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From: Banbury Charles
Category: Art
Date: 09 August 2009
Time: 10:18 AM
Review:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Continuing the themes of Dogville and Manderlay,
Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" confronts us with protagonists who futilely seek rational solutions to
insoluble existential crises. Willem Dafoe plays a cognitive psychologist who attempts to therapise
his wife, Charlotte Gainsborg, out of her grief following the death of their small son.They abandon
medication and visit a small secluded cabin in the middle of a forest in order to be close to nature.
Nature however, returns them to an animal state; his wife , violently waylays him and then hunts him
down , he is forced to kill her and burn her body before escaping back to civilisation.
The eye watering violence of the film is justified as we are here dealing with a film that sits squarely
within the genre of gothic horror . The film , like other fine examples of the genre such as "The
Shining" or "The Ring", creates a slow transition from images of uncanny dread towards real violence
and bloodshed. Full of stark primal images that recall the paintings of Edvard Munch , as well as
trademark near -kitsch devices such as a talking fox that mouths the words "chaos reigns",the film
sustains a relentless nightmare atmosphere that is made more palpable by the films terrible beauty,
its seductive and sensual aesthetic.
Anti-communist and anti idealistic, "Antichrist", like all von Trier's films, continues to assault
cherished positivistic ideals, in this case the notion that nature provides a rational backdrop to self
mastery and the healing of mental instability. Here nature exists in a fallen state, as the "church of
satan." A modern couple are forced to confront a pre- modern, medieval world of superstition,
ominous forces, dread fear, torture and loathing- and it consumes them.
Though I could hardly recommend it , I did leave the cinema feeling strangely elated.