Critics have called it shocking, horrific, repulsive, and pretentious; Roger Ebert claimed that Von Trier “has reached me and shaken me,”; others deemed it “the most shocking film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.”  So is Antichrist really deserving of all the controversy heaped upon it? (Is any film, really?) While it may be a bit overhyped, the last 45 minutes or so of the film easily rival the visceral gore of most contemporary torture-porn horror films. You know how certain movies get the ‘unrated’ aka NC-17 card, and you leave shaking your head, cursing the retarded logic of the MPAA? I’m surprised this one even made it to a theater: Genital mutilation, hardcore sex shots, leg impalement, Willem Dafoe’s ass, and a rather prescient fox who screeches: “CHAOS REIGNS!”

The first hour takes its time, building slowly, bogged down in an atmosphere of gloom and despair–Von Trier seems to have forsaken his Dogma 95 vow of chastity, which forbade every conceivable aspect of artificiality in cinema– for filters, optical and even special effects, most of which work to enhance the film’s milieu of dread. In the film’s opening, a Handel aria plays as the couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing the very Scriptual ‘He’ and ‘She’) makes passionate love, complete with hardcore sex shots (hey, I’m just tellin ya). In a room adjacent, their toddler child escapes from his crib, curiously crawls toward a snowy window, and falls to his death. It marks the beginning of a long descent into hell for the couple, which Von Trier divides into several chapters– stages of  Grief, Guilt, and Despair. He, a therapist, decides to take She into a forest called Eden to face her fears, where she eventually unravels and explodes into violence.

I kept wondering who was more deserving of the film’s moniker, whether Von Trier intended such a thing, or if it mattered at all: Willem Dafoe’s He is a therapist, whose reliance on the techniques he’s acquired in his profession has made him removed and unemotional, perhaps even vengeful in his passive-aggressiveness– shortly after they attend their son’s funeral, She accuses him of being “distant and cold” (accurate, if a bit late in realization). Gainsbourg’s performance at first seems to be little more than that of a mourning mother–until the film slides into despair, and implicates there’s more to that death than originally shown. Gradually She wears down under the crushing weight of her own guilt, mentally skewering herself and eventually physically mutilating herself and her lover. These last scenes comprise the film’s most graphic act, and had the audience alternating between hollering and reflexively sinking into their seats. And covering their crotches.

I suspect that Von Trier has feminist leanings in this film, but maybe that’s putting it a little too simply. Antichrist gets a little bogged down in imagery, metaphors which do little to do other than annoy at times. But it’s a visceral take on the differences between men and women, and how they grieve so differently over the loss of a child. There’s no real apparent “bad guy”, though Dafoe’s distance, and anger towards his wife is a subtler, more manipulative, passive aggression–while She becomes resentful, scornful, and ultimately, violent. This is certainly an important film, and though it doesn’t match the brilliance of Von Trier’s The Idiots or Dancer in the Dark,  you leave talking about it, thinking about it, trying to make more sense out of it. It’s one of those films you might have to see twice to make complete sense of, but at least you know when to cover your eyes the second time around. Pretentious? Maybe. Brilliant? Arguably. Bloody? In literal streams.

Words by Jeff Nau