ANTICHRIST (2009)

I had this film in my possession from Lovefilm for a long time. A very long time. I just couldn't get round to watching it, and I can only presume it's down to the furore and controversy that surrounded it's release. Everywhere you turned there was outcry, the Daily Mail wanted it banned, it didn't even need to have seen it, they just wanted it gone and no one else to watch it. Even those people who liked it, warned that those seeing it needed to do so with caution and trepidation. If it was a packet of cigarettes it would have a horrific picture of a tar covered lung on it's front.

So with a day off work, and Call of Duty: Black Ops completed I decided that now was the time to get this film out of the way and see what all the fuss was about.



The synopsis of the film is told beautifully by Lars Von Trier himself with a wonderful prologue shot in slow-motion black and white with classical music rousing the viewer, involving a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) having passionate abandoned sex (containing a close up of full penetrative sex - just to give you a flavour of where this film goes) while there young son slowly climbs out of the cot, unknown to them, and playfully wanders to an open window and his death. It's a fantastic introduction to the film and really takes your breath away. Von Trier had me eating out of the palm of his hand.

The film then becomes a study of guilt and grief, with stages of the film split into chapters, each referring to a stage of the grief process. These moments are played out very well by Dafoe's character, a therapist by trade, trying to help his wife Gainsbourg through the trauma. The tone is very contemplative with Dafoe being his simple best and Gainsbourg's moment's of quiet thought interrupted by howling scenes of grief. At the halfway point of the film, I was enjoying myself. Good acting, nice creative direction by a someone hailed as a great of European Cinema, and something to stimulate the grey matter.

Then it all goes a bit....well....er....somewhere else.

Dafoe's 'He' decides that Gainsbourg's 'She' must confront her fears and they retreat to 'Eden' a cabin in the woods where She had been on a retreat a year earlier, and where something strange had happened previously, to do so. Therapist games, whispered conversations and freaky, lustful sex occur and all of a sudden I am in a very different place to where I was 45 minutes ago.

I consider myself an intelligent film goer, I like to look for alternative meanings and try to decipher potential allegories from directors and writers, but I'm afraid I just didn't get this. From being an interesting and emotional insight into guilt and grief, I all of a sudden found myself in the middle of extreme, sexual violence, portrayed at it's most graphic, alongside examples of the cruelty of nature (including a talking fox that sounded a lot like Christian Bale's Batman), disturbing and arresting imagery and misogynistic politics.

I wanted to get it. In fact, I'm sitting here trying to get it now, but I just can't. It was interesting, it was well made, it was well acted, but at the end of the film I sat there thinking' What have I just watched?' and 'Was there any need for blood instead of semen?'.

Would I recommend it? No, I wouldn't. But having said that, if you can stomach a bit of violence, and aren't easily appalled, I would see it, because it is interesting, and you may get everything that Von Trier was trying to say. You may even think the Fox is the greatest talking animal in the history of cinema. But be warned it is a very, very, very tough watch. And for me, with very little reward.