Lars von Trier’s censor terrorising, award winning 2009
horror film Antichrist was the first
film I saw from the Danish art house Director and its beauty, graphic violence
and almost pornographic visuals left me stunned for days. For the last couple
of years I’ve been trying to get my girlfriend (who disliked Melancholia more than I did) to watch
it, in part because I knew it would disgust her. Much to my relief it did. Antichrist is one of the most violent
and certainly the most sexually explicit film I’ve ever seen but it isn’t
simply a trashy exploitation Tits & Guts horror, it is a well crafted,
beautifully made and deeply traumatic horror film.
Antichrist begins
with a prologue featuring a married couple who are never named (Willem Defoe
& Charlotte Gainsbourg) making love in super slow motion. The scene is
filmed in black and white and using a camera capable of capturing a thousand
frames a second. While the couple pound away their young son climbs out of his
cot and heads towards an open window before falling to his death. The couple
enter into the grieving process in very different ways with the husband taking
a clinical approach while the wife spirals deeper and deeper into depression. The
film is divided into chapters which mirror Gainsbourg’s emotional state with
Grief being followed by Pain and Despair. The couple make the decision to
relocate to a cabin in the woods but the wife’s emotional state takes a dark
and bloody turn for the worst.
