Antichrist (film)

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Antichrist is a 2009 horror film written and directed by Lars von Trier, about a couple who, after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods where they encounter strange and terrifying occurrences. The film stars only two actors, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe. Primarily a Danish production, the film was also co-produced with companies from five other countries.

Since premiering at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Gainsbourg won the festival's award for Best Actress, the film has come under attack for what some critics view as misogyny, as well as for featuring explicit sexual violence. At the same time many critics have also praised the film for its visuals and serious approach.

Plot

Antichrist is made up of a Prologue, four chapters (entitled "Grief", "Pain (Chaos Reigns)", "Despair (Gynocide)" and "The Three Beggars"), and an Epilogue.

Prologue

The Prologue is monochromatic, and silent except for the score, the aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" from Handel's Rinaldo. A couple (He and She) make passionate love, while their young son Nic awakens, climbs out of his crib, opens his baby gate, and climbs onto a desk by an open window. The "Three Beggars" first appear as three toy figures on the desk, each figure inscribed with the name of one of the chapters on its base: "pain", "grief" and "despair". Nic brushes them off before climbing to the window. Nic falls to his death on the snowy ground below. At the same moment, She is seen climaxing silently.

Chapter One: Grief

During Nic's funeral, She collapses, and as the other mourners gather around her, we see that they have no faces. She spends the next month in the hospital, in and out of consciousness and with little conception of time. When she awakens, She is crippled with grief. He, a therapist, is distrustful of the psychological care she is receiving,and takes it upon himself to talk his wife through the grief process. He has her flush her prescribed medication down the toilet. After a less-than-fruitful time of catharsis at home, during which She tries to distract herself from the pain with sex, He decides that they should try exposure therapy. Through their sessions, He is able to learn that her greatest fear centers on a cabin in a forest called Eden, at which she spent time alone with Nic the previous summer, while writing a thesis on gynocide.

The couple travel to Eden. During the journey, while She sleeps, He encounters a deer which does not show fear of him. As the deer turns to leave, He sees that it is mid-stillbirth, the dead fawn hanging limply from its rear.

Chapter Two: Pain (Chaos Reigns)

When She awakens, they continue toward the cabin. Upon encountering a footbridge over a river that leads to the forest of Eden, She is overcome with fear. Her eyes closed, she sprints across the bridge and into the forest, leaving her husband alone to journey after her. It is late evening when He arrives at the cabin, to find her fast asleep. When at the cabin, She again attempts to have sex with her husband. He does not comprehend her fear of the natural world and tries to solve her fears with psychotherapy, despite their relationship creating a conflict of interest. She becomes increasingly manic and grief-stricken. Meanwhile, the natural world surrounding the cabin continually proves itself to be forbidding and nihilistic; acorns pelt the cabin like gunfire, and at one point He comes across a self-disembowelling fox which seems to utter the words, "Chaos reigns."

Chapter Three: Despair (Gynocide)

While searching the cabin, He finds materials studied by his wife for her thesis: pictures of witch-hunts and a scrapbook filled with articles and notes on misogynist topics, in which her handwriting becomes more frantic and illegible as the pages go on. She, due to intense self-blame over Nic's death, comes to embrace the belief that women are inherently evil. He confronts her with Nic's autopsy report, which states that the bones in both of his feet were deformed. In a toolshed, He finds photographs of Nic, in which his boots are always on the wrong feet. She suddenly attacks her husband in the shed, stabbing him and then violently disrobing and mounting him while accusing him of planning on leaving her. She then crushes his testicles with a block of wood, the pain driving him unconscious. While he is still unconscious, She masturbates him until he orgasms, ejaculating blood onto her shirt and face. She then drills a hole through his leg, and bolts a heavy grindstone through the wound. She flees outside, leaving him unconscious in the shed, throwing the wrench she used to tighten the millstone underneath the cabin.

He wakes up and drags himself away, finding a foxhole in which to hide. While She frantically searches for him, He finds a crow buried alive, which makes noise upon waking, giving away his hiding place. He beats it repeatedly, but it survives. She finds him and tries to pull him out of the foxhole, then digs him out, beating his head with the shovel. Several hours pass, night falls, and, crying, She apologizes and helps to drag her husband back to the cabin.

Chapter Four: The Three Beggars

Once again in the cabin, She cryptically tells her husband that he was not meant to die yet, but that someone must die when the three beggars arrive. In a flashback to the Prologue, it is implied that She saw what was about to happen to Nic and did nothing. However, it is not clear if this is accurate or only her imagination. She takes a pair of scissors and, asking to be held, cuts off her clitoris, letting out a tortured scream as she does so.

During the night the couple are visited by the crow, deer and fox, and acorns beat against the roof of the cabin. Breaking through the floor, He discovers the wrench with which to release the millstone from his leg. While removing the millstone, She attacks Him with the scissors, stabbing him in the back then he pulls it off and throws it to the floor. He eventually removes the millstone, and his wife stops fighting him. He strangles her dispassionately, killing her. He burns the body outside the cabin on a pyre, which was shown upon his arrival at the cabin.

Epilogue

He makes his way from the cabin, eating berries from the ground. Upon reaching the top of a hill, he looks down to see hundreds of women walking up the hill towards him, their faces white and blurred. In the morning light, the women walk around and past him.

Cast

Willem Dafoe as He
Charlotte Gainsbourg as She

Production

Development

Antichrist was originally scheduled for production in 2005, but its executive producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen accidentally revealed the planned ending. Lars von Trier was furious and decided to delay the shoot so he could rewrite the script.

In 2007 Trier announced that he was suffering from a depression, and that it was possible that he never would be able to make another film. "I assume that Antichrist will be my next film. But right now I don't know," he told the Danish newspaper Politiken. During an early casting attempt, English actors who had come to Zentropa's studios in Copenhagen had to be sent home, while Trier was crying because his poor condition didn't allow him to meet them.

The title was the first thing that was written for the film. The post-depression version of the script was to some extent written as an exercise for Trier, to see if he had recovered enough to be able to work again. Trier has also made references to August Strindberg and his Inferno Crisis in the 1890s, comparing it to his own writing under difficult mental circumstances: "was Antichrist my Inferno Crisis?"

The film's budget was around $11 million, with the Danish Film Institute putting in $1.5 million and Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany contributing $1.3 million. Apart from Trier's own company Zentropa, other co-producers are Sweden's Film i Väst, Italy's Lucky Red, and France's Liberator Productions, Slot Machine and Arte France.

Pre-production

Willem Dafoe, who had worked with Lars von Trier in Manderlay from 2005, was cast after contacting Trier and asking what he was working on at the moment. He received the script for Antichrist, although he was told that Trier's wife was sceptical about asking a renowned actor like Dafoe to do such an extreme role. Dafoe accepted the role, later explaining his view on it: "I think the dark stuff, the unspoken stuff is more potent for an actor. It’s the stuff we don’t talk about, so if you have the opportunity to apply yourself to that stuff in a playful, creative way, yes I’m attracted to it." For the female lead, Eva Green was first approached. According to Trier she wanted to do the role, but her agents refused to allow her. The unsuccessful attempt to cast her took two months of the pre-production process. Eventually Charlotte Gainsbourg turned up, and according to Trier she was very eager to get the part: "Charlotte came in and said, 'I'm dying to get the part no matter what.' So I think it was a decision she made very early and she stuck to it. We had no problems whatsoever."

To get into the right mood before filming started, both Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg were shown Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror from 1975. Dafoe was also shown Trier's own 1998 film The Idiots, and Gainsbourg The Night Porter to study Charlotte Rampling's character. In addition to watching films, Dafoe also met therapists working with cognitive behavioral therapy, was present at actual sessions of exposure therapy and was given material to read about the topic.

After training at a camp in the Czech Republic, the supporting cast of trained animals, including a deer (played by Fiona), a fox (Bonifac) and two crows (Blue and No-Name), joined Dafoe and Gainsbourg at the location "Eden" in the forests near Cologne, Germany.

Filming and post-production

The film was shot on digital video, primarily using Red One cameras. Trier still hadn't recovered completely from his depression when filming started. He repeatedly excused himself to the actors for being in the mental condition he was, and he wasn't able to do the camerawork himself as he usually does, which made him very frustrated. "The script was filmed and finished without much enthusiasm, made as it was using about half of my physical and intellectual capacity," Trier said in an interview.

Props for the more violent scenes were provided by the company Soda ApS, and made in their workshop in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Plaster casts were made of Willem Dafoe's leg as well as of the "porno doubles'" sexual organs. A plastic baby with authentic weight was made for the opening scene. A dead deer fetus was modeled after pictures found using Google Image Search, and a nylon stocking was used as caul. In the scene where Dafoe's character ejaculates blood it is the real "porno double's" penis that is seen, with fake blood being sprayed by the prop crew. The vagina prop was constructed with its inner parts detachable for easy preparation if several takes would be needed.

The film features 80 shots with computer-generated imagery, provided by the company Platige Image in Poland. Most of these consist of digitally removed details such as the collar and leash used to lead the deer, but some were more complicated. The scene where the fox, with the director's voice, utters the words "chaos reigns" was particularly difficult to make. The mouth movements had to be entirely 3D animated in order to synchronise with the sound.

The aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" from Georg Friedrich Händel's opera Rinaldo is used as the film's main musical theme. The aria has previously been used in other films such as Farinelli, a 1994 biographical film about the castrato singer Farinelli.

Release

The film premiered during the Competition portion of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to a mixed response from the audience. At least four people fainted during the preview due to the film's explicit violence. Charlotte Gainsbourg won the Cannes Film Festival's award for Best Actress.

Two versions were available for buyers at the Cannes film market, nicknamed the "Catholic" and "Protestant" versions, where the former had some of the most explicit scenes removed while the latter was uncut. The uncut version was released theatrically to a general audience on 20 May 2009 in Denmark. It has been acquired for American distribution by IFC Films, and British by Artificial Eye. In Britain and Ireland, Antichrist was released uncut with an 18 certificate.

Controversies

The ecumenical jury at the Cannes festival gave the film a special "anti-award" and declared the film to be "the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world". Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux responded that this was a "ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship" and that it was "scandalous coming from an 'ecumenical' jury".

The film has also come under attack for its explicit and often disturbing sexuality, including the opening scene showing a toddler falling to its death while He and She have sex on the bed nearby. The film has also invited controversy for its graphic sexual violence. In one controversial scene, She hits His testicles with a wooden plank so hard that it is implied they are crushed. While He is unconscious, she masturbates him until he ejaculates blood. She then drills a hole through his shin to bolt him onto a grindstone. In a later scene, She cuts off her own clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors.

Following the positive reviews in Danish press, some of the critics were accused of being positively biased because of a banquet held at Zentropa's mansion in Cannes during the film festival every year, where Danish critics are invited. The criticism was met with the fact that the film had been equally well received by critics who were not present in Cannes, as well as in other countries such as Norway and Sweden.

Reception

In Denmark, the film became an immediate hit with both critics and audiences. As of 28 May 2009 (2009 -05-28)[update] it had an average score of 83% based on 6 reviews at the Danish-language review site Scope.dk. Politiken called it "a grotesque masterpiece," giving it a perfect score of 6 out of 6, and praised it for being completely unconventional while at the same time being "a profoundly serious, very personal ... piece of art about small things like sorrow, death, sex and the meaninglessness of everything." Berlingske Tidende were a bit confused about the nature of the film, but gave it a rating of 4 out of 6 and praised the "peerless imagery," and how "cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle effectively switches between Dogme-like hand-held scenes and wonderful stylized tableaux." An exception was Claus Christensen, editor of the Danish film magazine Ekko. Christensen accused the other Danish critics of over rating the film, himself calling it "a master director's failed work." On 27 August 2009 it was announced that the film had been nominated by Denmark for The Nordic Council Film Prize.

International reception was very polarized. As of 28 July 2009 (2009 -07-28)[update] the film had a 56% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 34 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5 out of 10. Chris Tookey for Daily Mail started his review by noting that the films contains "a few images of startling beauty," but soon went on to call it "offensively misogynistic" and "needlessly graphic." He also listed other films that preceded Antichrist in showing explicit sex, genital self-mutilation and "women torturing men for pleasure," eventually giving the film one star out of five. Blog Critics reviewer, Ross Miller, said it, "can't be completely discounted as, admittedly, it is a well made film, one that features two excellent lead performances from [Willem] Dafoe and [Charlotte] Gainsbourg." But nonetheless he found it to be, "a disgusting piece of work that aims to do little more than shock and provoke its audience in any way it possibly can."

In the English magazine Empire, film critic Kim Newman noted that "von Trier’s self-conscious arrogance is calculated to split audiences into extremist factions, but Antichrist delivers enough beauty, terror and wonder to qualify as the strangest and most original horror movie of the year."