ANTICHRIST (2009)

Posted by Stephen Jannise

I tried my best to avoid learning too much about Antichrist before seeing it, and, aside from seeing the trailer and hearing about the reception at Cannes and a certain talking animal, I managed to go into this screening relatively unaware of what I was about to experience. I think this paid off, as one of director Lars von Trier’s obvious goals with this film is to shock and stun viewers out of their moviegoing complacency. The plot itself is actually quite simple: a toddler walks out of a high-rise window to his death while his parents are having sex, and the father (a psychiatrist played by Willem Dafoe) must help the mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) deal with her increasingly violent guilt. He eventually takes She (the characters are unnamed) to their cabin in the woods, the place She fears the most, where He hopes to rid her of her depression by forcing her to confront her despair head-on. The more time He spends at the cabin, however, the more he begins to realize exactly what She had been up to when She had come to the cabin without him, and some decidedly unnatural phenomena begin to occur.

Von Trier seems to give a nod throughout the movie to the horror films of the late 60s and 70s (did I mention that Antichrist is a horror film?) that dealt with demon possession and the birth of an Antichrist, such as The Exorcist, The Omen, and Rosemary’s Baby. In addition to the thematic similarities, each of those films were consistently in danger of becoming mired in explanatory conversations involving psychiatric evaluations, medicinal suggestions, and constant recitations of the Book of Revelation, which provided the films with the necessary set-up of religion vs. modern medicine that wowed the therapy-mad crowds of the time but also threatened to bog down the narrative pace. Never fear, however, as each film had its fair share of well-placed death scenes and instances of demonic activity to enliven the proceedings (although Rosemary’s Baby deserves credit for its more subtle buildup of tension, I’ll save my Roman Polanski praise for another post). And so, von Trier follows suit here, apparently announcing his referential intentions with the title itself, which really has nothing to do with the film. He too wallows in sometimes overlong conversations about psychiatric methods and the research She was doing in the woods (that I won’t mention here), with dashes of terror and indecency here and there to break up the potential monotony. To those of you who didn’t like the earlier films I mentioned, this description of Antichrist is undoubtedly not very appealing, but for those of us who have a special place in our heart for those films, take it from me: this is the contemporary homage we have been waiting for.

Has it really been 40 years since a film like Rosemary's Baby has been as good as Rosemary's Baby?

Of course, I cannot say with certainty that von Trier intended all along to pay his respects to these films; after all, who ever really knows what this man is up to? But what I am certain of is von Trier’s desire, as always, to make his actors work harder than they ever have before, and Gainsbourg and Dafoe rise to the occasion. Much has already been said about Gainsbourg; just about every review of the film accurately praises her efforts here, and she also received a well-deserved bauble at Cannes for being the festival’s best actress. But I would like to stress in this review the strength of Dafoe’s performance. If you simply hear a description of the plot, a loving husband decides to become his wife’s therapist to help her through her depression, you would think that Dafoe is playing a Mr. Nice Guy. However, the proof of Dafoe’s achievement can be found in the many reviews that designate him as the film’s villain, for trying to sweep She’s issues under the rug with psychobabble, for underestimating the severity of her problems, and for forcing She into a situation that makes her uncomfortable in order to “cure” her. Dafoe’s character never announces any ill intentions; instead, the actor must portray a misguided lover whose subtle errors in judgment lead the couple into peril. Thus, whereas those earlier horror films dealt with the invasion by psychiatric therapy into territory previously dominated by religious counsel, Antichrist seems to reconsider the effectiveness of psychiatry in the age of prescription drugs. It seems no coincidence that, when He finally convinces She to flush the pills prescribed to help her with her mental health, their lives follow the pills down the drain. So, who is truly responsible for the catastrophic violence of the film’s final chapter: He or She?

Which of these lovers has wronged the other? One of the film's many talking points.

Thanks to the strength of the two lead performances, this question is one of many talking points that the film provides. Antichrist is sure to encourage debate among fellow moviegoers regarding the historically poor treatment of women’s mental health, the increasingly ugly nature of sexual conduct in a relationship gone wrong, and one’s individual beliefs regarding gender dynamics themselves. And as with any von Trier movie, there will also be plenty of post-film discussion concerning the art of cinema and filmmaking technique, even though this is arguably one of his most accessible films, stylistically speaking. In a year in which many good films did not necessarily encourage thought or conversation days, hours, or even minutes after being seen, Antichrist has stayed with me, haunted me in fact, for over a week. That has to count for something.