“Chaos Reigns,” said the fox to the man.
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is a fable, a fairy tale, a biblical parable, perhaps; whatever you want to call it, divided into five chapters. Though centered on two (and only two) human characters, it’s an animalistic film, dealing with the subjects of uncontrollable actions and out-of-control psyches. Some call it nature. It’s no coincidence that the three forms of human suffering (Grief, Pain, Despair) that serve as the titles of the three middle chapters are also represented in the story as animal avatars, appearing one by one in each corresponding chapter.
Grief is a mother deer, her dead little Bambi still hanging from her uterus, unable to be released. Pain is a disemboweled talking fox. Despair is a crow that cannot be killed, but seems to linger around death. These animals resemble the fate of the human characters. When all three show up, someone will die—or so we’re told. So you know that happens at some point.
The film deals with feelings like extreme lust and temper, which excuses the film’s highly explicit portrayal of sex and violence. Or sex with violence, I should say, since the film’s most memorable moments are a combination of both—involving bloody semen and mutilated genitalia. Nothing is safe.
In the gorgeously shot black-and-white Prologue, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are a married couple engaging in the throes of passion all over their house—complete with a graphic close-up insert of the, uh, insert—while their infant son crawls out of his crib, out the window and to his death. The film as a whole is beautiful (it’s fascinating that Von Trier’s most horrifying film to date is also the one with the prettiest images he’s ever conceived), but the silent black-and-white bookends are slices of marbles by themselves. Dafoe’s character is a psychiatrist, who agrees that a shrink should never treat his own family, he admits, but is convinced that he’s the only one who can save his wife from her damaging grief. He asks her to identify the place she fears most so they can conduct therapy there. She names their isolated cabin in a forest called Eden.
The analysis and theories Dafoe prescribes to Gainsbourg sound like complete psychobabble and their exercises appear random; but that’s the nature of the film, too. In the press kit I received, there’s a quote by Von trier where he talks about not putting much intellectual thought into the script. Scenes were inserted without planning and images conjured up without reason. In other words: instinct.
It’s a film about base instincts, but also about gender instincts. Is the film sexist? Only in the sense that it brings up an age-old feud with its bludgeoningly obvious allusions to Adam and Eve—still the most sexist story ever written. The decision to not name Dafoe and Gainsbourg’s characters renders their roles archetypal, hence even more in tune for the biblical reading. It recalls the perception of women that has survived for millennia, in which they are portrayed as weak and as gateways to evil—something that’s supported and/or instigated by Eve’s downfall. In Antichrist, Von Trier both recreates and spits on that symbolic gendercide in a modern couple and a modern context.
I’m not so sure why I liked it as much as I did. Maybe it’s the ace cinematography. Maybe it’s the brave acting by the two leads. Maybe it’s the awesomeness of a fox saying, “Chaos reigns.” Maybe I just appreciate the fact that it indulges in Hostel-like gore without allowing it to be “fun.” Some things remain unpleasant to see, and Antichrist indulges those. It’s certainly challenging, teasing and deliberately baiting the audience. It does so with expertise. I’m eager to see it again.
Antichrist is a horror movie, but not in the traditional characters-in-peril scenario. Actually, Von Trier’s use of stock scare tactics is quite poor (the “flipping through diary as it gets more and more disturbing with each page” schtick? Please.). Of course, he’s not trying to make a genre film. The horror in Antichrist comes from a very different place. He’s pooling all the fear and ugliness in the world—the death of a loved one, the breaking point of a marriage, selfishness, parental neglect, misogyny, nature’s unpredictability, the dark side of religion—and strings them along a pseudo-supernatural narrative. In the end, watching this movie is scary not as the experience of watching it, but as the evidence of evil’s presence in nature. That, I propose, is much more frightening than the coming of you-know-who.
"Antichrist" opens October 23, 2009 and is rated NR. Horror. Directed by Lars Von Trier. Written by Lars von Trier. Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe.
