Antichrist

Lars Von Trier’s latest film is a relentless hailstorm of violence, cruelty and despair. It is, undeniably, his most controversial work. The French at Cannes beach universally despised it. Jon Frosch from our local mag The Stranger called it a “Provocaturd.” Roger Ebert declared, “[the] film will not leave me alone.” The images in the film are striking and unforgettable, but there is little consensus among critics about the “point” of the film, or whether or not there is one at all.

On it’s base, Antichrist follows a motif found in many so-called “horror” films, though in a more abstracted way. It tells the story of a man and a woman, respectively named “He” and “She,” who, in the wake of a terrible tragedy go out into a cabin in the woods, a remote place called “Eden,” with the purpose of helping the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) deal with her grief. They go there because She has negative associations with the place and He, a licensed therapist played of course, by Willem Dafoe, believes that it will help her to learn to face her fears. At first She is catatonically terrified of going anywhere other than outside of the Cabin, but very soon she finds that she is “cured,” her fears are gone, though soon we discover that there is more to that place, and to She, than He had anticipated; in bringing her there He finds that he has unlocked something terrible, an evil power that will end up seducing and destroying them both in a series of sadistic and self-destructive acts of pagan eroticism. (I won’t spoil the film by describing any of the gruesome actions, though you probably have already been made aware of them, anyways.)

Walking out of the theater, Peter and I tried to figure out the film’s deeper meaning. Was it an anti-feminist statement? In the title of the film, the “T” in “Antichrist” is the symbol of Venus, and the movie depicts feminine energy as a Satanic force when unleashed. That said, it’s difficult to pin down any conscious political motive to the film, which is perhaps why so many critics have viewed the film as a work of aimless, pretentious provocation. I think Ebert was correct in saying, “If you have to ask what a film symbolizes, it doesn’t.” Ultimately, there’s something much more visceral and subliminal about Antichrist.

It has been said that Von Trier was in a deep depression while writing and making the film, which may be a key to understanding it a little more. Ultimately, Antichrist is a deeply psychological and spiritual drama. The film gives the impression of a mind under assault by chaotic forces that it is unable to control or suppress. For both He and She, Eden is a mythical, primordial place, a dark recess of She’s recent past that terrifies her and confounds him. It is a psychical embodiment of nature, and as Gainsbourg’s character proclaims, “nature is Satan’s church.” As He guides She through overcoming her anxieties towards Eden, things begin to turn, He finds that he’s left the rational world and has entered unfamiliar territory, a place he can’t explain or control, a world of witchcraft, of sadism, of sex and psychological violence that both entices him and threatens to engulf him completely. He first tries to escape, then he tries to extinguish the evil, to kill it off, but that only causes an uproar, a deluge of demonic femininity.

The progressive hopelessness of the movie is staggering, but it does point to a truth about life that everyone understands in a visceral sense. The film is a depiction of the failure of reason, the failure of the human will in overcoming the deeper, perhaps less-noble motives that are locked in the subconscious. We may try to suppress or control this duality of the spirit, the knowledge of good and evil, but we do so at our own peril.