Even though I had heard almost every single plot detail of ANTICHRIST, the movie itself was nothing like I expected. All the talk has been about how it’s incoherent, based on a dream Lars von Trier had, and there’s a fake talking fox and some castration. I expected the typically rotten production values of a Dogme/Dogville production, along with the usual deliberate layers of artifice he likes to throw in. And since I’m not a big fan of the guy, nothing said “must-see” about this.
I was very, very misled in my preconceptions. And by the way, Cannes jury, giving this an anti-award for being egregiously awful or whatever was a craven, anti-cinematic, show-offy P.C. move. Then again, maybe ANTICHRIST shouldn’t be embraced. It’s like arguing with my mother about horror movies – on the one hand I’d like her to see the merit in them, but on the other, wouldn’t you worry if your mother liked everything you like?
And the fox doesn’t look fake to me in the least, incidentally.
Much like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, ANTICHRIST is a horror film – yes, a horror film, make no mistake – that deals with a fundamental flaw in romantic relationships. Not that I’ve ever really been in one, but I know enough to be well aware that one thing men fear most from women is uncontrollable emotional outbursts. And also, that women more often then not want a sympathetic ear rather than the typical male impulse of wanting to “fix” everything immediately. In both movies, the woman is bringing baggage to the relationship – the death of a child, the lingering of a poltergeist. And in both cases, her partner is determined to solve the problem himself, in almost comically inept fashion…which in turn makes the problem increase exponentially, culminating (because this is horror, after all) in insanity and death.
But unlike PARANORMAL, and much of von Trier’s recent output, this is a stunningly lensed film, courtesy of Anthony Dod Mantle, who has shot his share of crappy-looking Dogme films, but clearly can bring it on when asked to rise to the occasion.
Attention demands to be paid almost immediately as, in slo-mo black and white, the unnamed couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg heatedly get it on, including actual penetration (as performed by porn-star body doubles for the close-ups), while their young child gets out of bed, walks to the window, and falls out, beautifully and hideously crashing to his death on the snowy sidewalk below, as opera music dominates the soundtrack.
Then the film proper begins. Both parents are in mourning, but She is taking it much worse than He, and ends up in hospital on some serious antidepression meds. It’s probably what she needs, but He, being a psychologist, thinks he knows better, so damn the drugs and let’s get to some serious aversion therapy. It is, of course, hugely unprofessional to treat someone you’re sleeping with – which he thinks he’s getting around on a technicality by trying to withhold sex from her – but unless someone is an obvious danger, you can’t forcibly hospitalize them for depression against their will. Or so the excuse probably goes – real-world logic isn’t exactly the point here.
Determining that what she is afraid of most is being out in the woods, He insists they go to their cabin there, where She had previously worked on her thesis project (one She thinks He perceives as “glib”) on the topic of gynocide – historical mass killings of women simply because they’re women, often under the pretext of witchcraft accusations.
But as her therapy progresses, we get hints that the place is cursed by the dead spirits of those murdered women…and, perhaps, that they deserved to be murdered because they were, in fact, truly evil. In Her fragile emotional state, these spirits may or may not be “real” as such, but they’re definitely real to Her. Things get even creepier as She starts seeing portents in constellations that don’t actually exist…and yet SOMETHING must be real, because He is having tie-in visions of mutilated animal spirits – “The Three Beggars,” based on the imagined constellations.
As with so many David Lynch movies, it’s beside the point to say that there is one true way to interpret the story – von Trier admits pulling it directly out of his own dreams and subconscious. But there is one very definite way to take the vibe of the whole thing, I’d say, and that’s that this movie knows exactly what it is to suffer from panic attacks. Not just by showing you a character having one, but taking you inside the mindset. If you’ve never had one, watch this movie and you’ll have some idea of the way my thought processes work on a regular basis – the paranoia, the thoughts of self-mutilation, the compulsive need to literally fuck the pain away. I’ve been trying to come up with a good horror script derived from hypochondria, but I think Lars beat me to it.
Charlotte Gainsbourg lays herself (and Dafoe, heh-heh) completely bare, like, a stripped down human being where nothing remains but primal, raw nerves. It’s an astonishingly un-vain performance, probably the best acting I’ve seen all year. It’s the sort of performance that you imagine would take an actor to extremely dark and insane places, risking their own mental health. Dafoe, who is not particularly subtle most of the time, is fine here, but he isn’t at the same level, but then again, that’s part of the point; the man in the relationship attempting to be level-headed and rational in a way that’s annoying to the woman who wants him to show more emotion. Making him an actual psychologist literalizes this notion, but I’d wager there are many coupled-up women out there who feel their man acts annoyingly LIKE a psychologist. Just as many men often fear their woman’s gonna go psycho on his ass.
The seriously crazy, shocking stuff you’ve heard about doesn’t happen until towards the end of the movie, by which time it has been earned. The way folks are talking, you’d think this movie was FACES OF DEATH or CHAOS, some cynical shocker created just because an immature director thought it’d be “some fucked-up shit, man!” And if you think it is after seeing it, I probably can’t change your mind.
I can only tell you that those of us who do suffer from anxiety disorders know damn well that it’s not. And for showing an understanding of that mindset in a manner I wasn’t sure was possible, ANTICHRIST is my favorite movie of 2009.
