Product Details

• Studio: Zentropa Entertainment
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B002BWP4D8

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 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 500 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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thematic Naked Despair, Repulsive Piece of Art That Makes You Uncomfortable, October 24, 2009

By	Woopak "The THRILL" (Where Dark Asian Knights Dwell) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

"It is a repulsive, perplexing piece of art" as described by the press notes of writer/director Lars Von Trier's latest film "ANTICHRIST". This would be the best way to describe this metaphysical journey as the film seems to have been made with the full intent to shock, sicken and dare the viewer to sit through the brutal acts of unreasonable violence and painstaking themes that taps into the depredation of the undone mind. This film is not for the squeamish but fans of Von Tier would marvel to his return his enticing confrontational appetites that blatantly exploit human suffering and misogyny to add to his visions and daydreams in a very disquieting manner.

The characters in "AntiChrist" are unnamed as we can only refer to the lead characters as a HE (Willem DaFoe) and SHE (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Von Tier begins the film with some very intense intercourse as their infant son crawls out of his crib to an open window and eventually fall to his death. Devastated, the couple feels that their sexual appetites have contributed to the death of their only child. SHE falls into deep depression and HE is a therapist who disagrees with the medical care given his wife. HE decides to take his own wife under his care and to take the devastated woman to their remote cabin in the woods. Once there, SHE's consciousness begins to further fall into madness as the woods give her much more memories about their deceased son. The wife also begins to feed upon images in the research of witches as the husband tries to counter her ailing mind with logic and psychiatric training. The evil that lurks in the woods eventually begin to overcome SHE as she becomes a destructive force goaded by archaic instincts to defy his best efforts to cure her.

If anything, Von Trier's desire to shock, unnerve and bring scenes of discomfort to his viewer is brutally effective. Most people would say that the film borders on challenging the borders of taste as the film has a lot of violence, sex and full frontal nudity. It is very difficult to dissect this film without spoilers so I will try to avoid discussing many key scenes; the film's main strength comes from its ability to make the viewer uncomfortable and the sensation of shock and surprise is crucial to its enjoyment (if you can call discomfort that way). Von Tier fills the screen with gothic imagery, unsettling atmosphere and sexual games to drive his theme of grief and depression. The film has a lot of symbolisms and metaphors; as the audience is drawn to Von Tier's theatrics. "AntiChrist" may not match the intensity of "Dancing In the Dark" but the film still proves to be an intriguing piece of taxing surrealism and controversial undertone.

The film may become too cryptic for its own good and will prove too much to swallow for the inexperienced movie watcher. I am pretty open-minded and I revel in darkly twisted films but there were times that the screenplay taxed my brain as it felt a little incoherent. It is an unrelenting journey to the deep end of the line; as we become privy to SHE and her descent into extreme madness. It does help as Von Tier divides the film into four chapters as he begins the film with an arresting, beautifully shot barren monochrome as to usher the misery that is to come. The film has a few symbolic entities such as "Grief", "Pain" (chaos reigns), Despair (gynocide) and the "Three Beggars" that brings the depths of SHE and her quickly deteriorating sanity. The monochrome sequence stuns rather quickly as the audience is brought into a very graphic display of intercourse, as it brings the audience in a dispiriting scene of tragedy. The film's mood becomes more catastrophic from there.

Von Trier seems to represent his main characters as ORDER and NATURE. HE is a determined to pull his wife from the brink of chaos while SHE is a force of nature whose hysterical and increasingly deranged state appear natural and unstoppable. HE is determined to go to the depths of her psyche and SHE is determined to fight off this assault; it is obvious that the film is meant to shock as we see the mental conflict that rages between the two. SHE uses sexual favors and hysteria as she is tormented by the forest itself, fearing an evil that equals feminism itself, as explored in her Biblical thesis of the historical decline of women as 'agents of chaos' when driven by forces unexpected and beyond control.

Scissors and stones meet genital areas as images of self-mutilation, torture and stillborn imagery becomes commonplace in the film. Uneasy sequences they may be but they prove necessary to exhibit and augment the suffering of the two protagonists. There is a calculated ugliness in "AntiChrist" as the film resorts to verbal hostility for the first two acts until the horror elements are kicked into high gear that includes some very graphic genital mutilation. Trier brings some bloody ejaculate and female circumcision that is complemented by the case of pure delirium in the woods of Eden.

"AntiChrist" is a movie not for the faint of heart. I cannot say that I can give the film a strong recommendation since the film just gets its strengths from graphic imagery. However graphic and disquieting the film is, it is mesmerizing as the film has some enthralling tricks of camerawork, nice artwork-like compositions and the naked despair is just able to move the most detached watcher. Much of the film's burden falls on Charlotte Gainsbourg and she delivers in her portrayal; she is scary yet so sympathetic. Von Trier's "AntiChrist" is very combative and definitely tests your threshold for discomfort and pain. You have to have a mindset that is bold and daring to partake of this dark, slow-burning, "art house" horror movie.

The Film is of very graphic nature that only a timid recommendation may be given. [4- Stars]

4.0 out of 5 stars A paranoid male fantasy brought to life - a dark and disturbing but endlessly provocative depiction of woman, man, nature, November 6, 2009

By	Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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. 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 five 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.

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 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.