A ***1/2 out of **** review from Roger Ebert...

The term antichrist is commonly used to mean "the opposite of Christ." It actually translates from the original Greek as "opposed to Christ." This is a useful place to begin in considering Lars von Trier's new film. The central character in "Antichrist" is not supernatural, but an ordinary man, who loses our common moral values. He lacks all good and embodies evil, but that reflects his nature and not his theological identity.

This man, known only as He, is played by Willem Dafoe as a somber, driven, tortured soul. The film opens with He and his wife, She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), making passionate love. This is a moment of complete good. In the next room, their infant son begins to crawl around to explore and falls to his death. This in itself is a neutral act. It inspires the rest of the film, which labels itself in three stages: Grief, Pain and Despair.

We must begin by assuming that He and She are already at psychological tipping points. She has been doing research on witchcraft, and it leads her to wonder if women are inherently evil. That may cause her to devalue herself. He is a controlling, dominant personality, who I believe is moved by the traumatic death to punish the woman who delivered his child into the world.

Their first stage, Grief, is legitimate. Their error is in trying to treat it instead of accepting it and living it through. Of course they blame themselves for having sex when they should have been attentive to the infant. Guilt requires punishment. She mentally punishes herself. For reasons he may not be aware of, he is driven to deal with her guilt as a problem, lecturing her in calm, patient, detached psychobabble. Her grief is her fault, you see, and he will blame her for it.

This leads to pain, most directly when he insists, at this of all times, on their going to their remote cabin in a dark woods that she fears at the best of times. The cabin is named Eden; make of that what you will. They have already eaten of the fruit, and it will never be Eden for them again.

The psychic pain of his counseling and their removal to the forest are now joined by pain inflicted upon them by nature and each other. The woods are inhabited by strange animals that look ordinary -- a deer, a fox, a crow -- but are possessed and unnatural. He and She don't much seek refuge in their cabin but increasingly find themselves outside in the wilderness. They begin to inflict pain on each other in unspeakable and shockingly intimate ways.

These passages have been referred to as "torture porn." Sadomasochistic they certainly are, but porn is entirely in the mind of the beholder. Will even a single audience member find these scenes erotic? That is hard to imagine. They are extreme in a deliberate way; von Trier, who has always been a provocateur, is driven to confront and shake his audience more than any other serious filmmaker -- even Bunuel and Herzog. He will do this with sex, pain, boredom, theology and bizarre stylistic experiments. And why not? We are at least convinced we're watching a film precisely as he intended it, and not after a watering down by a fearful studio executive.

That said, I know what's in it for von Trier. What was in it for me? More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. Who can say what von Trier intended? His own explanations have been vague. The actors take the words and actions at face value and invest them with all the conviction they can. The result, in a sense, is that He and She get away from von Trier's theoretical control and act on their own, as they are compelled to.

We don't know as much as we think we do about acting. In a recent interview, I asked Dafoe what discussions he had with Gainsbourg before their most difficult scenes. He said they discussed very little: "We had great intimacy on the set but the truth is we barely knew each other. We kissed in front of the camera the first time, we got naked for the first time with the camera rolling. This is pure pretending. Since our intimacy only exists before the camera, it makes it more potent for us."

So it is a documentary in one way. What does it document? The courage of the actors, for one thing. The realization of von Trier's images, for another. And on the personal level, our fear that evil does exist in the world, that our fellow men are capable of limitless cruelty, and that it might lead, as it does in the film, to the obliteration of human hope. The third stage is Despair.

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A *1/2 out of **** review from Christy Lemire in the ASSOCIATED PRESS...

(AP) LOS ANGELES (AP) - To say that "Antichrist" is shocking would suggest that it's effective.

Certainly shocking us is Lars von Trier's point - or we can assume it is. Doing so at least gives us something to hold onto when most of the movie seems so maddeningly pointless.

The Danish writer-director has said this domestic thriller was the result of working through a bout of depression, a script he wrote as a therapeutic exercise. Watching "Antichrist," though, that's hard to believe; so much of it seems so gratuitous, it's difficult to imagine it would be helpful to anybody, even its creator.

Among its imagery: a little boy falling from an open window to his death; graphic, sadistic sex; bloodied woodland creatures; and genital mutilation. And as it builds to its violent crescendo, it only becomes more hilariously absurd. By now you may have heard about the moment in which an injured fox, lying in the tall grass of a forest, lifts its head and growls out the cryptic warning, "Chaos reigns!" It's deservedly drawn both laughs and boos, and even become a bit of a catch phrase among film aficionados.

As for the story itself, well, it's pretty dull for the most part. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a married couple known only as "He" and "She," pretentiously. Following the death of their young son in a freak accident - which they couldn't prevent because they were too busy having exquisitely photographed bathroom sex - they retreat to their cabin in the woods to work through their guilt and grief. This consists of long, achingly empty stretches punctuated by moments of shrill screaming and brute violence.

The first section is in slow motion and black-and-white, with the water from the shower paralleling the snow falling outside, and Dafoe's face contorted in ecstasy just as the child's face reflects his fear as he tumbles to his death. Gorgeous as this prologue is - the work of Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who also shot von Trier's experimental "Dogville" and "Manderlay" - it's also so self-consciously artsy, it keeps the audience at arm's length. (And that's coming from someone who watched it at 37 weeks pregnant with her first child - a boy.)

Once the couple heads into the woods, "Antichrist" shifts to soft, intimate color for the next three chapters, titled "Pain," ''Grief" and "Despair." He insists they go to their remote, rustic cabin because it's the place She fears the most, and it just happens to be named "Eden" with great biblical portentousness. "Eden." And He is a therapist, so clearly he knows what he's doing.

Turns out, He didn't really know his wife very well at all - or her ability to afflict gross bodily harm using items from the tool shed. "Antichrist" will do nothing to quell the accusations of misogyny that have long been leveled against von Trier; the breakdown She suffers seems intended to titillate, nothing more.

Dafoe and Gainsbourg do dig deep for these mentally and physically rigorous roles, so you have to give them some credit for finding the fearlessness to go to such dark places. (She also won a best-actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for playing "She.") You only wish their efforts were in the service of something worthwhile.

"Antichrist," an IFC Films release, Not rated but contains graphic violence, gore, sexuality and language. Running time: 109 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

A pan from MSNBC...

By Alonso Duralde
Film critic
msnbc.com contributor
updated 4:42 p.m. MT, Tues., Oct . 20, 2009

With his controversial new film “Antichrist,” is writer-director Lars von Trier suggesting that women commit evil acts because they have so often been wrongly accused of witchcraft and devilry over the centuries? Might he be implying that women actually deserve all that bad press?

Is he saying that any male therapist who chooses to take on his wife as a patient deserves anything awful that’s coming to him?

Or is the thesis of the film that there’s no point whatsoever to human endeavor, since nature itself is inherently wicked and — as the film’s talking fox (no, really) suggests — “Chaos reigns”?

While the film’s supporters will no doubt spend years arguing over the deeper meanings and symbolism behind this latest work from the bad-boy auteur who gave us “Breaking the Waves” and “Dogville,” “Antichrist” is a thoroughly pretentious and unpleasant wallow that tortures its audience for no apparent reason. Why bother being dragged through slime for art if there’s no destination at the other end of it?

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a couple whose young child accidentally crawls out the window while the parents are making love. The film’s first few minutes lugubriously linger over this coitus, in slo-mo and black and white — the exquisite cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle (“Slumdog Millionaire”) is better than von Trier deserves — complete with a penetration shot provided by the two stars’ stand-ins.

As the infant climbs over Dafoe’s desk, knocking over three statuettes labeled “Pain,” “Grief” and “Despair,” certain segments of the audience will find it hard to choke back the church giggles; the cavalcade of heavy-handed metaphors has only just begun.

Gainsbourg is paralyzed by mourning, but therapist Dafoe says her doctor is over-medicating her, so he insists on treating her himself. He manipulatively guides her through her panic attacks and withholds sex from her — now that he is her therapist, it wouldn’t be ethical, after all — with the stated intent of getting to the root of her fears.

The therapy eventually involves the duo traveling to their house in the woods, where Gainsbourg had spent the previous summer with their child while trying to finish her thesis about the history of society’s violence against women. And it’s in the woods that things get seriously cuckoo-bananas, with the wife becoming frighteningly unbalanced.

Admittedly, I’m easily disturbed by gore in movies, but the bloody business of “Antichrist” is so over-the-top — and its storytelling so divorced from humanity — that I found myself unflinchingly staring at the film’s violence, unaffected by any of the mutilations and monstrosities being paraded in front of me. The movie’s tasteless and much-discussed shock tactics desperately want to unnerve the audience, but they ultimately have all the impact of a 5-year-old repeatedly poking you, saying, “Does this bug you? Am I bugging you?”

Dafoe makes an effort, but his character is so choppily conceived (as is just about everything else in the film) that he can only do so much. Even though Gainsbourg is one of the most interesting young actresses working today — in her native French — I found her heavily accented English to be a constant distraction; her character is supposed to be American, but her diction reminded me of that Kathy Griffin joke about how Gwyneth Paltrow “talks like she’s from Europia.”

Partisans of both European art-house cinema and gut-bucket exploitation horror will either adore or despise “Antichrist”; let it be said that, if nothing else, it’s the kind of movie that doesn’t summon a lukewarm response. Count me as a hater.

It's cuckoo-bananas all right but in a fun way. Jeesh... these critics are so serious!

An absolutely scathing review from USA Today:

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

Antichrist (*) is probably the most disturbing, bleak and self-indulgent film ever made.

Ultra-explicit in its gruesome depiction of self-mutilation and torture and excruciating in its slow pacing and pointless visual digressions, the latest film from director Lars Von Trier (Dogville) seems intent on making the audience miserable.

Von Trier does include moments of lyrical visual beauty amid the tedium and gore, but this is his least accessible film in a career of challenging work. Breaking the Waves (1996) was a fascinating and unsettling look at relationships and religious devotion, and Dogville was an inventive and provocative morality tale. Under the guise of a meditation on marriage, parenthood and anguish, Antichrist is actually a particularly misogynistic torture-porn film.

Its intense focus on a grief-stricken and increasingly unhinged woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her pedantic psychologist husband (Willem Dafoe) dives off into such twisted and far-fetched territory that it completely loses viewers. The first minutes of the film grab us powerfully by the throat, but the rest is like being slowly and erratically strangled.

Antichrist is billed as a horror film, but it doesn't offer the cathartic release of most movies in the genre. Perhaps Von Trier sums it best in a quote about the movie: "I would like to invite you for a tiny glimpse behind the curtain, a glimpse into the dark world of my imagination; into the nature of my fears, into the nature of the Antichrist."

While that may sound intriguing, if creepy, it is an invitation best declined. Von Trier's fears — if indeed this is what we're watching — are deeply disturbing and idiosyncratic.

Gainsbourg won an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival for her part. Perhaps she deserves recognition for her fearlessness in assuming a part that is unremittingly morose and ultimately, violently perverse.

The movie immerses itself in the darkest despair imaginable, blending dystopian porn with ghastly horror and graphic violence. But it's all done in a mundane, almost clinical way. Von Trier seems to be thumbing his nose at the audience, oblivious to whether any of us is the slightest bit captivated by this incoherent hodgepodge.

The notion of exploring the fallout from a horrendously tragic event, as this film starts out seeming to do, is arresting and powerful. But what the story devolves into seems to lose any connection to its initial intent.

When Gainsbourg grabs for the tools in the movie's final third, things get unbearably ugly, and the squeamish would be wise to flee the theater. Better yet, squeamish or otherwise, avoid entering the theater in the first place unless you're willing to endure a barrage of psychobabble and relentless sadism. Antichrist amounts to audience torture.

If there's a film that will certainly be reassessed by critics as time goes on, it will be this film. I'd bet you that in 20-30 years it will be considered a classic of world cinema.

Let's see.

bloodied woodland creatures
torture
misogyny
graphic violence
pretentiousness
psychobabble

Yup. Right up my alley. If this ends up being a classic, I hope it is in the same vein as Plan 9 From Outer Space. Not that I dont admire Ed Wood for his persistence.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: babypook,

quote:

Originally posted by puxzkkx:
If there's a film that will certainly be reassessed by critics as time goes on, it will be this film. I'd bet you that in 20-30 years it will be considered a classic of world cinema.

Answer no. 1: They just have to get all those women out of the reviewing business.

Answer no. 2: Or, in 20-30 years from now, you'll have grown up and done a little reassessing yourself.

I don't think its a fantastic film. But I think the marked difference between the response to the film from critics and that from bloggers, net cineastes and film fans I know shows that it isn't going to go down in history as just some awful shock flick.

I don't think it is a masterpiece, at all. But it is the kind of film that I could see legitimately gaining canonical status among film writers and cinephiles in the next few decades.

And for the record, it is far less misogynistic than, say, Breaking the Waves. And it seems to me that a LOT of people are judging this film without having seen it. Not to mention I saw it with my mother, a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, and she loved it. But maybe that's because she knows how to read and appreciate a film.

Also, I'm more likely to trust the opinion of people who are ready and willing to discuss the film in depth, devote time and thought to it, than the opinion of critics who, while renowned and qualified, have a very limited period of time between watching the film, writing their review of it and sending it to print. I'd bet you that quite a few of the trades critics who gave Antichrist pans when they first saw it may have quite different opinions now.

After all, it is certainly the kind of film that takes a bit of time and work to wrap your head around.

For the record, I gave it a 'B' on a scale of 'F' to 'A+'. At the end of a given year, I only consider films graded 'B+' and above as eligible for my personal Best Picture award. I think many elements of the film are breathtaking, genius, stunning. But I also think a roughly equal amount is completely unsuccessful, ideas that look better in ones' head or on the page than on the screen. It is a very, very flawed film. But it isn't a film that can be easily boxed into tidy labels and categories either.

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The thing that's extremely impressive about Trier is that once he broke through in a big way with Breaking the Waves, each and every one of his films has been imminently watchable (despite some odd conceits - who woulda thought Dogville or Manderlay would be interesting to watch), pretty much fascinating from start to finish, extraordinarily cinematic, have great performances, have clear strokes of genius, show brilliant range, etc. Antichripes is no exception.

Incl this look at his films - Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Manderlay. Quite amazing!

Look

I LOVED breaking the waves, dogville & the idiots. But COMPLETELY DESPISED dancer in the dark.

Antichrist is quite possibly the first Von Trier film I am indifferent to.

For all of its shocking exhibitionism & explicit savagery, I had expected to either love it or hate it to extremes. But I thought it was strangely forgettable. I saw it, I embraced its gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cinematography, I was shocked in parts, and then the movie was done and I didnt even think twice about it over the next few days.

I appreciated Roger Ebert's review, which gave an interesting perceptive interpretation of the film (more than he usually does). I dont disagree with his reading. But I also felt that any movie so desperate to test our threshold & tolerance for self mutilation & torture can really only succeed if we care enough for the people who are either inflicting or receiving torture. In other words, the shock factor needs to be grounded in substance and character. Whatever the symbolism.

Compare this to the torture-porn-like horrors in Kinatay (another movie which was skewered at Cannes). I have much greater appreciation of Kinatay, which had deep resonance for me for days after, as one of the strongest cinematic indictments of modern-day corruption and of the human capacity to cross the line and do the unthinkable. I maintain that the explicit horrors on display is in service to the story, while in Antichrist, the torture-porn fare felt like a series of gameplay gimmicks - soulless superficial shocks for their own sake.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Egghead,

I agree with you 100%.

I realize these days, it has become almost passe to say that Von Trier has a misogynistic streak, but, man, is it ever feeling more and more true.

I personally loved 'Breaking the Waves,' and thought it's dark tone was very appropriate.

But after watching Emily Watson go through rape and torture and sexual degradation there, followed by Nicole Kidman getting raped in 'Dogville,' followed by Bjork getting assaulted and framed in 'Dancer in the Dark' to NOW have another film of Von Trier's, which involves female genital mutilation, I have to say I've had pretty much enough and can't be bothered to care.

The thing that irked me a little about Anti was the Gainsbourg character. She seemed to self indulgent. But then most of these types are. In fact, she reminded me of a friend, which I told my friend in a moment of unbridled jest, who responded by not talking to me for days. He hadn't seen the movie, so I figured I wouldn't be outed, but was I! That added to the horror of the movie for me!

I haven't seen Antichrist yet but plan to... I've seen many of von Trier's other films and admire them much. I can't imagine anyone not liking Dancer in the Dark, which is brilliant. As for those female "victims," it's tragedy, not misogyny.

If anyone watches Antichrist on VOD, could you please check to see if it is shown property (2.35 - letterbox) rather than matted (partial letterbox, which cuts off the sides of the image?) IFC did mutilate A Christmas Tale when it was on last year; they then released the DVD and it showed on Sundance with the proper aspect ratio. I would like to see this soon, but I refuse to see it when not projected properly.

Thanks in advance.

Von Trier seems to be able to pull exceptional or committed performances from his actors, despite being divisive performances.
I actually liked Europa, Breaking the Waves (to a point), but disliked most of the other films I've seen by him. He just loves to title his actors "the woman" and play up the victim the victim the victim (almost always women).

Also, I dont think the craft of his films is consistent. Sometimes, they're ruinous (Medea).

He's, likely not someone I would like in real life. He is far from being a director I care about re his 'work'.
I likely will pass on Antichrist. I suppose that's because of who I am, and not necessarily because, it is a bad film.

I can't wait to watch this VOD on Monday morning on my day off! haha

quote:

Originally posted by Pucifer:
I haven't seen Antichrist yet but plan to... I've seen many of von Trier's other films and admire them much. I can't imagine anyone not liking Dancer in the Dark, which is brilliant. As for those female "victims," it's tragedy, not misogyny.

Well you can count me in with Egghead as someone who hated almost every minute of "Dancer in the Dark"... even though Bjork is great in it. I hated "Dogville" despite Nicole Kidman giving one of her better performances... even though it was actually even less liked I prefer the sequel.

I do think Lars Von Trier has a twisted misogynistic streak and likes to see women suffer and have felt that way since "Breaking the Waves". The only film of his I really like much is "Zentropa" which is one of his early works though Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgard make "Breaking the Waves" worth seeing once. I wanted to flee the theatre while watching "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville" so despite Bjork and Kidman being great I still did not find the films to be redeeming enough for even a single viewing.

Dogville for me, albeit with content misgivings, is just about the most thrilling piece of mise en scene I've seen in a film this decade. It confirmed for me von Trier (mad) genius. It was one of the fastest moving films I've ever seen.

I like Dancer in the Dark quite a bit, particularly Bjork's great performance.

I saw it two months ago and had mixed feelings about it. The acting was good, especially Gainsbourg, but it was absolutely disgusting when she cut off her clitoris. If I was her I would never agree to play the scenes that she had to played. They were degrading for a woman.