Director: Lars Von Trier.
Writer: Lars Von Trier.
Starring: Willem “Don’t cut me!” Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Budget: $11 Million.
Year of release: 2009.
Despite claims by the media that he is a megalomaniacal misogynist, I am actually convinced that Lars Von Trier is very humble about the ‘importance’ of his work. The critic’s screening of his latest film, Antichrist, at the Cannes film festival was greeted with both cheers and boos from a divided press. At the conference that followed the screening, reporters and critics alike were all very confused by his little horror film.
A reporter for the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, asked Von Trier: “Would you please, for my benefit, explain and justify why you made this film?”
Von Trier’s reply: “I don’t feel I have to justify...” He was cut off at this point by the same journalist who said quite angrily: “Yes you do! This is the Cannes film festival, and you’ve brought your film here and you have to explain why you made it!”
Von Trier then said: “You are all my guests here. It’s not the other way around. It’s the hand of God I’m afraid. And I’m the best director in the world. Though I’m not sure God is the best God in the world.” Though many have probably misinterpreted the above statement, I believe it is a case of this notoriously cheeky Danish film-maker taking the piss.
Speaking of piss, the reporter who demanded Von Trier justify his film was really pissed off. You could clearly see that the anger sharks were swimming in his head as if Von Trier had personally come into his home and shat in his wife’s casserole.
Such absurd anger highlights the schizophrenic view that many hold towards the film industry. Antichrist is a violent film, but the examples of extreme violence are extremely brief. This is in stark contrast to the brutally drawn out violence of films like Hostel or Saw, both of which were met with the usual outrage from the lunatic American Christian right, but were pretty much left alone by the mainstream media.
This is not to mention other movies or television shows that all feature implied violence on a much grander scale than Von Trier has depicted across the entirety of his career. What is the body-count in the popular Keifer Sutherland vehicle 24? Yet 24 aired on the Fox network with a PG-13 rating.
It might be said that movies with high body counts often don’t show explicit gore and are therefore okay, but sometimes the acts of violence in these mainstream films result in the death of innocent characters. When Neo kills all those security guards in the famous lobby shoot-out, we know that innocent people plugged into the Matrix actually fucking die. Yet, no critics demanded a justification for the Matrix movies.
Here is the apparent inconsistency: In Hollywood, violence is okay as long as we don’t get up close and personal with it. In Antichrist there is a gruesome genital mutilation filmed in extreme close-up, but the character isn’t killed as a result. The very fact that we see the act close-up (and probably because the act is done to an area of the body pertaining to sex) is enough for the film to be immediately dubbed as ‘shocking’ and ‘scandalous.’ Meanwhile, 24 can show us prolonged scenes of torture and get a pass. I just don't think that all the outrage at Antichrist is justifiable in this respect.
I do suspect that the outrage has less to do with the gruesome depictions of violence and more to do with the message Von Trier sends with it. The themes are incredibly grave, but they are important and they are seldom addressed in the medium of film. One theme is the inherent sexism that exists in modern society. The antagonist in Antichrist is a woman who doesn’t ask permission to perform evil acts, she just does them as a fully autonomous agent. Here, Von Trier seems to be taking a jab at the way modern society tends to victimise women. If you want to get an idea of what I mean, you can watch virtually any mainstream Hollywood film where female characters are consistently unequal to their male counterparts in respect to their capacity for violence. Sure, the recent trend is to give female characters some capacity for violence (think Keira Knightly sword fighting in the Pirate movies) but it is always attached with some cutesy joke ("You think that's bad? Try wearing a corset!") It is rare in a film if a female character ever possesses the same capacity for violence as a male character without some sort of disclaimer being attached.
Von Trier seems to be suggesting that women are just as capable as men at acts of innate violence. Furthermore, given the extent at which our behaviour is defined genetically, and given the genetic difference between men and women, Von Trier is suggesting that women are capable of a kind of violence that a male dominated industry (such as Hollywood) is incapable of understanding.
Maybe, just maybe, the reason critics are offended by Antichrist is because they know that a lot of it is pertinent but don’t want to accept Von Trier’s vision of contemporary society. If he was just some sleaze-ball movie-maker, critics might be inclined to dismiss him entirely as they did the guy responsible for Battlefield Earth. But Von Trier is an outstanding film-maker and his work commands intention. So the 'intellectual' critics angrily demand justifications for his films. One is reminded of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and its concerns with anti-intellectualism pervading modern media.
For those dear readers who want to know whether Antichrist is any good, I’m glad to answer in the affirmative. In terms technical achievement, Antichrist far surpasses Dancer in the Dark in terms of design and cinematography. Antichrist may be a nightmare, but it is a beautifully constructed one, as vivid as any you might have had after drinking certain red wines after midnight. Dafoe and Gainsbourg shine in their parts and credit must be given to Gainsbourg specifically for taking on such a complicated role that has the capacity to be so misunderstood. In the beginning, she inspires empathy and by the end she inspires a kind of terror that could only come about from witnessing the slow decline into psychotic madness of someone you love dearly.
Von Trier criticises society from a level that is not analytical but emotional. If you want a frank and highly intellectual discussion on social injustice, you should turn to the works of Germaine Greer. If you want to directly experience such injustice, Antichrist is as close as you can get without spending some time alone in the woods with a woman guilty of infanticide. His capacity to inspire sheer existential dread is the reason he is one of the most powerful film-makers working today. It’s also the reason I can only ever watch about two of his films a year. I suspect my next review might be a Pixar flick.
Five Stars:
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