(Despite its graphic sexuality, Antichrist is puritanical at heart.) If Antichrist begins as a heavily art-directed exploration of grief, it expands to consider many other things: historical gynocide nature (human and otherwise) as malevolent force and sex as something deserving of punishment. For the movie’s purposes, this man and woman are symbols for their respective gender. Just when Gainsbourg or Dafoe are digging into a moment, an abrupt cut yanks them – and thereby us – out of it. His abrupt camera style during the conversation scenes – jumping around for various angles, which are then edited into a series of starts and stops – severely undercuts the performances. Neither of these lead characters gets a name, which suggests von Trier’s level of interest in them as people. The setting allows von Trier’s talent for striking tableaus to blossom – there’s an astonishing shot of the couple having sex at the base of a gnarled tree, with the pale arms of mysterious others reaching out from the roots – while the story itself grows progressively outlandish. At first their sessions take place in their squalid apartment – it looks like a leftover Saw set – but eventually they move to a remote cabin in the woods. When the wife proves inconsolable, the husband, a therapist, makes the unwise decision to treat her as his patient (ignoring his own distress). The ensuing sections – respectively labeled “Grief,” “Pain” and “Despair” – chart the couple’s descent from anguish into madness. It would be exploitative if it wasn’t so laughable, especially when von Trier delivers the hack filmmaker shot of the boy’s teddy bear hitting the sidewalk. In elegant black and white, with Handel’s Rinaldo soaring in the background, a couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) indulges in passionate, slow-motion sex while their toddler son climbs out of his crib, onto a chair and falls out a window to his death.
The title is largely a joke, as is (I hope) the prologue to the film.
His name is the first thing to appear on the screen, followed quickly by the title: Antichrist. Before you have a chance to call him any names, director Lars von Trier beats you to the punch.
0 kommentar(er)
