Perhaps some of you have heard about the film "Anti-Christ", a film to which some of our number were lucky enough to go a few days ago in Krakow. It is directed by someone, this much is highly evident, but his name escapes me, and I don't really feel like opening up another browser window and finding it out. It stars Willem Defoe as a somewhat condescending psychiatrist and Charlotte Gainsbourg as his completely batshit insane wife. As I recall, they have no names in the film, but this could be a result of my attempt to psychologically block out everything connected with this film. By which I mean to say, it was a masterpiece of grotesque cinema and everyone should go see it as soon as possible. Mortgage your house, miss class, do anything you possibly can, but see this film. The people sitting next to me in the lobby instruct me to say 'hi' to Finland. Anyway...
The film begins with a highly explicit sex scene in which a toddler falls to his death. I would be hard-pressed to make this up. Anyway, afterwards the wife goes on medication for depression (men not being affected very much by the deaths of their children, it would seem) and the husband, in a stroke of genius, tells her to flush her pills and go under his treatment, which, as any psychotherapist will tell you, is exactly what you're supposed to do, since husbands usually have sufficient emotional distance from thier wives to give them sound treatment.
The two go on a retreat to the woods to a cabin wherein the wife made a failed attempt to write some kind of thesis on cynocide or gynocide (the scribbly text being siutable for hip audiences, but not so much for comprehension), which basically means violence against women (I think), specifically witch-burning.
From hereon in, it gets slightly murky as to the 'why' of things, but the 'what' of things is only too clear. Basically, the wife goes absolutely crazy and does all kinds of stereotypical horror movie things to her hubby (notably, she drills a hole through his leg and attached a grindstone to it) until he frees himself from said parenthetical grindstone and chokes her to death with his bare hands. The final scene is just him walking away from the cabin and being followed by a bunch of people who had no other roles in the film, the only cast other than the happy family being a bunch of trained animals.
The most enjoyable moment in the film is undoubtedly when the husband is having a trippy dream in which he sees a fox tearing its own insides out. Justifiably mystified by this whole ordeal, the man stops and stares at it. It turns to him, and in a voice rivalling the cheesiest thing you've ever heard in your entire life, it says only "Chaos Reigns".
All in all, the film was kind of... strange. Think "Blair Witch Project" meets "Saw III". There is more sex and incredibly painful-looking violence than I've seen in any three other films, and the whole message of the film seems to be that women are crazy.
Lars von Trier (the director) has apparently made other movies, many of them apparently very good, but "Antichrist" fails on quite a few levels. The film makes some apparent attempt to identify itself with some of Herzog and Bergman's work, but not very convincingly, and it relies a bit too much on fairly cheap shock tactics.
I say all of this not as a student of film (I am not one) but simply as a member of the viewing public.
And, to wrap it all up, "Chaos Reigns".
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