The project of the main provocateur of the modern film industry Lars von Trier with the expressive name "Antichrist" is one of the most sensational and controversial film premieres of 2009. The tape was presented at the Moscow and Cannes film festivals. After that, the film "Antichrist" reviews fell in incredible quantities. A flurry of harsh criticism fell upon the creator and the movie itself. Lars von Trier was charged with abuse of shocking sexual and aggressive episodes in the film's structure. Because of this, the film "Antichrist" reviews is called the arthouse of pure water - meaningful, pretentious, with traditional author's tools.
Demonstration of human situations
The author consciously and deliberately blurs the boundaries of what is permitted, mixing death with lust, tragedy with pleasure. This is a skillful metaphorical motion picture of the horror genre with fairly frank, almost pornographic scenes. Nevertheless, such a clear demonstration of borderline human feelings, emotions, and situations cannot obscure the psychological message skillfully disguised by the Danish film master. The main thing is to try to be unbiased while watching. "Antichrist" is a film whose description cannot be made without taking into account its hidden psychological context. Even the creator himself admitted that his brainchild has a certain therapeutic value.
Creators
The film "Antichrist" reviews of film critics identified as monofilm. Indeed, this is an individual, solo work. The director originally planned to shoot genre films and involved one of the most successful scriptwriters of Denmark, Anders Thomas Jensen, to work on the script, but after he refused his services and independently rewrote almost the entire dramatic basis. In addition, he intended to appear in the role of the operator, but Trier had to abandon this idea, since he had not yet recovered from his stay in the clinic, where he was treated for depression. Lars had trembling hands, so his long-time associate Anthony Dod Mantle became the cameraman. It was he who managed to so magically remove the Westphalian forests.
Structure
The film "Antichrist", the content of which is divided into six conventional parts ("the number of the beast"), can be conditionally divided into a prologue, epilogue and four chapters. Moreover, the style of these middle parts is fundamentally different from the prologue and epilogue. At the beginning and end of the picture, the author ignores the “live” camera and the muffled tones of the color scheme. They reign in black and white (the trademark of art art), and behind the scenes sounds the tragic aria from Handel, but somehow pacifying, and there is no other musical design in the picture. And all movements are slowed to the limit, literally you have time to count up to 10 as long as a drop of water falls to the floor. Such a prologue is the film "Antichrist." Reviews of critics noted that it was this classic beauty that makes it possible to successfully exhibit Man and Woman (the heroes have no names), indulging in love joys. The picture is so beautiful that the beholder hardly recognizes the American actor Willem Dafoe in the Man, and the French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg in the Woman.
Actors
The cast of the film is represented by leading actors - Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Storm Akeke Salström. About their acting work we can speak with a certain degree of conventionality. For performers of the roles of the main characters, participation in this project was not a risky step; there is a suitable background in their filmography. Willem Dafoe starred in the role of Jesus in a project by Martin Scorsese, the heretical film The Last Temptation of Christ. Charlotte Gainsbourg, the beloved child of freethinking parents , also does not lag behind in the number of shocking movie roles. But for the director von Trier, most likely, it was completely unimportant. During the casting, he tried many stage masters, but chose those who agreed to become an obedient instrument in his trembling hands and did not ask unnecessary questions. Eva Green could play the main female role in the film, but the actress could not allow herself to be fully manipulated. On the advice of the director Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, before the start of filming, they watched Tarkovsky's Mirror. And after that they simply entrusted their characters to Trier. It seems that it was with his light hand that the heroes at the beginning of the film still obey Stanislavsky’s immortal school, but after that they completely forget about it, like about all other schools, and about the laws of logic. The cast of the picture, if it was worth rewarding, is mainly for total dedication. And also for participating in the creation of one of the most difficult Trier works.
Plot
The plot of the film "Antichrist" is a story about a painful attempt at psychotherapeutic healing, which ended very tragically. A middle-aged couple lost a child who fell out of the window either after he saw the first snow, or during the parents' intimacy. After a certain period of time, the main character - the husband, a psychoanalyst, undertakes to independently treat the spouse's prolonged depression. His goal is to study the fear that the wife tells the hero about. At first, the subject of her unrest is an abstract forest, which, as it turns out later, is associated with paradise Eden. "Antichrist" is a film whose plot description continues with a country trip of the main characters. It is there, in the "field" conditions, the main events of the picture are played out. As depression progresses, the behavior of the main character becomes completely irrational, the woman is controlled by aggression and sexual desire. This arthouse story ends with the director as the Antichrist showing a group of women making their way through the forest. This is the only mention in the plot about whose name is put in the title.
Religious background
In the epilogue, the meaning of the film “Antichrist” is exposed - the religious background of the experiences, which the author embodied in a sophisticated cinematic form. All participants of the Trier psychotherapeutic session, deepening in themselves, as expected, were faced with the collective unconscious - a kind of genetic memory. Therefore, they discovered the presence of psychological problems called existential. The scandalously famous filmmaker did not hesitate to briskly use the sexual-biblical metaphor, through it reflecting on the imperfection of our world. If the viewer fails to tune in to just such a perception, he may be disappointed with the ambiguous visual range, which is oversaturated with naturalistic details.
Burn at the stake!
Trier made a frightening, unbearably scary film. An adequate reaction to primitive viscous horror is either an exit from the show or a nervous laugh. The picture affects not only the organs of vision, it like a virus affects the whole body. In this, it resembles a potent medicine in a huge dose or a hard drug. Therefore, many, in principle, civilized viewers during the show of "Antichrist" behave as if possessed by demons. Not without reason did Lars von Trier want many to burn at the stake before, even after Dogville and Dancing in the Dark. He, like enfant terrible, has long tried on the role of the “cursed creator”, and therefore uses his own strategy, combining the incompatible, creating an explosive cocktail from incompatible components.
No comment
Lars von Trier flirted with elements of pornography more than once (most successfully in “Idiots”), many could endure. Even in this work, cardinal self-harm and sadistic scenes are considered by some critics to be quite justified, suggesting too nervous spectators to close their eyes after continuing to watch. Unforgivable even for Trier, the whole cinema community considered the combination of the film "Antichrist" with Tarkovsky's aesthetics and direct quotes from "Stalker" and "Mirrors". And the fact that the director devoted the project to the flagship of Christian morality Andrei Arsenievich Tarkovsky, experts overwhelmingly leave no comment, unlike his fans and opponents. The first Trier's homage was called sacrilege, and the latter - sophisticated mockery of the universally recognized genius.