Antichrist (2009)
Country: DK/GER/SW/IT/FR/POL
Technical: col/bw/2.35:1 104m
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Synopsis:
A woman working on a thesis about violence done against women down the ages and her psychiatrist husband decamp to the woods after the tragic death of their young son. As he attempts to cure her of her fears and grief she gradually tips into insanity.
Review:
The director's essays in 'épater les bourgeois' become ever more desperate and taboo-breaking. Here we have slow-motion penetrative sex, masturbation in abundance and a self-administered cliterectomy with a pair of scissors... At the same time a strong undercurrent of mysticism or transcendentalism pervades the film, notably in the appearances of the Three Beggars in various guises, as if guiding events. The final scene in which dozens of faceless women ascend a wooded hill towards Dafoe, what with that actor's back catalogue, surely evokes the Sermon on the Mount and is not the only piece of abused Christian imagery used to strike further horror into the film's potential audience. Whether all the psycho-babble and case history stuff, with all the theorising about gynocide and its causes, amounts to any more than the director playing games with us is debatable.
Country: DK/GER/SW/IT/FR/POL
Technical: col/bw/2.35:1 104m
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Synopsis:
A woman working on a thesis about violence done against women down the ages and her psychiatrist husband decamp to the woods after the tragic death of their young son. As he attempts to cure her of her fears and grief she gradually tips into insanity.
Review:
The director's essays in 'épater les bourgeois' become ever more desperate and taboo-breaking. Here we have slow-motion penetrative sex, masturbation in abundance and a self-administered cliterectomy with a pair of scissors... At the same time a strong undercurrent of mysticism or transcendentalism pervades the film, notably in the appearances of the Three Beggars in various guises, as if guiding events. The final scene in which dozens of faceless women ascend a wooded hill towards Dafoe, what with that actor's back catalogue, surely evokes the Sermon on the Mount and is not the only piece of abused Christian imagery used to strike further horror into the film's potential audience. Whether all the psycho-babble and case history stuff, with all the theorising about gynocide and its causes, amounts to any more than the director playing games with us is debatable.
Country: DK/GER/SW/IT/FR/POL
Technical: col/bw/2.35:1 104m
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Synopsis:
A woman working on a thesis about violence done against women down the ages and her psychiatrist husband decamp to the woods after the tragic death of their young son. As he attempts to cure her of her fears and grief she gradually tips into insanity.
Review:
The director's essays in 'épater les bourgeois' become ever more desperate and taboo-breaking. Here we have slow-motion penetrative sex, masturbation in abundance and a self-administered cliterectomy with a pair of scissors... At the same time a strong undercurrent of mysticism or transcendentalism pervades the film, notably in the appearances of the Three Beggars in various guises, as if guiding events. The final scene in which dozens of faceless women ascend a wooded hill towards Dafoe, what with that actor's back catalogue, surely evokes the Sermon on the Mount and is not the only piece of abused Christian imagery used to strike further horror into the film's potential audience. Whether all the psycho-babble and case history stuff, with all the theorising about gynocide and its causes, amounts to any more than the director playing games with us is debatable.