Lars Von Trier ... Oh ... It's one of the filmmakers I've admired for years and whom I eventually lost all passion. In my head, he won a time as the largest contemporary cinematic genius before recently becoming more a vile manipulator reaches of anti-Americanism and gear for now stand somewhere between these two extremes. Antichrist, though, I waited, because I like Gainsbourg and Dafoe, because I love horror movies, and do not want a scandal at Cannes? Maybe to see him in the morning cup of coffee in hand, reduces the strength, because I still looking for that primary and visceral experience that we promised. It's a little danger of that word experience elsewhere: increasingly we hear of the experience of cinema, see a movie like experience. Many critics of the last von Trier (including Roger Ebert ) leave out all the symbolism or the possible interpretation of the film by saying, misogynist or not, Antichrist is an experience, a ride that must try. It is almost a pragmatic argument: the film makes me an effect, no matter where, so that it is valid. It also subjectivism applications as it denies the discussion focus only on feelings, personal of course, since others are bored, see AO Scott . I lean more towards Scott, even if the word boredom is a bit much, the film remains interesting, unless it is awaiting the final act so described and decried that we fear a priori. Finally, defend Antichrist saying it's a powerful experience, it is a point of view as little critical to say that it's a boring film.
It took me a while to find positive reviews and analysis that managed to go beyond the subjective description of a particular experience. There here, there's more here and the same article also points us here. Let
wholesale the argument: he, the character of Willem Dafoe, imprisons her (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in a rational framework in refusing to mourn their son in the gentle irrationality of his inconsolable grief; He represents what condescending paternalism which was used to demean women through the ages. For my part, I do not see how this speech really applies to the character of Dafoe. If the irony of which expressed the face of Von Trier seems obvious therapeutic tool (the childish fear of the pyramid, role playing that are obviously ridiculous nothing to help her, etc..) I more misery to understand what makes him so bad to her. His stoic attitude at the outset is one of listening, he endured the insults and personal attacks without flinching, he just accepts the irrationality of his wife. He even displayed a rather generous gesture when he decided to put aside his own grief to deal fully with the much more difficult for his wife. Stupid decision, it means, what therapist would treat his wife in a situation as difficult, involving them both equally, but this is one of the few mistakes we can charge him. She, however, eventually embody everything she wanted in her thesis report on witchcraft, that is to say, this vision of the woman hysterical, irrational, head of evil, the antichrist whereof (as opposed to moreover, with the Christ figure in what was Emily Watson Breaking the Waves ).
There would be ironic, Von Trier has fun with these pictures just to denounce them. Personally, there is irony or not, I feel completely overwhelmed the discourse: he is trying to convince me that women are evil, or it's wrong to say that the woman is Evil, I think it's been a few decades we are rehashing these ideas. The irony, anyway, I hardly feel (but I guess it is there, as Von Trier Von Trier). Absolutely True example tells us that the codes are grotesque horror film purposely, just to put us at a distance, yet to me they are ridiculous, period. The film is structured in three acts, but he might well have stopped after the first, the two others being variations (thin) on the same theme. Ditto for codes of horror: the music down, the violence, the sequences dream, everything is too front to be efficient. The scene where she hears a cry unknown for example, believing it to his son in distress, is strangely built a sound point of view, the shout is located in the center, as behind the screen, that from the outset we made it clear that this is a hallucination. The scene is long and the cry is always centered at the same noise when it runs in all directions, the scene loses its interest when we understood since, within seconds, there is hallucination, the director does we need more son playing the show in silence, but he will anyway. We can not even share the distress of it because it's so obvious that she hallucinates, his frantic search eventually leave us indifferent. It's a little diagram of the entire film, repetition of ideas and effects that supported the long and exhausting indifferent.
The last act, therefore, seems quite unnecessary and truly pornographic. The violence comes only repeat once more what we hear anyway from the beginning, the monster is released and gives reason for all the talk about which it is supposed irony. There is no reflection on the violence, it is just for effect, for finally doing this horror film. I am fond of this movie, gore and extreme movie, I'm not at my first leg pierced by a crankshaft (you will tell me that after all these texts on abjection and the representation of violence I'm not very consistent - I will return safely). In Antichrist yet shocking violence, not by its excesses, but because it's only there to shock, to show off ostentatiously. Asian films extremes of recent years also offer such violence exhibitionist, whose purpose is to cause as much, but everything has gone back on entertainment in a fun sort of contest of who can be more devious and imaginative in sprawl of this violence. It does not serve a speech she did not symbolic, it exists only for itself. Violence Antichrist used primarily to transcribe into action the ideas previously supported in words, a kind of reification of discourse on women, which makes the blow quite unnecessary as fundamentally repetitive. It is a way to completely insert the nail clubbed disproportionate. Certainly, it is left stunned and disgusted. The problem is in function: it does not bother me they are trying to disgust me just for the pleasure of being disgusted, it's harder to accept when violence was a function can not assume, by his symbolic role (redundant) which borders on the ridiculous (especially since the speech is stale). The last sentence of her (and the movie I think) is something like: "None of This Is" any use at all ", as AO Scott is quite the impression I got out of the projection .
Across Von Trier has reiterated that this film was written during a depression, it is a sort of cure or outlet for the author. One would think in this case that violence is cathartic, or it tends to sublime Burke and Kant, as some images also might suggest, by their representation of a terrifying nature. However, as Von Trier refuses this view, violence is not liberating, it only serves to press again even more despair. The author notes here image (successful elsewhere, such as there are many, the film is not a total disaster) of a plant that He offers it as condolences. Von Trier will zoom on the roots and dirty muddy water of the vase rather than the flowers themselves, he points to the horror of the bottom which supports Venustic top, a little like David Lynch who returns his camera underground at the beginning of Blue Velvet . There is the whole film project, and also its limits: not only point to the ugly, we forget the existence of beauty, which nevertheless serve to enhance the quality of ugly. That is to say that for us to share a despair, or that of his characters, the filmmaker should not shoot the ground, it must also leave us a glimpse of the sky, if only for the veil soon. Like any good suspense, it is necessary that the character has a chance of escape, otherwise the tension dies because his fate is already set, it also here: as we realized in minutes that von Trier is interested only muddy roots, everything that follows becomes uninteresting, it only becomes a festival of overbidding. Moreover, mixing like that a film about despair and a discourse on women as a source of evil, it gives the impression teenager that the author has just been royally dumped by a chick and he wants revenge against the fairer sex in full force ...
More seriously, the dedication to Tarkovsky, frankly ironic it shows both the poverty of speech Von Trier, contrasting with his cynical pessimism that most human of Russian film: in fact, von Trier takes Tarkovsky down. "Nature is Satan's Church" is the antithesis of the whole work of Tarkosvki, for whom nature is God's work, since it is often a source of purification, rebirth and redemption, state absent the whole work Von Trier (though sometimes evokes them, but never without his eternal irony). The plan Antichrist most similar to Tarkovsky is when He stands in tall grass, almost motionless, a gentle wind which thrilled the greenery, and the rain falls suddenly, almost silent. Visually, we are close to Tarkovsky, but symbolically, we are the opposite: the Russian director, the rain comes to wash, it is a source of redemption. At the end of Stalker example, when men abandon their project so close, the rain falls in the building open for cleanse them of their despair, redemption will be offered in the following epilogue. When water falls on him in Antichrist, on the contrary, the feeling of despair is increased, the rain is threatening, it is a premise for a storm (if I remember correctly, the last image before the third chapter before the Apocalypse).
This anti-Tarkovsky makes us understand what is wrong Antichrist, as noted in the text it, but as an aside, as if it were unimportant. Tarkovsky, unlike von Trier, including the Bible and its symbols, he can use them in all their depths, while Von Trier instead relying solely platitudes, obvious that the figures merely reverse (Eden as film horror) or simply evoke mythologise to his psychological drama. The woman thus far is described as the source of evil than as a creative force. This reflection on the creation of cycle life and death, is still more interesting than the simple sociological observation of the dichotomy male / female. From the opening scene, Von Trier linking sex and death, it will take until the female genital finals. There is therefore a Puritanism (male) criticized, especially when she refuses him sex that she needs to express. He forces the discharge, which eventually explode in one of the strongest scenes first, then she asks him to hit her when they finally make love, then in the grand finale Then, however, violence tends to diminish the importance of earlier times, most newspapers and, in my opinion, most addictive, hence also the inadequacy of such violence, making obsolete the foregoing. Von Trier, of course, has nothing the Puritan (although his pessimism is entirely Protestant), while visually it passes all the taboos, penetration and cutting in close-ups, he pushes back by the very form of his film that sexual repression (sexuality obviously being associated with woman, which is blamed for the death of their son since he died while they were making love). That is, at the same time giving back to the woman's importance as a designer and in this sense it is superior to man, or at least more critical. The woman, in Antichrist, is Nature, the chthonic forces and irrational, what the author well remark here, seeing it as a tribute to the woman, while yet it is this vision of woman as witch-Von Trier tends to want to criticize. But there is actually ambiguous as it seems also true that he prefers the path of the irrational woman psychologizing discourse of man, he wants to remind us of our animal nature and primary, all that we share with our Nature mother. There is perhaps a closer relationship with Tarkosvki but the focus is very different: for Russian, irrational side of Nature is not synonymous with violence and bestiality, but rather the expression a spiritual entity that is beyond us and includes us, that we may call God or not, distress or we may even hurt us, yes, but never to the point of destruction. I imagine that von Trier wants to criticize the image of woman as witch-source-of-evil while trying to appreciate what is subtended by the image, that is to say that the appearance unreasonableness be quite decadent vision of the filmmaker, hence the confusion about the misogyny of the film possible. Especially since it must be remembered, original sin is transmitted at birth, so the woman in childbirth sends evil, the two poles are shareholders. Again, it is critical that Von Trier or the image he endorses?
However, I can hardly believe that von Trier has knowingly made a movie so stupidly misogynistic (woman = evil), I think he wants to criticize these images of women that come from the Bible, but the irony is not so obvious: the prologue, for example, True said he absolutely was photographed just as well for us mean that von Trier takes his distance, as seems to me a deep and kitsch unjustified. It's not that black and white advertising and idle emphatic is also mounting Parallel ridiculous (with a dryer, no less!) and the cheap melodrama of the situation. Total irony or bad taste? Hard to say, especially since von Trier has already indulged in something aesthetic mannerism. It makes me think, well, my creative writing teacher at CEGEP (a reference!) Who told me after the session that if I let my somewhat pervasive irony, perhaps I'd end up saying something ... Something like that Antichrist: Often a great formal beauty, but in the service of ideas brought a confused college students in a bric-a-brac of references more or less mastered the hell we are trying to cover under the excuse of irony (and perhaps also the dream, the film wanting to be more metaphorical, mythological than realistic ).
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