Lars von Trier, maker of calculating horror comedies, is a shrewd showman -- if not exactly in the classic Hollywood tradition then at least in the Barnum & Bailey one. He pleases his audiences by teasing, taunting and testing them, keeping his tongue in his cheek. I picture him as a dancing, grinning little prankster on the fringes of world cinema, alternately flaunting a streak of astringent sadism and hiding for safety behind a shield of facetiousness.
He's also, in "Antichrist" particularly, a thudding literalist whose mock-academic ideas and images are so over-rationalized and in-your-face that (like the mysterious cry of a baby placed too far forward in the sound mix to be haunting or ambiguous) they don't have much room to resonate. When they ought to be harrowing, they're obvious and over-explained, which cuts them off from genuine emotion or experience. Nevertheless, "Antichrist" is a serviceable, sometimes atmospheric horror movie, until the last chapter-and-a-half when it just goes flat. By then it's already gotten a little too much of a charge out of commenting on its own giddy morbidity, and whether the audience is laughing at it or with it doesn't matter. Either way, the laughter is dismissive.
It's overtly patterned after a masterpiece ("Don't Look Now"), and the child who dies while his parents, He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), are making love is named Nic, same as the director of that film, Nicolas Roeg. (The picture itself is dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky for reasons I do not pretend to understand.) The comparison to Roeg's film is illuminating: Both begin with a prologue in which the child dies; both involve the bereaved parents, in hopes of healing, traveling to a getaway location (Venice in the former; an "Evil Dead" cabin in some uncommonly oak-y Pacific Northwest woods in the latter) while still in a haze of grief. But the precipitating child-death in "DLN" is both heart-pounding and heart-wrenching; in "Antichrist" it's a black-and-white pornographic Thomas Kinkade fantasy. The famously explicit sex scene in "DLN" is an expression of loss and grief, emotionally raw; in "Antichrist" the sex includes a close-up of penetration in the shower, but is devoid of emotion -- just a mechanical set-up that expresses nothing about the relationship between the generic He and She.
If "Antichrist" is an exceptionally disappointing horror picture (like so many, it goes flaccid in the final act, when the nature of the threat becomes specific and concrete), it's only because, at first, it actually seems to have a few ideas rolling around in its horned little head. There's tension between He and She (I can't help thinking of Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss when using those designations): He, a psychiatrist, ostensibly tries to help Her (re, She) deal with her "atypical grief pattern" by taking her back to Eden, the woodland retreat where she and their son had gone one summer so that She could work on her thesis on genocide, a history of violent persecution of women. His goal: to get her to face, and overcome, her worst fears. Or is it? The passage after the child's death and before they leave for Eden is the darkest and most intriguing part of the picture -- and the most horrific because it is so fraught with inchoate emotions of loss, love and hostility.
You would think that a couple who had just lost their only son would have already had to face their worst fear, but no. Soon we've nearly forgotten all about Nic and are dealing with bigger stuff, like whether nature is satan's church and all women are evil. Apparently She's grief has fused with her fear and she has displaced it onto something else. Nature? Satan? The Evil That Women Do? Herself? She resents and resists what she feels is He's smug authority over her. He goads her toward a kind of healing, which proves to be somewhat effective, but denies her the curative comfort and closeness of sex at a most crucial time in their marriage. Why? Because you aren't supposed to screw your therapist. Yes, and as a therapist you aren't supposed to treat your wife? The dynamics between He and She simply become irrelevant as the movie goes horrorshow in the forest, laboriously setting the stage for the entrances of its omens, the Three Beggars (of Doom): Grief, Pain and Despair, which are presented like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse except that there's no horse and one is a deer, one's a fox and one's a crow.
Nature is anthropomorphized (animals symbolize human emotions) and human evil (humans are the only creatures capable of evil) are projected into it, so that "human nature" can be conflated with nature-nature (aka "satan's church"). All of this fails to be realized in movie terms (ticks and acorns don't do it), and is soon abandoned altogether. "Antichrist" plays with evil, but displays no conception of it, or why She (or He, for that matter) would become an embodiment of it. The movie's dreaded third sign is called "Despair," symbolized by a buried crow. But Von Trier can't approach the void that is Despair, because he's too hung up on Meaning to apprehend the lack of it. The void is not evil. The void is not personal. The void is indifferent. That's why they call it the void.
It soon becomes abundantly clear that "Antichrist" is not content to imply or suggest anything that it can't nail down right in front of you. I'm not going to reveal any of the movie's grotesque special effects (if you've read anything about the Cannes reception you probably already know too much) except to say that, when it comes to gruesome images of torture and sexual mutilation "Antichrist"'s got nothing on the so-called Asian Extreme films that we've seen in the past few decades. In its desperation to deliver something Shocking and Artistic (or, at least, commercially exploitable), the movie toys with depictions of genital mutilation in the manner of Nagisa Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses" that were scandalous back in 1976. But here the whacking off is gratuitous in all the wrong ways, inserted to provide hollow, artificial climaxes in a movie that has nowhere to go. Provocateur/schoolmarm Von Trier, switching tones between the disingenuous and the seriously engaged, will risk making a bad movie, but even the good ones have the whiff of the science lab about them. As the man in the lab coat, he won't risk putting himself "out there," and as a consequences his film has no soul, nothing in danger of being lost.
I mentioned the cry of the child in the forest that seems to embody the kinds of decisions that cause the film to fail. She runs about, trying to figure out where it's coming from, but it never sounds like it's coming from anywhere. It's not something that might be mistaken for the cry of an animal (a fox, for instance?) -- something She may have misinterpreted in her imagination. And it's not coming from one place in the forest, or perhaps another, due to shifting winds or echoes. It's just right up front in the mix, flat and obvious, playing over the whole scene. OK, we know it's coming from inside her own head (particularly when she finds Nic and we can see he's not the source), but such an audible hallucination -- in broad daylight, as it were -- isn't very creepy or imaginative. (A few horror movies, in addition to Roeg's "Don't Look Now," that take parents deeper into the abyss: Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby," Philip Noyce's "Dead Calm," Neil Marshall's "The Descent," and/or Steven Spielberg's scary 1972 TV movie, "Something Evil," with Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin.)
I don't understand the haters or the hailers of "Antichrist." Because I've never been inclined to take Von Trier seriously as a "major" director (though I've appreciated some of his work, he strikes me as more of a gremlin¹ than an artist), it's hard for me to see this film as a catastrophe. And it's not ambitious or accomplished enough to be anything more than a mediocre genre movie. That in itself is disappointing. I wish I could find more to get worked up about.
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¹ Dictionary definition #2: "A maker of mischief."
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UPDATE (10/6/09): Ebert blog post on "Antichrist from Cannes that I had not read until just now:
Von Trier's film goes beyond malevolence into the monstrous. Never before have a man and woman inflicted more pain upon each other in a movie. We looked in disbelief. There were piteous groans. Sometimes a voice would cry out, "No!" At certain moments there was nervous laughter. When it was all over, we staggered up the aisles. Manohla Dargis, the merry film critic of The New York Times, confided that she left softly singing "That's Entertainment!"Whether this is a bad, good or great film is entirely beside the point. It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. It's been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell. This is the most despairing film I've ever have seen.
"Gremlin"? C'mon, Jim. He may paint with ridiculously broad strokes sometimes, and such broadness tends to sabotage his work, but he's got more artistic brio in his left pinky than most of the Hollywood/Sundance hacks have in their whole bodies.
As for "Antichrist" I'll have to wait until the 16th to see if I agree with you or not.
JE: Would you prefer "provocateur"? The definition of "gremlin" I'm using is: "Maker of mischief." That certainly does not preclude brio.
I think it's a beautiful film, but that's all I'm willing to comment on with any certainty.
Jim, the article on Antichrist in this month's Film Comment is pretty insightful.
"Provocateur" works for me.
I have to admit that he does *look* rather like a gremlin!
My sentiments exactly. I was actually enjoying much of the first and second act of the film, despite some seriously obvious metaphors being thrown about, because of its similarities to other films I admire like DLN, and Blue Velvet, and The Shining.
But from that millstone scene on it seemed like von Trier lost his way. And in response, he overcompensated, relying on shock tactics to disguise his own befuddlement. It really ended up being more disappointing than an outright failure.
I admit that I got bored and didn't make it all the way through Antichrist. I had seen Dogma before and felt kind of scummy afterward, so I watched Dancer in the Dark to see if that would be any different. I really liked it at first, but as it went on and Bjork's character made the progression from quirky and sympathetic to horrifyingly contrived sacrificial lamb, I realized that von Trier is the only director who has been able to make me feel sorry for trying to watch his films, every single time.
I'm ashamed to admit that I only recently discovered Roman Polanski. The contrast is... evident. I've seen nine of Polanski's films in the course of about a week and a half, and they range from interesting at worst to incredible at best. As a budding enthusiast, it's hard to sit still for the von Triers of the world when there's so much good stuff out there that you haven't even discovered yet.
This is a comment to your review of Antichrist. I comment here because Apparently it´s not possible to comment in the entry you made about Antichrist.
Hi Jim
First of all let me say that I completely disagree with you about Antichrist and Lars von Trier. I think he is one of the mayor filmmakers working in the world today and Antichrist is his most powerfull work to date. But I can understand you. Lars von Trier walks such a tight rope between the powerfull and the silly, that I can understand why he leaves some people cold. I can't understand the haters though.
Also you call von Trier a prankster and he no doubt has fashioned himself that way, but he is also a person who is painfully earnest. Maybe that side of him is not that known outside Denmark, but as far as I know him, from interviews and books a have read about him he really puts himself "out there" in Antichrist. Maybe you did not feel it, but I can tell you that I did feel that he put himself out there.
What I can't understand is how you can overlook his commans of tone and technique. The moods and horrors he evoke in this movie are amazing and terrifying.
Last but not least, this is one of the best blogs about film around and I enjoy reading it every day.
JE: Thank you, Mads. A gremlin (or satan) turned off comments here for a while so I took the liberty of re-posting yours where you originally intended. I do think there are some wonderful atmospheric touches in the film, though I think the most effective, promising and terrifying part of it comes early in the first chapter, when She is deep in her grief and He is trying to get to the root of it -- before they go to Eden. I just don't think the film handles the horror or "supernatural" elements effectively (even if you read them as psychological rather than occult phenomena) for the reasons I described (the handling is too heavy-handed), and because I don't see how they correlate thematicaly to what's happening with the characters. (What is "chaos reigns" meant to signify, coming from a symbol of Pain, for example?) But if you have a reading of the film you'd like to present, I would be very interested in reading what you have to say. I'm open to other readings and defenses I may not have considered.
I don't think von Trier is either a masterful artist or a gremlin, I think he is a potentially brilliant man clouded by his own eccentricities, phobias, and general mental unease. An artist who gets blocked by his own shortcomings, rather than embracing them, can very rarely reach greatness, dontcha think?
From what I've seen, he's worked on some terrible films (Dogville, Antichrist) some that are very very good (The Idiots), some in between (Element of Crime, Dear Wendy), and one that stands among the finest films ever made (Europa). In my observation, his potential is much, much higher than what is usually achieved.
Thoughts on Antichrist:
Without the benefit of knowing his earlier work, Antichrist may appear like the biggest “art-house fart” ever pulled. But fans of the director must know how aware he is of artistic convention. When he bathes his prologue in perfume commercial black-and-white, or has the nerve to include an animal that talks in obtuse riddles (“chaos reigns!”), you can either assume he sees the very fine line he’s walking, or not.
But of course he does. The problem is not that he takes artistry and symbolism too far, he just takes it too seriously. Antichrist is utterly, utterly humorless, bone-dry, and no truly great art can be a black hole, sucking every drop of zeal from life.
He presents us with two characters who have managed to get married and conceive a child despite looking like they’ve never experienced a moment of joy in their lives. After their baby falls from a window and dies in the opening scene, they tumble into a kind of depression that only exists in the movies. In real life, these people would either dismantle their lives and start again, or be destroyed. They continue on in a nonsensical middle-ground, a stupor of grief, just because, we can assume, von Trier has even more horrors in store for them.
Antichrist might have worked as a genre film, not unlike Cronenberg’s History of Violence or David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express. Both were entertaining works from directors of high artistic reputation, and in rare moments, von Trier comes close to making The Exorcist for 2009. But in truly anti-commercial fashion, his movie has characters no one will care about, a plot with no structure, and suspense with only physical consequence. It’s a well-made slog, Bergman with genital mutilation. Making art is not as abysmal a process as many "artistic" directors would have you believe.
You know, I loved Dancer in the Dark.
I haven't seen it in a while, but I was moved. Of course, the film was manipulative in a fairly extreme way. But I didn't mind. The repeated use of The Sound of Music of all things to show its central character's attempt to disassociate herself from her harsh, brutal "reality" helped to establish that this was a film that made no apologies and that didn't attempt to be about the world os much as an extreme, caricatured version of it; she tries to make it way too happy, the world makes it way too sad for her. I can understanding the sacrificial lamb stuff not working for others, but it gutted me.
And it has a happy ending, right? Her son gets to see.
Whether or not I see Anti-Christ, or any other von Trier, is another story.
I haven't seen the movie, but I've read a lot about it, and one thing that has interested me (maybe even annoyed me a little) is how thoroughly the movie has been debated, yet how little it has been described.
Despite descriptions of some key, and rather grotesque, scenes, I can't think of another movie which has produced so much that means nothing to a non-viewer.
Neglectful (?) parents lose baby, go to cabin, gets worse from there.
But what happens? What is the minute to minute action of the movie? Is it just two people yelling at each other or otherwise abusing each other? Or is it a quiet movie that takes time to drink in its allegedly surreal imagery?
After most descriptions I read, I think "Well, there's 30 minutes?" Where do 109 minutes come from?
"I had seen Dogma before and felt kind of scummy afterward, "
The Kevin Smith film?
Seriously, Lars Von Trier has not made a film called "Dogma".
A liberal - film critic, filmmaker, or otherwise never dismisses the verbiage of cinema, Von Trier - specifically as a disguise for pronography, for there is no real pornography other than the real world (not the TV show, the actual experience). Von Trier is a satirist no more, no less. Antichrist specifically is a series of puns on anti-feminist rants. I actually think he's a bit soft on the concept, not as tactile as say a Dogville or a Breaking the Waves, but I believe in severity, especially when it comes to movies. That's why I consider a Jennifer's Body to be far more damaging to the collectve human psyche than anything Von Trier has ever contemplated, because it glosses over what could have been a scathing indictment of female sexual politics.
Antichrist in the final reels is a horror movie - of a sort, the way Tootsie is a horror film (in that it shows a not-terribly-attractive man dressing up as a not-terribly-attractive nay, fugly woman). Eh, what're you gonna do? How 'bout just let the man tell his story and walk away from the damned thing when he's done? Nope. Can't have that.
I have not yet seen "AntiChrist" but I am a huge Lars von Trier fan (I think that "Dogville" is one of the greatest films to come along in the 21st century thus far). I will, no doubt, see it when it comes out on DVD but I am curious, since you say in your response to Mads' blog comment that you are "open to other readings and defenses I may have not considered," as to what you think of Roger Ebert's Cannes (and Toronto) review of the film (which was, for the most part, favorable). I understand that you are the editor of his website and I wonder if the publication on your brother-blog site would cause dissent? Probably not considering he and Siskel got along pretty well despite their uproarious disputes over movies. I don't know, maybe I'm just curious to see what the debate might look like between two so disparately aimed critics (he seems to be far more sentimental and populist--not at all an insult; and you seem to be more of a theoritician, a film critic with a greater emphasis on HOW the film is made rather than what the film is about). Hmm... just food for thought, I know that it didn't work last year when angry bloggers wanted to see you face off against Ebert over your negative reviews of TDK and his positive review... If not here with AntiChrist, then where? I want some DEBATE! HA
JE: Roger and I frequently disagree about movies -- like any two critics (or human beings). As for debate, all you have to do to create one is to read what one critic has to say and then read another. I'm eager to read Roger's review when "Antichrist" opens to learn more about how he sees it. For those who haven't read his piece yet, here's a link and an excerpt:
Ebert's full piece here: http://bit.ly/5kvSz
P.S. I just discovered that I had not yet read Roger's first Cannes piece on "Antichrist" (I was on vacation when he filed it). Here's a really good, provocative paragraph:
Ebert's FIRST piece from Cannes here: http://bit.ly/PaFoS
I, too, find myself put of by Von Trier and I haven't even seen one movie of his. Now THAT'S a provocateur.
That said, I recommend this alternative view:
http://darwingoestothemovies.blogspot.com/2009/09/antichrist-2009-dir-lars-von-trier.html
Not my blog, and I make no money for this shill. Film reviews in a Darwinian perspective. His take on Straw Dogs has me revisiting my impression of that film.
Though (as previously stated) I've yet to see "Antichrist", I have a pretty good idea of how I'll react to it. Von Trier's films tend to operate on my frequency, if that makes any sense, and my Catholic upbringing will probably color my interpretation of the symbolism that you (perhaps rightfully!) find overstated. No matter how I react to the film, I look forward to taking part in the discussion that will unfold on here!
I'm just curious if you still think highly of Von Trier's 'Breaking the Waves'. I know that film was on your top 10 list of 1996 and I'm somewhat surprised to now hear you say that you don't take Von Trier seriously as a 'major' director. You do say that you admire some of his films but in my mind, #3 or 4 on a top 10 list would inspire more love and excitement than simple admiration.
I personally love Breaking the Waves. Just curious if your opinion of the film has gone down in the last 13 years.
JE: I think Von Trier is (as I said) an interesting gadfly, but I've never placed him in the top ranks of contemporary filmmakers. I saw "Breaking the Waves" once when it was first released. I hadn't been impressed with "Zentropa," and this seemed like a breakthrough, a promise of great things to come. I still think it and "Dogville" are the most impressive of the Von Trier films I've seen, but that doesn't mean I think he's a major league artist. That last shot of "Breaking the Waves" is breathtaking... but is it a moment of transcendent spirituality or insanity or a joke or flip-off to the audience or all of the above? His following films have made me feel that I was reading (or feeling) too much into "Breaking the Waves" -- or, at least, that I misunderstood what the film was doing. I may have been so wowed by the impenetrability of that ending that I put it on my list while I was still under the spell of the film. If I'd had a few more weeks, I probably wouldn't have rated it so highly; I've found his films don't stay with me for very long. Still, I should try to see it again. I'd be interested to know more about how you it. To be sure, audaciousness and iconoclasm are values to be prized in any artist. Von Trier's sensibility, though, just leaves me cold, and I've never found him profound. Earnest or facetious, I don't put much stock (or trust) in his work.
Apropos of the debate that I want to see between you and Roger, you say that "all you have to do to create one is to read what one critic has to say and then read another." And, well, I've done that. I understand that you guys see things differently but I want a DEBATE -- an interchange between two trustworthy critics who see things differently on an issue (a la when you and Rosenbaum intellectually dueled over the bravado/hollowness of "No Country for Old Men"). I don't suppose it has to happen here with Von Trier's film but I think it would be enlightening to see it go down somewhere, sometime, over some film you guys are split on...
JE: Yeah, I understand. In this case, though, we see the film so differently (and personally) that I'm not sure we wouldn't just be talking right past each other. In some ways it reminds me of some exchanges I had with people who love "Speed Racer." I saw a calculating, cynical commercial ploy; others saw a genuine, heartwarming innocence in the same film. We were all interpreting tone, and that's something that's hard to debate!
"...it's not ambitious or accomplished enough to be anything more than a mediocre genre movie." A fellow who posted on my own blog noted that it was actually more of a ripoff of "Evil Dead" than anything else.
I wonder if von Trier has ever taken the stance I've seen common to some artists who take themselves way too seriously: they keep themselves deliberately ignorant about popular culture to avoid being "contaminated" by it, or something along those lines. If that's true for him, then he really did himself a disservice by making what would seem to amount to a copy of a number of different genre movies. When you know what's out there, you know what works and what doesn't, and you have that much better an idea of what not to do and why.
I plan on seeing it myself, but I suspect my reaction is going to be along the lines of what Andrew Sarris once said about Stanley Kubrick around the time he made "2001": "Kubrick's tragedy may have been that he was hailed at a great artist before he had become a competent craftsman."
Fair enough. I just remember really appreciating your ability to knock Rosenbaum on his ass when it came to "No Country For Old Men." I don't pick sides--and, in fact, I am highly appreciative of J.R.'s film criticism (esp. concerning the films of Bela Tarr and Carl Th. Dreyer)--, but when you're right you are right and Rosenbaum was WRONG. He was so wrong about that film and in so many respects. Some times I don't think he cares to READ a film--something I find you more than competent with in every blog and review! I haven't seen "AntiChrist" yet but I am such a big fan of "Breaking the Waves" and "Dogville" that I can't wait. I would agree that von Trier is a provocateur but then again aren't most of the post-modernist directors? It seems that you appreciate the quotesy-ness of Tarantino or maybe just his formal prowess. I think that Von Trier is more of a risk taker than Tarantino and I think that such a claim is axiomatic when you come to see "Breaking the Waves" for what it really is--a social critique but also a menacing, loose reworking of Carl Th. Dreyer's "Ordet," with a very unique dialectic visual approach (the dichotomy of the static God's-eye-view versus the wobbly, subjective handicam coverage of Bess McNeil and her sexcapades in the name of marriage and TRUE spousal committment and LOVE). Just as well, "Dogville" is a film that is also a huge risk to take, esp. considering that it is an AMERICAN film. For me, it's probably the most anti-American film I have ever seen but that's not why I appreciate it. I appreciate, once again, his visual lingo which is so in-your-face that you can't deny its power (even if it's an assault): his bare (sound-stage) set is another God's-eye-view objective detail where dramatic irony has never (I repeat: NEVER!) been so cleverly assembled and executed !!! I guess the debate might exist between you and I if not between you and Ebert (haha). So, come back with right hook, Jim... because for the aforementioned reasons ("Breaking the Waves" and "Dogville"), I DO put stock (and trust) in Von Trier's work. :)
This may be oversimplifying things, but what keeps Von Trier from being a major artist is that he is, at heart, more interested in melodrama than drama. There are lots of things I like about Dancer and Dogville, but screenplay would be at the very, very bottom of the list: for the contrivances, for the too-obvious symbolism, for the cheap morals, and especially for the language, which fails to rise above any of it.
Has he directed screenplays not written by himself? Because that might prompt him to do better work.
By William B "And it has a happy ending, right? Her son gets to see." Yes, but she also didn't need to die. What enrages me about this film is that Bjork's character could have had her cake and eaten it too. She could have saved her son, and lived; albeit spending the rest of her life in prison. All she had to do was spak up. She didn't, not for any reason of honour, but because IMO she was a pawn used by Von Trier to shock and outrage the audience.
I can't stand Von Trier and Dancer in the Dark is a major reason why. It seems to me, and why I can't regard him as anything but a minor artist (all filmmakers are ultimately artists) is that he exists only to shock and outrage the audience. While other, vastly superior, filmmakers were also into shock, they at least offered something in return. They wanted to enlighten/emotionally transform/stun the audience into action etc... Von Trier doesn't care what the audience does with his films. He'not interested in reciprocation and doesn't seem to me to care about either his character or plots, except as tools in his quest to be the 'bad boy.' Roger Ebert wrote a review of Blue Velvet in which he criticised the treatment of Isabella Rosellina. While I disagreed with the criticism in the case of Blue Velvet, I think that it applies absolutely to the films of Von Trier, such as Dancer in the Dark. Unlike Blue Velvet (which has interesting things to say on matters of voyerism, the nature of good and evil and perversity), I don't think Von Trier's films say anything at all, certainly not intellectually, and not emotionally either; for the emotion that is produced is arguably cheap. He just wants to get a rise out of the audience, and doesn't care whether the 'emotion' is brought out sincerely and whether or not.
His aeshetic is also IMO extremely unattractive, and while not every great director is a wonderful visualist (Eastwood for one), Von Trier doesn't even make an effort. The less said about his camerawork the better....
Love that photo from Antichrist for a number of reasons, one in particular. If al the imagery in the film is that good, I might just watch on DVD with the sound off.
By the way, I think your review of "Fight Club" is spot on. The others, including Roger, completely missed the point.