ANTICHRIST

Appalling many, thrilling others, outraging all, hailed as a brilliantly hellish vision, dismissed as a stunt, Lars von Trier’s psychosexual horror film was the movie that created the most headlines in a year not short of provocations. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg give their all as a couple who retreat to a house in the woods to overcome the grief of losing their only child. Gainsbourg won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her astounding performance as a woman possessed. Though it seems condemned to eternal life as a rental shocker, Antichrist is overwhelmingly a theatrical event – in its cinematic grandeur and its director’s compulsive, and compelling, exhibitionism.

“Antichrist is a gorgeous, mesmerizing construction, and almost every one of its frames shimmers with demented, imaginary life. (Cinematography mavens: Anthony Dod Mantle makes spectacular use of two new hi-def digital cameras, the Red and the Phantom.) It offers more proof, if we need any, that von Trier is one of the most accomplished cinema artists of our time, and also perhaps the most deeply trapped in his own head... This isn’t just the most personal film von Trier has ever made, but something like an unconscious film. As magnificent as Dafoe and Gainsbourg are, they’re specters in a shadow play excavated from the deepest recesses of Lars von Trier’s troubled psyche.”— Andrew O’Hehir, salon.com

“I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this impossible movie kept me hooked from start to finish.” — Manohla Dargis, NY Times

“Call me evil, but I think the dark shadows of civilisation deserve to be seen and reflected on rather than ignored... The American feminist Camille Paglia sees men as both attracted and afraid of the mysterious fertility and groundedness of woman. The dark realm of woman could be seen as closer to uncontrollable nature... And this is the realm that Antichrist leads its audience into, as old images and ideas are transformed into a wondrous, cinematic universe by Von Trier’s imagination.” — Heidi Laura, The Independent [Cultural historian Heidi Laura is credited as the film’s ‘Misogyny Consultant’]