ANTICHRIST
HIMSELF, The director
Let me just say that I’m positively thrilled to be writing my first “official” review of Lars von Trier’s work. He of, dogme manifesto fame, declaring his intentions to depart from standard Hollywood stylistic conventions like soundtracks, certain editing and shooting rules, things that in general make films seamless, pleasurable and hard to separate from reality. And many hate him, for these as well as many other reasons. He’s an experimenter, a bizarre Dane who likes to set his films in America but won’t travel here, a notorious eccentric who I’d love to interview one day.
As is typical of most of the von Trier oevre (except maybe for the silly Boss of It All), many will like this one, many more won’t stand it. Here he has taken two actors who are profoundly unpleasurable to look at, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, but who are profoundly interesting to watch, and thrown them in the midst of a bizarre exploration of his own battle with severe depression. Dafoe is “He” some kind of therapist/psychologist, married to “She” (Gainsbourg). She is extremely disturbed and contrary to all ethical directives, he is treating her. They wind up in a remote cabin in the woods, where “she” had been working on her dissertation, on women’s spirituality, some months back. If you know von Trier, I won’t be spoiling it by saying there hoped for meeting of the minds go slightly awry.
It may sound weird and boring, and you may experience it that way. On the other hand, and this is where von Trier never fails, it is utterly unpredictable. Sometimes its bad to not know where one is going, it signals confusion, poor planning and execution. Here it is von Trier’s skill: it’s always a journey, a slog through the consciousness of usually, one or many very alienating characters. We’re not supposed to really like He or She, maybe we don’t even care about them, yet somehow we get tricked into the fabric of the film --- honestly I don’t know how he does it. Maybe it’s subtle magical psychic trick that only works on a few of us.
So I’m not going to give any more of the plot away, I’ll just sit back and listen to all the various responses from anger to disgust to radical acceptance of von Trier’s latest acute examination of human psyche and behavior. Note that Gainsbourg won the Acting Award at Cannes this year for this performance and it is indeed a triumph. From the moment I first saw her on screen in, I believe, Jane Eyre, with William Hurt, I was positively shocked by her aggressively Gainsbourgian features (very little Jane Birkan there) and her placid look, the look of someone who knows their unattractive but can yet wield it as a weapon. Dafoe is the same: a perfect match in that sense: the two together, and warning there are graphic sex scenes here, are an absolute turn off...well sort of.
But it is well worth watching as long as you are bold, brave and not looking for comfort. But then with Lars von Trier of Breaking the Waves, and Dancer in the Dark two really brilliantly difficult films, you should have some idea what you’re getting into. Or maybe his films should come with a special warning label: you probably won’t enjoy this, it will probably disgust and annoy you, but you’ll be scratching your head about it for years.
Antichrist opens October 23, 2009.
Written and directed by Lars von Trier; produced by Meta Louise Foldager; Director of Photography, Anthony Dod Mantle; edited by Anders Refn. Released by IFC Films. Running time: 109 minutes.
With: Willem Dafoe (He); Charlotte Gainsbourg (She); and Storm Acheche Sahlstrom (Nic.)
