Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ

i really like the idiots, and riget is often very funny

and i like the pranksterism of the dogme manifesto (they wrote it in 30 minutes while getting drunk). i don't really "agree" with it but i don't really agree with most manifestos either

Five Obstructions is good, but kinda zzzz in the middle stretch.

His female characters often turn out to be pretty strong through everything though, or sometimes they snap and get revenge on their tormentors. Either way I think we're meant to think of them as inspiring survivors instead of victims, moreso than a lot of his male characters anyway.

In retrospect, DitD probably was a pile of crap, but I still think highly of Breaking the Waves and Dogville.

i dont see how that really follows.

and 5 obstructions is so not like that, it's a really compassionate movie, not to give away the ending, but i don't see how you could watch that film and come away with the idea that lvt is trying to degrade the main character.

― s1ocki, Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:54 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i need to reesreeen this; funny i think i agree with you but my conclusion was basically the opposite. it's clear LVT loves Leth dearly but still has basically no self-recognition. he's totally invested in the idea of himself as some kind of torturer-therapist and that never comes in to question. like, who the fuck are YOU maaaan!?

I really loved Dogville, like it depressed the shit out of me for days.

Actually, I tend to like his movies incrementally more than I think I'm going to, but appreciate them retroactively not that much.

Brian Fantana: I think I was in love once.
Ron Burgundy: Really? What was her name?
Brian Fantana: I don't remember.
Ron Burgundy: That's not a good start, but keep going.
Brian Fantana: She was Brazilian, or Chinese, or something weird. I met her in the bathroom of a K-Mart and we made out for hours. Then we parted ways, never to see each other again.
Ron Burgundy: I'm pretty sure that's not love.
Brian Fantana: Damn it.

Von Trier is currently working on a film entitled Dimension which is a project that spans 30 years. Every year the cast and crew (including Udo) meet to shoot footage. The film will show the actors age 30 years without make-up or special effects. Approximately seen years of footage has already been shot. The premiere will take place in 2024!

(source: Udo Kier's bio @ imdb.com) (Should have started the "Anticipating Lars Von Trier's Dimension (2024)" thread?)

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE54G2JF20090517

(can't wait)

Von Trier film that shocks critics non-shocker :)

(we neither!)

(wme neither!)

* Xan Brooks

The horror! The horror! Scene from Lars von Trier's Antichrist

"Chaos reigns," declares a mangy fox about midway through Lars von Trier's Antichrist. The audience guffaws and then – whoops – we are pitched headlong into the abyss. Until then I'd been standing toe-to-toe with the film, which casts Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe as a bereaved couple going off the rails at their shack in the woods. But after that I'm senseless; my thoughts in tatters. There are squawking crows and pitch-black holes and an abattoir's worth of mutilation that I could only peer at through splayed fingers.

Chaos reigns. I stumble out in a daze, momentarily unsure whether I loved it or loathed it. Abruptly I realise that I love it. Von Trier has slapped Cannes with an astonishing, extraordinary picture – shocking and comical; a funhouse of terrors (of primal nature, of female sexuality) that rattles the bones and fizzes the blood before bowing out with a presumptuous dedication to Andrei Tarkovsky that had sections of the crowd hooting in fury.

screendaily makes it sound like the same old same old, which i can easily believe.

"Antichrist is Lars Von Trier at his most provocative. There doesn’t seem to be a genuinely-felt sentiment in it, apart from the conviction that women are the root of all evil - not something he hints at subtly, but clubs the viewer around the head with. Cannes gives Von Trier the oxygen of publicity and Antichrist will draw thousands of irate rants, and, later, a rehabilitation when some declare they love it after all.

Preposterous, but probably destined to become a cult horror ticket - it is well made and, at times, genuinely horrific - Antichrist stars a oft-naked, sexually rapacious Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe as a couple whose toddler child falls to his death from an open window in the prologue. They’re having sex as the accident happens, and Von Trier cuts from the child’s face mid-fall to Gainsbourg’s mid-orgasm, which pretty much sets the tone for the picture. Dafoe, a controlling psychologist, decides to treat Gainsboug’s “a-typical grief” himself.

This leads the couple to a forest retreat called Eden, an evil place where Gainsbourg starts to really lose the plot. Much will be made of a female circumcision sequence and there is beaucoup de female masturbation. Gainsbourg seems to mislay her pants at a certain point and spends the rest of the movie rampaging around the forest naked from the waist down while Dafoe is mutilated a la Misery- and that’s after she charges his erect penis with something akin to a battering ram. Other highlights include a talking fox."

sounds great!

This makes it sound like the worst thing in the history of bad things, ever:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/05/antichrist_fart.php

Ebert's seen it too (maybe a little too many spoilers in there, don't know)

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/05/for_even_now_already_is_it_in.html

I just wanted to add that I really loved The Five Obstructions, the only LVT-associated thing I've ever enjoyed.

Director's Confession http://www.antichristthemovie.com/?p=277&language=en

He also told the media, “I am the best film director in the world, and all the others are overrated”, though he later downplayed it a little bit by saying that “all filmmakers think so about themselves but say it out, but I do”.

"I really loved The Five Obstructions"
otm. also

the more modest Von Trier films (which he mainly did till breaking the waves) are his best

This just looks so good.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/entertainments23/sets/72157617175236492/

beaucoup de female masturbation
beaucoup de female masturbation

Hard to take seriously any criticism titled "antichrist = fartbomb". Probably best to take some time to think about the movie before ranting. But I haven't seen it, so maybe it really is a fartbomb. Fartbomb.

xp to Zeno

You have to have heard that one in context though, it was right after a journalist asked him

"What is you justification for making this movie?"
"Do I need a justification?"
"YES!"
-crowd chuckles-
"Well, I, ..." (Von Trier was genuinly surprised by the aggressive tone of voice from the reporter. He ends up saying he doesn't think he needs to justify himself because he's a filmmaker, drops a silence, and to regain himself somewhat makes that joke)

It's really more of a joke if you actually hear it.

from Antichrist = Fartbomb

"that I didn't pay attention to the fact that my plug adapter wasn't giving power.

The computer went down and I lost everything. Seven or eight really
good paragraphs."

LOL

i don't think i have seen a LVT film i've liked. i thought the five obstructions was terrible too but i can't really remember it. i suppose dogville was the least bad.

also if von trier is so extremely depressed it may be worth him considering the fact that he's depressed because he's a complete and utter cunt.

Now now.

jed otm

that should cheer him up, good work guys

Considering how much misery he gleefully spreads, he probably deserves it!

That said I did enjoy the first Kingdom series (haven't watched the second yet) and the overlooked Boss of it All which was pretty amusing. I have a lot of respect for Dancer in the Dark but really have no desire to see any more of his traumatizing dramas.

sometimes i wonder why i like (sometimes love) von trier but tend to have big moral problems with haneke. they're on somewhat similar sadist/moralist kicks. i think part of it is von trier's gleefulness, he usually seems like he's really having a good time making you miserable (where haneke maybe won't let on what a good time he's having, which is what makes him seem disingenuous to me). but this one doesn't sound gleeful, boy howdy. i will definitely see it, even if somewhat against my better judgment.

(my fave LVT is dogville. other ones i like a lot: five obstructions, zentropa, the kingdom (1st season). breaking the waves is pretty good. i liked the music sequences in dancer in the dark, but the movie overall i thought was strained. the element of crime felt like a style exercise. still need to see the idiots and boss of it all.)

Haven't thought anything he was behind lacked in interest, at any rate.

he's really having a good time making you miserable (where haneke maybe won't let on what a good time he's having, which is what makes him seem disingenuous to me)

ding ding ding

Definitely go see Boss of it All, tipsy, it makes me wish deeply he would keep doing comedy (like the lighter stuff in this and The Kingdom) rather than this sadistic stuff he's made his life's mission.

dude EVERYTHING he does is comedy

Haneke is worse than disingenuous: he's a hypocrite who thinks that you are beneath contempt for loving the violence he (thinks he secretly) loves.

Also I would sit through "Faces of Death XIV" for some naked Charlotte Gainsbourg.

More or less a detailed analysis of this:
http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/05/cannes-09-antichirst-review-take2-oh.html

Seems like a pretty logical tragedy scenario (something terrible happens while they're having sex) - unsolveable grief - repent (by making sure they won't enjoy sex ever again) kinda thing to me, to be honest. But filmed by LvT. And described by people who only focus on the shockingly gruesome details without which it maybe was way too shallow and hollywood for LvT?

dude EVERYTHING he does is comedy

from Dogville on, the kind that isn't funny

dude did you read the "director's confession"? that's funny shit!

i laughed lots at dogville. (never saw manderlay -- i suspected he'd done everything interesting he could with that format in the first one.)

s1ocki, i don't know what that is, I stick to his films (until I quit them)

it's a little statement he prepared for the film... it's something else.

dude is just a showman. i think he's great at it. why the eff not?

I think you are confusing SHOW with sewage

I'm starting to get the impression that he's not your favorite director.

morbs is just jealous that von trier brings fresh bile each time

ha there's about six more likely candidates where I work

SPOILER

whats the significance of the epilogue? he turns around and sees the 3 animals again and then women start climbing and surrounding him - who are they and is it implied that they kill him (since when you see those 3 animals, someone dies). guessing they were executed witches, since thats what her thesis was on

SPOILER

anyway dope movie, i wanna see it again

http://www.movieline.com/images/chaos_reigns_fox.jpg

lol

SPOILER

whats the significance of the epilogue?

i thought the women at the end were basically a vision of nature -- since in the scheme of the movie women represent nature ("satan's church"), the engine of birth and death etc. and of course his killing her was a futile gesture, nature is in and around everything and will always triumph over reason. chaos reigns.

sort of simple-minded, obv., but the strength of the movie is much more in its execution and depth of feeling than in its ideas.

(so in that sense you could say the women kill him, since by bringing life into the world they simultaneously condemn it to death. that's the movie's central terror. )

ok yea that sounds about right

ok so this is on netflix on demand.

pretty WOW. don't know what to make of it right now.

i was just saying to a friend yesterday that this is the movie i remember most from last year. which is not the same as saying it's the best thing i saw last year, but it did leave an impression.

This film was great! The most offensive thing in the whole DVD is the idiot from the Daily Mail demanding von Trier justify his making of the movie.

http://manilovefilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CinCapsJediGhosts.jpg

The most offensive thing in the whole DVD is the idiot from the Daily Mail demanding von Trier justify his making of the movie.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1200742/CHRISTOPHER-HART-What-DOES-film-banned-days.html

love the plot description in this because it gets nowhere NEAR how graphic and crazy it is.

Considering showing this and 'Possession' as a double-header at one of our Film Club gatherings. Not sure they'd actually compleement each other that well though. Would have to do 'Antichrist' first I think as well. Hmm.

hated this

Didn't totally adore it but appreciated it for being pretty unique and hard to forget

Is there a Melancholia thread? Just saw it the other night, and I loved it.

I plan on seeing it but haven't yet. friend of mine saw it at the Castro theater and said he laughed through tons of it, which was um an atypical reaction in terms of the rest of the audience

was shown this the other day. it's a fairly remarkable work - i had expected to hate von trier, but the balance of empathy is almost entirely with gainsbourg's character here. put crudely, the film is about how dafoe's character fundamentally misunderstands, mistreats and patronises her to the point of rejecting her desires for intimacy, her nature, her need to be loved rather than treated like an unexploded bomb - until she does explode - and then he kills her. an allegory for how men have treated women since time immemorial. he is almost too awful in his obtuseness - but this is what men are, all too often, when confronted by female anguish.

the issue of the shoes, placed on the wrong feet - this is the toughest part to explain within that narrative - i suppose that von trier is attempting to demonstrate that people (especially women?) can be irrational & operate under logics contrary to the (nefarious) scientific method which dafoe wields so fatally - this is a sympathetic reading, perhaps, but at no point in the film did i feel my misogyny sensors (insofar as i'm 'allowed' them) beeping - it really did feel like it was on gainsbourg's side (while retaining some small empathy for dafoe, the pedantic fool)

it reminded me of how technically skilled and imaginative he is. people getting worked up over his narratives tend to overlook or underplay how well he uses light, sound and editing. there are things in antichrist that really don't look like anything else i've seen.

― flying squid attack (tipsy mothra), Friday, September 18, 2009 2:14 PM (5 years ago)

agree w/this. i rate this film pretty highly even though i don't think i could ever explain what exactly LVT was trying to say with it, or whether it even means anything at all, but it's just an incredibly beautiful and unique film just on a surface, sense-oriented level. the only recent film that stuck with me for similar reasons was 'under the skin.'

this film and melancholia are masterpieces. shame about nymphomaniac.

i'm going to have all three hurled at me before too long! delightfully intense opening gambit

But Nymphomaniac (director's cut) is the best one of the three! Again, technical things, editing especially, but also the beautiful images of trees or hospital rooms or genitalia (joke). And just the whole rambling construction, all 5½ hours of it, with digression upon digression. Nobody does shit like this. Anymore.

I showed the first seven minutes in my film class. A couple of open-mouthed responses. I'd forgotten about the close-up of Willem Dafoe (or his body double's)'s meat.