Chaos reigns
A black and white montage begins in a tiled shower, as slow motion cinematography builds from a leaking faucet into a shower of water raining down over the entire frame. The couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Willem Dafoe--whoa, talk about a handsome pair!) are making love passionately. Stylized to the utmost, flurries of falling snow outside open windows are suspended near complete stasis--the poeticism of these elemental abstractions clearly harks back to Tarkovsky’s work in the seventies. And the somber “Lascia ch’io pianga” aria from Handel’s opera Rinaldo will undoubtedly stamp these opening few minutes with the typically criticized accusations of “pretentious,” “arty,” or “self-indulgent” from many, but I would here like to address this style of filmmaking as beautiful.
Perennial enfant terrible von Trier treats this material seriously. He wants the viewer to pay attention to this opening chapter because many details auspiciously reveal the nature of this duo which will be laboriously sketched out through the rest of the film.
Intercut with the shots of the couple making love are frames of their young child who wanders first into their room, then out their bedroom window to his death. Notice as these shots begin that the baby monitor near the couple is switched off; later you will be inclined to suspect who turned the device off--She or He.
Additionally, the prologue reveals a trio of figurines on a desk, later identified as “The Three Beggars,” named Grief, Pain, and Despair. At the beginning the miniatures’ likenesses are of people. Later, however the motif is repeated as an astral constellation and most memorably, as three animals: a deer (always seen birthing a stillborn fawn), a bird that will not die, and a fox.
Lars von Trier is currently the working filmmaker whom I have been a devout follower of for the longest. Back in the sticks when I was 16, then being an avid reader of Entertainment Weekly and having begun the transition into my then newly discovered arthouse phase, I recall Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwartzbaum both selecting the same film for their number one pick of their top ten list--Breaking the Waves (1996 Lars von Trier). After seeking the film out and watching it on a rented VHS, it would only be years later that I would be able to fully appreciate it.
In Portland, OR during the late 90s I was able to peruse von Trier’s full oeuvre thanks to Mike Clark’s Movie Madness Video & More (which is still my favorite video store of all time). Renting horribly dubbed VHS copies of The Idiots (1998), The Kingdom (1995) and The Kingdom II (1997) still ranks up on the top of my list of greatest movie experiences. And then there was the time I was able to see the advance preview screening of Dancer in the Dark (2000) at the Hollywood Theater on NE 41st St. and Sandy Blvd.
Dancer in the Dark was the most amazing experience (along with seeing Pulp Fiction 5 times in a month when I was 14) I had ever had the privilege of being rewarded with, by a film that met expectations generated months in advance. That film remains one of my favorite modern masterpieces from one of the greatest living auteurs of the 21st century.
Back to Antichrist (2009), the plot is told through an additional 4 chapters and an epilogue which involve the couple hiking through the woods to a cabin as they deal with the grief over the death of their son, Nicolas.
Forget pawning this off as misogynist or being preoccupied with the graphic extreme acts of sexual violence. There’s an artistic vision present which should not be overlooked. Antichrist reminds me of Dreyer’s films that also austerely revisited archaic orthodox religious practices, and there is something that has always been fascinating about setting horror tales in that milieu.
The film is an art-horror tale of madness, in which psychology and gender studies seem to be present while not specifically outlining any messages; it seems inappropriate to take this film too seriously because it works cinematically, but obviously suffers if over-analyzed or taken as some sort of statement.
It is also, like The Kingdom (1995/97), a haunting narrative which is embedded with victims of atrocious violence who linger as ghosts confronting protagonists in the present.
The animals, or “Three Beggars,” the woods (or specifically nature)-- referred to by She as “Satan’s Church,” along with its rain of acorns, are brush stokes used by von Trier in a manner which is enjoyable for those who appreciate his mischievous cinematic pranks in which he seems to revert to his contoversy-courting mode of visceral, transgressive narratives.
Trivial Observations: Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of 60s French pop-icon crooner Serge Gainsbourg, won the Best Actress Award at Cannes this year for her performance in Anitichrist.
This film was shot on digital video.
-Dregs
Attended screening at the Alamo Ritz on 11/21/2009 (first released in US on October 23, 2009). Unrated, 105 minutes. Distributed by IFC Films.
Labels: Denmark, Horror, IFC Films, Lars von Trier


Robo-geisha (2009 Noboru Iguchi) is definitely the prettiest film I’ve seen this year and also the one in which I had the most fun. The first time I saw the trailer, I admit, I thought this looked stupid. But after seeing the 35mm print projected in a theater, I now see it as a work of art.
Ninja Assassin (2009 James McTeigue) dispatches the action before you can blink an eye, and in this sense, foreshadows the stealthy attack methods of the figure its high-concept title announces. No detail is spared from the iconography. Everything is here, from throwing stars to impossibly-agile, black-clothed wall-scalers. And of course, there are the fight scenes.
Special makeup effects artist Yoshihiro Nishimura has established his reputation as director with his second film, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009 co-directed with Naoyuki Tomomatsu), and his previous movie, Tokyo Gore Police (2008), with prosthetic latex creations which display every imaginable way to see people dismembered in the goriest possible ways, with a few hundred gallons of stage blood drenching the productions for a good hour, at least.



