Fantastic Fest ’09 Review: Antichrist (2009)
Studio: IFC Films
Directed By: Lars von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Review By: Kayley Viteo

Reviewing this film is like trying to fathom something you know you can’t possibly understand. Just when I felt like I was getting a handle on what the film was saying or doing, I would encounter yet another image or sound that made me rethink myself. That is, in essence, what I love about Antichrist – it is simultaneously baffling and addicting, intriguing and disgusting. I would caution readers that if you haven’t seen the movie yet, there may be inadvertent spoilers here.

Antichrist features only two actors, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who play a nameless couple reeling from the death of their small child who accidentally falls out of a window whilst the two of them are having sex. Divided into four chapters and bookended by monochromatic and virtually silent (the only sound is the score) prologue and epilogue, Antichrist, at least at face value, appears to be a film about the nature of grief and how it affects a relationship. The film is best described as psychological horror, although certainly not all the horrific elements of the film are solely psychological. Yet everything about it is somehow haunting and strangely provocative, even when the torture becomes as physical as it is mental.

There is nothing about Antichrist that is easy. Walking out of the theater, I struggled to grasp the meaning of the final frames simply because I was baffled by it. I didn’t need the meaning to make the movie any more worthwhile of an experience – a film doesn’t have to have a meaning to be enjoyed, at least not for me – but I really did want to figure out if those final frames were trying to evoke some sort of final truth. What I decided is that Antichrist is not a film meant to be understood in any sort of traditional way. It isn’t about objectivity or telling a straightforward story, rather the opposite – the truth is in the process of viewing it, in how viewers subjectively respond to it. For me, I enjoyed the process. Sure, the film is, at times, insanely difficult to watch; but, it is also gorgeous, haunting and passionate. Gainsbourg is achingly beautiful, but also scary in an extreme, but realistic, role. Dafoe is a perfect counterbalance as the logical psychiatrist husband, who foolishly thinks he can heal his wife’s problems, which are far more difficult than he thinks.

To me, the film is a complex portrayal of a man and a woman, the mystery of nature and the logic of science, sex and how all of these factors create a wilderness easy to get lost in. Perhaps that’s why I love Antichrist – it acknowledges, and recreates, the complexities of these relationships on screen in an unrepentant and brutal manner (in a variety of ways), which seems the most truthful way to portray them.

Seeing Antichrist is an experience. I can’t say I loved it, but I did enjoy getting lost for a little while in von Trier’s scary imagination – even if one scene in particular haunts my mind for the foreseeable future.