Product Details

• Actors: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm
• Directors: Lars von Trier
• Format: DTS Surround Sound, Special Edition, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: November 9, 2010
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B003KGBISO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,199 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Antichrist: (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Lars von Trier (Europa, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark) shook up the film world when he premiered Antichrist at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In this graphic psychodrama, a grief-stricken man and woman—a searing Willem Dafoe (Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ) and Cannes best actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (Jane Eyre, 21 Grams)—retreat to a cabin deep in the woods after the accidental death of their infant son, only to find terror and violence at the hands of nature and, ultimately, each other. But this most confrontational work yet from one of contemporary cinema’s most controversial artists is no mere provocation. It is a visually sublime, emotionally ravaging journey to the darkest corners of the possessed human mind; a disturbing battle of the sexes that pits rational psychology against age-old superstition; and a profoundly effective horror film.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

210 of 223 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The COMPLETE, UNCUT Criterion Edition!, September 21, 2010

By 

A. Mazzola "sicmaster64" (Clarkston, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Antichrist: (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

So, a lot of people seem to be inquiring, myself included, about whether this version is the uncut or cut version of the film... so I decided to do a little digging...

I E-Mailed Criterion at [...] yesterday and got an E-Mail back today from a Karen Mesoznik who works there and this is what she had to say:

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for your email!

We are issuing the uncut version of this film (108 minutes). Our master is the same version as the one that premiered at Cannes; IFC did not edit the film for release here. It's possible there may be some confusion due to the French DVD which incorrectly states the run time as 120 minutes.

I hope this information is helpful. Thanks you for supporting Criterion and please let me know if you have any more questions!

Best,

Karen
The Criterion Collection

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, I wondered what she meant by the French DVD stating 120, so I dug a little deeper and found out that the French DVD in fact states the film at 120 minutes, but the film itself is actually 108 minutes (uncut). There is no 120 minute version of the film. 108 minutes IS in fact the longest running time. The cut versions range from 100-104 minutes (depending on where and how you view the movie). If you have seen the 108 minute version, then you've seen it all, and THIS is what Criterion will be releasing. (The film in all of its unsettling glory!)

I hope this helped you guys! I will definately be purchasing this version myself. Hopefully this persuades people to do the same.

If anyone has any further doubts, feel free to E-Mail Criterion yourself at the E-Mail address mentioned earlier in my post!

76 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dark and disturbing but endlessly provocative and brilliantly shot depiction of woman, man, nature, June 9, 2010

By 

Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Antichrist: (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

A woman and a man lose their son in a tragic accident. Rather than trust in the medicine prescribed by her psychiatrist to ease her grief, he (a psychotherapist) decides to subject her to his own therapeutic regime. She (in an incredibly devastating performance by Charlotte Gainsbourg) will face her fears directly, and see that there is nothing to fear. He doesn't consider that he may have something to fear from her, or that he, with his clinical detachment from feeling and incessant preoccupation with the stance of observer, may be the one who truly needs therapy. (On that note it is hard not to detect a kinship of the themes of this film with the themes of von Trier and Jorgen Leth's The Five Obstructions, that set up von Trier himself as therapist to Leth, whose capacity for aesthetic detachment he found troubling).

The imagery in the film is fascinating and frightening - it is certainly von Trier's most accomplished film in terms of cinematography, and it definitely deserves to get the Criterion treatment. The prologue and epilogue are highly formalistic, shot in a series of powerful black and white images that border on the unreal; the rest of the film, broken into four chapters, is shot handheld with washed out but saturated colors, with rippling natural imagery and occasional freaks of nature that as a whole evokes a darker vision of Tarkovsky's zone (from Stalker). The film is in fact dedicated to Tarkovsky, and suggests a kind of inversion of his values and approach: whereas Tarkovsky finds in nature the potential for transcendence, suggested but not depicted, von Trier depicts in nature the reality of hell, a "Satan's church" where, as the fox asserts, "chaos reigns"; where Tarkovsky takes long, leisurely tracking shots, von Trier's are a bit jerky and employ the occasional jump cut, but he also employs the trademark Tarkovskian slow zoom into extreme close up on a partial face or gesture, and also (as I recall) occasionally employs the "temporal folding" that is common in Tarkovsky's films, where in the course of a single pan or tracking shot of the camera, events are depicted as if simultaneous that could not have been.

The film has been described by several critics as suggesting that women are evil, and the setting in a woods they call "Eden" makes it hard not to see "she" (Gainsbourg) as a kind of twisted Eve figure whose longings and obsessions (and sense of guilt) introduce evil and death into the garden. Still, it seems to me that the central character in the film is "He" and the film uses him as an object lesson to provide a critical depiction of a paranoid male fantasy/nightmare. "He" (played admirably by Willem Dafoe) is a therapist who is confident of his powers, and was obsessed by his job and detached from his wife and son until the accident allowed him to treat her as patient. He had dismissed as trite her writing and research on misogyny and "gynocide" - hatred and violence against women, born of fear -- and was emotionally distant from her until now she became for him a fascinating object of study. He becomes threatened and uneasy when she seems to have been cured, and seeks to continue the therapy by whatever means necessary. What she really fears, he insists, is that the male fears about women that inspired the violence she had studied were in fact true, that women are in fact evil - and that she is herself the object of her fears. When his projection onto her becomes real, when the fear he projected onto her comes to life, it becomes clear that this is his own paranoid fantasy, his own fear of aggressive female sexuality come to life allows him to justify and actualize the violent retaliation he had formerly only been able to realize against her in words, by objectifying and dismissing her.

It is as if, von Trier's film suggests, as if the modern version of the old male fear of the feminine, expressed then by accusing powerful women of witchcraft as a justification for doing them violence, as if this fear has been transformed or sublimated into the male pretense of objectivity. An objectivity that treats women as if their fears and concerns were utterly banal, but only out of a deeper anxiety that if women were to realize that male objectivity is really a new form of witchcraft aimed at silencing women, if women were to realize this they would come into their own and that would be the real danger. The film does not, as I see it, in any way endorse this view of women, or this fear, but depicts it powerfully in the form of a perverse parody. Not for the timid, but not to be dismissed, either, as if it were merely another provocative and shocking joke by that Danish trickster, Lars von Trier. It's a subtle and complex film, powerfully shot, darkly scintillating and dangerous.

Here's what to expect on the Criterion release:

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Lars von Trier and supervised by director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
Audio commentary by von Trier and professor Murray Smith
Video interviews with von Trier and actors Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg
A collection of video pieces delving into the production of Antichrist, including interviews with von Trier and key members of his filmmaking team as well as behind-the-scenes footage
Chaos Reigns at the Cannes Film Festival 2009, a documentary on the film's world premiere, plus press interviews with Dafoe and Gainsbourg
Three theatrical trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ian Christie

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What is the Nature of Evil?, October 22, 2009

By 

Chris Pandolfi (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Self indulgence is inherent in storytelling. In the case of filmmaking, we have the writer and director, who each have a specific vision of what will unfold in front of the camera. What ultimately limits the vision are practical matters such as budgets, limits of technology, studio meddling, scheduling, the MPAA, or any combination thereof. Watching Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," it became abundantly clear, rather quickly, that I was watching a completely unlimited vision. This is a truly self indulgent story, and in all honesty, I don't know whether or not I mean that as a criticism. I appreciated Trier's audacity to make the movie he intended to make, yet I find myself in utter disbelief over the confusingly allegorical plot and the extreme sexual content, some of which validates the criticism that the film is misogynist.

It stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who were indeed brave to accept their roles. They had an even bigger challenge than simply making their characters believable; they had to be physically and emotional vulnerable, and at times, this required them to act in scenes so frighteningly cringe-inducing that it wouldn't be enough to call them shocking. Trier is obviously trying to provoke the audience, not merely in terms of violence and gore, but also in terms of heavy dialogue, strange setups, a meandering structure, and bizarre symbolism. The title in and of itself is an attention grabber, and it will almost certainly inspire visions of unspeakable (and typical) demonic horrors. Ah, but this movie isn't about to let you off so easy. The title, just like everything else we see, is open to interpretation.

For example, is the word "antichrist" referring to Dafoe or Gainsbourg, their characters known only as He and She? The film, divided into four titled sections, opens with a prologue that shows He and She graphically having sex as their infant son falls to his death from an open bedroom window. As the story proper begins, in a chapter called "Grief," we find that He won't let She go through the process of grieving. He's a therapist, you see, and as such, He would rather treat his wife's symptoms through a series of mental exercises while jotting down meaningless notes in a hierarchical pyramid. He sees She not as a wife so much as a clinical experiment, and regards her distantly and coldly, almost as if He were trying to punish her for their son's death. Would a caring husband take his mourning wife to a cabin in the middle of the woods, a place She has been before and intensely fears?

But why did She go to this cabin, named Eden? To write a thesis, naturally, although She never finished it. She has, however, done enough research on the forces of nature to make her believe that women are inherently evil. Now that her son is dead, She has all the more reason to devalue and punish herself. But does She also have reason to devalue and punish her husband? By now we have reached the second and third chapters, called "Pain" and "Despair," both of which follow such twisted and disturbing logic that it's difficult to think past how the mind could conceive of it. They involve the appearances of a crow, a fox, and a deer, each so ghastly in appearance that it's impossible to think of them as of this earth.

By the time we reach the fourth chapter, "The Three Beggars," He and She find themselves in extreme physical and psychological situations. The outside world, unnatural in every sense, is cold, filthy, and inhospitable. Tree roots sprout human limbs. Caves and tall grasses shield terrifying representations of animals. As for Eden, which is decaying both outside and in, it's eerily claustrophobic and a perfect catalyst for He and She's respective emotional breakdowns. They really do know how to hurt each other. More to the point, She knows how to hurt herself. She wants to hurt herself. She wants him to hurt her. It becomes an exhausting and grotesque downward spiral, where suffering and anger give way to physical punishments best left unspoken of.

Inevitably, it comes down to a simple question: Is "Antichrist" a good movie? The thing is, I don't think the word "good" really applies here. If immediate reaction is of any indication, then the truth is I left the theater feeling disgusted and emotionally drained. However, I also found myself a little in awe of Trier, having the nerve to release a film so uncompromising. And there is no mistaking the artistry that went into virtually every shot. The ending, while highly enigmatic, is visually stunning, playing into the figurative nature of plot. So if I can't give it credit for delighting me, I can certainly give it credit simply for affecting me. Some filmmakers, I suspect, are not interested in telling a story so much as they are in being memorable, be it in a positive or negative light. You may like "Antichrist" or you may hate it, but either way, you will almost certainly never forget it.