The first motion picture in director Lars Von Trier's "Depression" trilogy, followed close by 2011 'Melancholia' & 2013 'Nymphomaniac'. 'Anti-Christ' is divided into a prologue, four chapters and an epilogue. It tells the story of an unnamed couple played by William Dafoe & Charlotte Gainsbourg whom after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods, in order to recover from their trauma but instead experiences increasingly violent & deadly sexual behaviors between them. Without spoiling this arthouse horror movie too much; after its premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, the motion picture was surrounded by controversy. First off, the movie's shocking graphic nudity scenes of genitals getting mutilated cause many audiences members to faint. Many couldn't handle the gore & violence despite how little of that sensationalism punishing allegory interpretation of the biblical undoing of creation is in the film's runtime of an hour and 40 minutes. In truth, most of the film is spend on slow near silent deliberately blurred motion dreamlike visuals filler that seem to drag or odd lingering shots of animal & plant life. Not only that but the pseudoscience dialogue about the natural world being inhabited with evil was too confusing & muddled than sophistical. After all, some of the symbolism like the three beggars (The grieving deer, the despairing crow and painful fox) aren't not that well developed or explained. Was Mother Nature AKA Eden, the antichrist? Who knows!? At least, the black and white opening and ending visuals with composer George Frederic Handel's masterpiece "Lascia ch'io pianga' playing was all perverse beautiful shot by Oscar winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. That said, the movie is still disturbing with all its dead babies symbolism like a fallen chick being eaten by ants or a stillborn fetus hanging from the hindquarters of the bounding mother deer to earn the movie, a NC-17 rating. Plus being banned in France nearly 7 years after its release, despite being co-produced by Canal plus (a French Company). As magnificent as the performers acting is, especially Gainsbourg who won Best Actress by the Cannes jury, their characters are so unlikeable that it's a turn off. First off, all of the psychological subjecting that the husband does to his depressed wife is highly annoying & unrealistic. All his patriarchal put downs is uncalled for. Yes I know the film is criticizing the exposure therapy treatment where an anxiety ridden patient is gradually exposed to the source of their irrational fear as the director had undergone this treatment for his own anxiety problems but this is extreme version that doesn't really existed. The true point of exposure therapy is to treat anxiety without the intention to cause any danger to the patient wellbeing. As for the wife; her own self-loathing through violent acts of mutilation and torture of a man she supposedly loves with is a bit much for me to take. Her historic viewpoints about women being tortured and killed in history because they were born evil is not even that accurate; seeing how according to the section about the European Witch Hunts on Gendercide.org. It shows that during the time periods of the witch hunts, the majority of women were not affected. The majority was targeted were foreign men. Only about fifty five percent of people who thought they were bewitched were of the female gender. Maybe that's the point of the film that inconsolable grief can cause people of sound reasoning to act irregular and abnormal, resulting them back to their animalistic nature of killing and procreating; which the Bible deem as savage and non-Christian behavior. Nevertheless I still found this movie to heavy handed and misinformation preachy. Regardless, it didn't stop many critics from dismissing it as pretentious and empty. However the most common complaint about the film is that blatantly misogynistic. After all, von Trier's previous record of psychologically torturing and debasing his female characters is highly infamous. It doesn't help that the title card and much of the promotional art, the t in the word 'antichrist' is suggested by a figure combining the Christian cross and the symbol for woman. If this is misogyny, it's a far more complex and nuanced form of misogyny than the simple prejudice. It's the one from the deepest recesses of the director's troubled psyche. It was very clear that the director was suffering from extreme melancholy when he made this movie. Nevertheless this form of self-therapy coping mechanism did not work. Trier was reportedly suffering from depression even after this film and attempting to exorcise his own personal demons by getting into fights with journalists & critics by declaring himself the best director in the world, as well as dedicate his movie to fame filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky without much fanfare. Overall: While I don't believe this film to be artless Euroshlock like some critics. As there are really powerful haunting scenes like Gainsbourg's character hearing babies crying around Eden. I do think this nihilistic psychological horror film could had been better. Unlike the biblical forbidden tree of knowledge, this sour fruit of movie is not quite worth biting into.
Review of Antichrist
