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Antichrist
Director – Lars Von Trier.
Cast – Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
I heard a woman threw up at the movies while watching this. I was skeptic. Thought it was all a bunch of hype. I even told the women sitting next to me (who were covering their eyes all the time, even before there was any scary stuff) that this wasn’t a horror and they ought to calm down. I was wrong. Half an hour into the film I was the one doing all the covering and turning away.
This is by far the strangest, most disturbing, most horrifying and most graphic movie I have ever seen. I will never watch this movie again.
The plot is simple. It’s about a married couple whose baby son crawled out of a window and died, while they were making love. The husband is a psychiatrist and the mother has recently quit some sort of adult education. The woman suffers an emotional breakdown and the husband takes her as a patient and attempts to cure her throughout the movie. He takes her to the place she fears the most, the woods, in order to get rid of the fear. That specific part of the woods is called Eden. The woman eventually goes insane and, well, see for yourself.
Knowing a bit about Von Trier helps to understand this film. Von Trier has had to endure various, serious depressions and as a result, he views the world differently than most people, which is obvious in the film.
The beginning (prologue) and the end (epilogue) of the movie is shot in very similar styles. It’s black and white and the slow motion effects and background music makes it very beautiful. Everything in between is dark and horrible. Maybe this is a statement. Everything between birth and death is suffering and only in death, or non-existence, do we find peace.
The baby boy, who usually is a symbol of life, beginnings and joie de vivre, dies, or if you stretch it, commits suicide.
Various animals appear throughout the movie; a blood-covered fox, a deer which is in the middle of giving birth and an infant crow. The fox is in China believed to be a signal from the spirits of the deceased. At some point in the movie the fox looks into the camera and yells; Chaos reigns! Thus stating that there is no afterlife.
The deer giving birth is, like the baby boy, a symbol of life. However, the deer infant is dead and nothing about the miracle, that is birth, is beautiful.
The crow is commonly known as a symbol of negative omens. At one point, the husband attempts to kill a new born crow, because it’s giving away his hideout. However, the crow proves difficult to kill and it takes several blows with a rock before the bird falls silent.
Have a look at the movie poster. The tree is supposed to be the tree of life. However the tree is fertilized with dead bodies. And that is, in a nutshell, the message of this film. What if birth, life and death aren’t beautiful miracles, blessed by God? To Lars Von Trier they aren’t and this movie is a lens through which we are offered to view the world as he does.
I honestly wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone. Not because it isn’t a wonderfully executed piece of cinema but because I felt sick watching it. I very rarely have to look away and I never experienced that I couldn’t eat my popcorn. Until I watched this movie.
One Danish film critic said that one third of the audience would give this movie five stars. The second part would give it zero. And the last part would have no idea what they’ve just seen.
Director – Lars Von Trier.
Cast – Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
I heard a woman threw up at the movies while watching this. I was skeptic. Thought it was all a bunch of hype. I even told the women sitting next to me (who were covering their eyes all the time, even before there was any scary stuff) that this wasn’t a horror and they ought to calm down. I was wrong. Half an hour into the film I was the one doing all the covering and turning away.
This is by far the strangest, most disturbing, most horrifying and most graphic movie I have ever seen. I will never watch this movie again.
The plot is simple. It’s about a married couple whose baby son crawled out of a window and died, while they were making love. The husband is a psychiatrist and the mother has recently quit some sort of adult education. The woman suffers an emotional breakdown and the husband takes her as a patient and attempts to cure her throughout the movie. He takes her to the place she fears the most, the woods, in order to get rid of the fear. That specific part of the woods is called Eden. The woman eventually goes insane and, well, see for yourself.
Knowing a bit about Von Trier helps to understand this film. Von Trier has had to endure various, serious depressions and as a result, he views the world differently than most people, which is obvious in the film.
The beginning (prologue) and the end (epilogue) of the movie is shot in very similar styles. It’s black and white and the slow motion effects and background music makes it very beautiful. Everything in between is dark and horrible. Maybe this is a statement. Everything between birth and death is suffering and only in death, or non-existence, do we find peace.
The baby boy, who usually is a symbol of life, beginnings and joie de vivre, dies, or if you stretch it, commits suicide.
Various animals appear throughout the movie; a blood-covered fox, a deer which is in the middle of giving birth and an infant crow. The fox is in China believed to be a signal from the spirits of the deceased. At some point in the movie the fox looks into the camera and yells; Chaos reigns! Thus stating that there is no afterlife.
The deer giving birth is, like the baby boy, a symbol of life. However, the deer infant is dead and nothing about the miracle, that is birth, is beautiful.
The crow is commonly known as a symbol of negative omens. At one point, the husband attempts to kill a new born crow, because it’s giving away his hideout. However, the crow proves difficult to kill and it takes several blows with a rock before the bird falls silent.
Have a look at the movie poster. The tree is supposed to be the tree of life. However the tree is fertilized with dead bodies. And that is, in a nutshell, the message of this film. What if birth, life and death aren’t beautiful miracles, blessed by God? To Lars Von Trier they aren’t and this movie is a lens through which we are offered to view the world as he does.
I honestly wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone. Not because it isn’t a wonderfully executed piece of cinema but because I felt sick watching it. I very rarely have to look away and I never experienced that I couldn’t eat my popcorn. Until I watched this movie.
One Danish film critic said that one third of the audience would give this movie five stars. The second part would give it zero. And the last part would have no idea what they’ve just seen.