Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ

(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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00659/news-graphics-2008-_659250a.jpg

CHAOS REIGNS

http://www.myspaceantics.com/images/funny/snow-diving-fox.jpg

When your legs are black and blue
It's time to take a break
When your legs are black and blue
It's time to take a holiday

Hahahah Haitch

Press conference http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/9902.html

Very first question (after a couple of minutes) is the "Can you justify..." "I don't think I have to..." "YES YOU DO" from the Daily Mail dude

and the press kit http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/Image/Direct/029841.PDF

haha dafoe's reaction

Newsnight review was quite funny on this -- basically a shouting match.

The Tarkovsky dedication sounds hilarious to me.

this looks like Repulsion.

apparently everything has been banned for this. The poster on the underground, fbk has banned the trailer, the flyers are banned. supposedly even mems of the public have ripped display stands in the cinema. which is prob good for the film and environment.

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.