What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre.
ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009)
Released on Criterion Blu-ray 11/09/2010; Spine #542
Overgrown, flowering,
With incense and weeds
And the cruel noise
Of dirty flies.”
-A Season In Hell, Arthur Rimbaud
Man succumbs to the deviltry of his antithesis, his masculinity replaced by emotional impotency, both victim and abuser of Mother Nature. Lars von Trier’s season in hell exorcizes his own personal demons through the dark glassily; the nameless characters avatars of human conceit, both lost amid their own secret gardens.
The film begins in a monochrome snowfall, the couple making love while their son tumbles like spun clothes. Cut to color and a month later where the woman is hospitalized in a deep depression and her husband is revealed to be a psychologist, a man who seems cold like a hard rain and just as expressionless. He begins aversion therapy with his wife, discovering her atypical fear and confronting it, his relentless ego a brooding shadow upon her senses. She is inexplicably afraid of their summer cottage named Eden, where the previous summer she gave up working on her thesis about the Salem witch hunts. He forces her to confront each aspect of this wicked landscape and it soon subsumes her…and him.
Trier’s maddening narrative remains elusive in meaning and ripe in interpretation: is she suffering from the trauma of her lost son? Does she become possessed by some feminine malignancy represented by Nature? Cause and effect has been erased and reversed blurring the lines between external horror and internal conflict: in this storm only chaos reigns (rains). We begin to suspect that she has loathed her husband for some time, and had begun torturing their son the summer before. In a revisionist flashback, we see her cruel eyes focus upon their son moments before his fall from grace as if she could have saved him…but chose not to. Her passion has transformed into hatred, and sex becomes a violent weapon whose edge cuts both ways.
The lush cinematography imbues this world with a vibrant realism underscored by a damnable crescendo of entropy. The violence is brutal and anarchic, the comfortless man suffering the trials of 17th century women while his wife becomes tormentor. Their roles reversed, she is consumed by her masochistic behavior while his lament blossoms into a spiritual awakening: he is finally embraced by the ghosts of woman past, and becomes a daughter of the dust.
Final Grade: (B+)
To toss my own hat in the ring of this guest review, here is my take on Antichrist.
*************
About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.
2 comments:
Rather unrelated to this post, but I thought I'd share...You know you married the right girl, when for an anniversary gift she buys you Criterion's BBS box set on blu-ray.
Yes you did.
Post a Comment