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Charlotte Gainsbourg goes for a walk in the woods. |
Very nasty surprises for a couple in the woods
ANTICHRIST
Directed by Lars Von Trier
Certificate 18
THE premise is rather simple. A couple lose their son, and decide to head to a secluded cabin in dark and wild woods to get over their grief.
Bad move.
While the fella (Willem Dafoe) hopes being in a place called Eden may give him the space to help his partner’s pain subside, instead the pair become hideously tangled in their strained emotions and bad, bad, bad things begin to occur between them.
Danish director Lars von Trier caused a stir at Cannes with this offering and it is easy to see why. Firstly, parts of the film are brilliantly put together, and that means you are drawn in.
But Mary Poppins this ain’t.
It’s incredibly horrific in parts, and when not freaking you out with graphic violence, you are always aware that something is lurking just off screen, be it to do with creationism (but suggesting the world was made by the Devil, not God) or simply the waves of teary grief the pair feel over the loss of their boy.
Von Trier said when the film was first screened that it was the product of a period of his life where he suffered from a serious bout of depression. He exorcised his ghosts by sharing them with us. Packed full of visual and aural hallucinations, this is a chronicle of a couple’s joint descent into madness, and Von Trier brings a subtlety and sensibility in places before blowing you away with some grotesque nightmare.
He says that he wrote the script as a form of therapy, and added in for no apparent reason episodes he had dreamt about. This sounds hugely self-indulgent, but has the effect of making our couple more believably mad as the plot does not follow traditional rhyme or reason. It makes for a disjointed film at times, but you’ll be too busy hiding your eyes for this to make much of a difference to the thread.
From the clattering of acorns hitting the roof, as if teasing the occupants, to the high bracken that surrounds and cuts off like a leafy army laying siege, this is nature gone moody. It is dark beyond belief, with some scenes so eye-wateringly horrible I can’t comfortably type this review and think about some of the more disgusting moments.
Dafoe is always watchable and he brings a level of oddness to the film that just adds another impenetrable grim layer to what is going on.
His co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg is as intense, her cheek bones pinch her face into contorted grief and her dark eyes cut and destroy anything that could be considered beautiful in nature.
Above all, Antichrist is a shocking and disturbing piece of art, and while I did not “enjoy” it, it will haunt you for some time afterwards, which I assume was Von Trier’s aim. |
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