, their relationship unravels. He does seem genuinely concerned, but even so, something about Dafoe’s sinewy body and square jaw makes him seem more sinister than solicitous. Gradually, you sense flickers of uncertitude in his behavior as his wife begins to behave in startling ways. Her disturbing rants and eerie actions cause him to take pause and wonder if taking his mentally unstable wife into the deep, deep woods was maybe not such a good idea after all.

“Antichrist” is a haunting exploration of power between a man who’s perhaps wielded too much of it and a woman who’s tired of dealing with his cocky brand of sovereignty. He doesn’t deserve the deranged things that she does to him, but that’s not the point — this is her big F-you for having to endure his arrogance.

In the end, “Antichrist” is not really a movie that challenges mind or morality. It’s more of a visceral experience, which I’m not convinced is reason enough for a film to exist, at least in this case. If you’re remotely squeamish, bring smelling salts. Or skip it entirely.
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Movie review: 'Antichrist'

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