Antichrist

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If you thought Oshima´s "In the Realm of the Senses" was raw, explicit, sexually grotesque, and pornographic, wait until you see Lars von Trier´s "Antichrist." The opening black-and-white sequence shows characters of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg making love with magnified shots of full penetration (porn stars were used). All of this happens in the first four minutes of the film, and while the love-making act itself does not shock you, the explicitness and urgency with which the director plays his cards just might. And this aspect becomes more evident in the final chapter.

Throughout the film, Trier plays with this favorite palette format--that is black-and-white, but also switching back to the color format to depict dismay and disarray in the lives of the grieving couple. Even though the back-and-white imagery is gothic in nature, it reminds us of the director´s best efforts in the past, and more importantly, "Europa" (1991). Trier also pays tribute to the popular Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky.

Told in four chapters and an epilogue, "Antichrist" shows the progressive decay of normal human behavior towards more maddening depths of emotional turmoil. While the director´s representational style to portray the pain and grief of the grieving couple at the death of their son works wells in the first three chapters, it goes horribly downhill in the final few, for both the viewers and the couple. Trier´s fierce, explicit assault on his viewers is similar to Oshima´s shocking conclusion in "In the Realm of the Senses."

The ghastly act in the cabin will not only shock you, but it will leave you thinking about the meaning of self-inflicted sexual violence. You will cringe at the sight of a bloody ejaculation and probably squirm seeing a mutilated clitoris. You will only think: What is the meaning behind this violence? Guilt maybe. Or is it deliberately added as a shock-inducing element in the film? I tend to side with the later. No matter what you think of "Antichrist," it does not provide for an emotionally elevating experience as other have made it out to be. Instead, it intentionally gets under your skin, and crosses the specified cinematic boundaries in portraying grief. The overabundance of sexual violence killed it for me. It´s the same film that attracts, repels, and then throws you out.

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