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Antichrist (film)

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Antichrist
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLars von Trier
Written byLars von Trier
Produced byMeta Louise Foldager
StarringWillem Dafoe
Charlotte Gainsbourg
CinematographyAnthony Dod Mantle
Edited byAnders Refn
Distributed byNordisk Film (Scandinavia)
IFC Films (United States)
Artificial Eye (United Kingdom)
Release dates
Cannes Film Festival:
18 May 2009
Denmark:
20 May 2009
United Kingdom:
24 July 2009
United States:
23 October 2009
Running time
109 min.
CountriesTemplate:FilmDenmark
Germany
France
Sweden
Italy
Poland
LanguageEnglish
Budget$11,000,000

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.[1]

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.

A couple (He and She) make passionate love, while their young son Nic makes his way from his crib and onto a desk by a window. After seeing his teddy bear floating while tied to a balloon, the child opens a window and - holding onto the bear - falls onto the ground below, dying. At the same time, She is seen climaxing silently.

At the child's funeral, She collapses and spends a month mostly unconscious in hospital. When she wakes, She is crippled with grief and He, a therapist, 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 hide the pain with sex, He decides exposure therapy will be effective. She tells him that she is most afraid at a cabin in the woods at which she spent time alone with Nic the previous summer, whilst writing a thesis on gynocide.

The couple travel to Eden, the cabin. During the journey He sees a deer which is mid-stillbirth - a calf is protruding from its rear end. 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". He begins to understand his wife's fear of nature: that the nihilism seen in nature is just as present in humanity.

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 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 distorted. In a toolshed, He finds photographs of Nic, in which his boots are regularly on the wrong feet. She attacks her husband mid-coitus in the shed, crushing his genitals with a block of wood. While he is unconscious, She masturbates him until he orgasms, ejaculating blood onto her shirt and face. She then drills a hole through his calf, and bolts a heavy millstone to his leg, throwing the tool she used to tighten it under a bridge nearby. She leaves him unconscious in the shed.

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 burying him alive, but digs him up several hours afterwards. During a confrontation in the house, She takes a pair of scissors and performs a clitoridectomy upon herself, and curls up on the floor in agnonising pain.

During the night the couple are visited by the crow, deer and fox and acorns again beat against the roof of the cabin. Breaking through the floor of the shed, he discovers the tool with which to release the millstone from his leg, and then strangles his wife, killing her. He burns the body outside the cabin on a pyre, which was shown upon his arrival at the cabin.

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

Cast

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.[2]

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.[3] 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.[4]

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?"[5]

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.[6][7][8] 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.[9]

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."[10] 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."[11]

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.[12] 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.[10]

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.[13][14][15][16]

Filming and post-production

The film was shot on digital video, primarily using Red One cameras.[1] 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,[12] and he wasn't able to do the camerawork himself as he usually does, which made him very frustrated.[4] "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.[5]

Except for the eyes and ears, the face of the fox was 3D animated in order for the lip synch to work out.

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.[17]

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.[18]

The aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" from Georg Friedrich Händel's opera Rinaldo is used as the film's main musical theme.[19] The aria has previously been used in other films such as Farinelli, a 1994 biographical film about the castrato singer Farinelli.[20]

Release

The film premiered during the Competition portion of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to a mixed response from the audience.[21]Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). At least four people fainted during the preview due to the film's explicit violence.[22] Charlotte Gainsbourg won the Cannes Film Festival's award for Best Actress.[21]

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.[23] In Britain and Ireland, Antichrist was released uncut with an 18 certificate.[24]

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".[25][26][22] 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".[26]

The film has also come under attack for its explicit 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.[27]

Claus Christensen, editor of the Danish film magazine Ekko, accused the other Danish critics of over rating the film, himself calling it "a master director's failed work." He further explained how he thinks it is improper that the Danish film journalists are invited to a banquet at Zentropa's mansion in Cannes every year, which might result in a positive bias in reviews of Zentropa's productions. 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.[28]

Reception

In Denmark, the film became an immediate hit with both critics and audiences.[29][30] As of 28 May  2009 it had an average score of 83% based on 6 reviews at the Danish-language review site Scope.dk.[31] 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."[32] 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."[33]

International reception was very polarized. As of 28 July 2009 the film had a 56% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 34 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5 out of 10.[34] 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.[35]

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."[36]

Video Game

According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, a video game called "Eden," which is based on the film, is in the works. It will start where the film ends. "It will be a self-therapeutic journey into your own darkest fears, and will break the boundaries of what you can and can't do in video games," says video game director Morten Iversen.[37]

References

  1. ^ a b Antichrist. Danish Film Institute. Retrieved on 2009-05-10.
  2. ^ Vestergaard, Jesper (2005-04-08) "Lars von Trier dropper Antichrist" (in Danish). CinemaZone. Retrieved on 2009-06-01.
  3. ^ Møller, Hans Jørgen (2007-05-11) "Von Trier: Jeg kan ikke lave flere film" (in Danish). Politiken. Retrieved on 2009-05-26.
  4. ^ a b Thorsen, Nils (2009-05-17) "Lars von Trier: Det hjemmelavede menneske" (in Danish). Politiken. Retrieved on 2009-05-26.
  5. ^ a b Aftab, Kaleel (2009-05-29) "Lars von Trier - 'It's good that people boo'." The Independent. Retrieved on 2009-05-29.
  6. ^ Rehlin, Gunnar (2008-07-30) ""Von Trier's 'Antichrist' moves ahead - Financing complete on English-language film." VarietyRetrieved on 2008-12-27
  7. ^ Movienet News (Jul 30th, 2008), "Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ Firms Up the Cash", accesses 12-27-2008
  8. ^ Bloody-disgusting.com (July 30, 2008), "Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist' Firms Up the Cash", accessed 12-27-2008
  9. ^ Nordiskfilmogtvfond.com
  10. ^ a b Bourgeois, David (2009-05-20) "Antichrist's Willem Dafoe: 'We Summoned Something We Didn't Ask For'." Movieline. Retrieved on 2009-06-11.
  11. ^ Crocker, Jonathan (2009-07-22) "RT Interview: Lars von Trier on Antichrist." Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2009-07-22.
  12. ^ a b Bo, Michael (2009-05-23) "De overlevede Antikrist - og von Trier" (in Danish). Politiken. Retrieved on 2009-05-24.
  13. ^ Chud.com
  14. ^ Thompson on Hollywood
  15. ^ Twitchfilm: "We Present To You The Rest Of The Cast For Lars von Trier’s ANTICHRIST"
  16. ^ Chud.com, paragraph 3
  17. ^ Fyhn, Mikkel (2009-05-23) "Mød effektmændene bag Triers mareridt" (in Danish). Politiken. Retrieved on 2009-05-31.
  18. ^ (2009-06-02) "Efekty specjalne w Antychryście" (in Polish). Platige Image Community. Retrieved on 2009-06-18.
  19. ^ Antichrist Pressbook (PDF). Artificial Eye. Retrieved on 2009-07-28.
  20. ^ Haynes, Bruce, The end of early music, Oxford University Press US, 2007, p. 25. ISBN 0195189876
  21. ^ a b "Festival de Cannes: Antichrist". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-05-09.
  22. ^ a b "'Anti-Christ' gets 'anti-prize'". 2009-05-23. Retrieved 2009-05-25.
  23. ^ Pham, Annika (2009-05-22) "Antichrist sold to UK and US." Cineuropa. Retrieved on 2009-05-26.
  24. ^ Larn, Paul (2009-06-12) "Cannes Sensation ANTICHRIST To Be Uncut In The UK." The Cinema Post. Retrieved on 2009-06-11.
  25. ^ Stone, Jay (2009-05-23). "Antichrist gets an anti-award in Cannes" at National Post. Retrieved on 2009-05-23.
  26. ^ a b Cannes jury gives its heart to works of graphic darkness
  27. ^ Ny Mag, Lane Brown. So What Happens to Willem Dafoe’s Genitals in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Anyway?, Rory Mulholland. "Danish 'Antichrist' provides Cannes' annual scandal" By Rory Mulholland. Retrieved on 05/25/2009.
  28. ^ Lindberg, Kristian (2009-05-24) "Danske anmeldere beskyldes for rygklapperi" (in Danish). Berlingske Tidende. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
  29. ^ Fiil-Jensen, Lars (2009-05-26) "Publikum vil se 'Antichrist'" (in Danish). FILMupdate. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
  30. ^ http://www.nordiskfilmogtvfond.com/news_story.php?cid=1591&sid=10&ptid=4 Nordisk Film & TV Fond: Antichrist Wins Award and Danish Audiences
  31. ^ Antichrist (in Danish). Scope.dk. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
  32. ^ Skotte, Kim (2009-05-17) "'Antichrist' er et grotesk mesterstykke" (in Danish). Politiken. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
  33. ^ Iversen, Ebbe (2009-05-18) "Fire stjerner til »Antichrist«" (in Danish). Berlingske Tidende. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
  34. ^ Antichrist at Rotten Tomatoes
  35. ^ Tookey, Chris (2009-07-24) "Antichrist: The man who made this horrible, misogynistic film needs to see a shrink." Daily Mail. Retrieved on 2009-08-08.
  36. ^ http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/ReviewComplete.asp?FID=136285 Antichrist review in Empire
  37. ^ Vigild, Thomas (2009-06-17) "'Antichrist' fortsætter - som spil" (in Danish). Politiken
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