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Jim Rohner.

Antichrist film review.

Wait, what?  What kind of jerk would I be to put just my name - myself - first and foremost before the product I was about to create?  What would it say about my ego?  While it's true that films by well-known and artistically-lauded directors are often released with declarations of "a film by such and such" or "so and so presents," such credits seem to imply pride, as in, "this director is proud to present to you his or her film," more so than arrogance, as in, "this director is gracing you with his or her film."  Yet by eliminating that simple "a film by" or "presents" credit and presenting just a director's name before his or her film begins - or, indeed, specifically preceding the film's own loaded title - I can't help but pick up on a message, whether intentional or not, about a massive ego behind what I'm about to see.

That doesn't automatically necessarily signal something negative.  A singular credit of "Martin Scorsese" or "Terry Gilliam" or "Christopher Nolan" would hook me almost instantly and, based on past experiences, I'd be confident that that enthusiasm would be justified.  It's a different story with Lars von Trier.  He makes me skeptical.  To his credit, von Trier is an ambitious, affective filmmaker who marches to the beat of his own drum in making films that demand often passionate responses.  And with Antichrist, he's received passionate responses.  In between walk outs and laughs of derision, audiences have accused von Trier of being pretentious and losing his mind.  I even heard one man label the filmmaker "a f***ing ass."  His partner concurred.  I wish that I could defend the film for being ambitious, for von Trier naming it something purposeful like "Antichrist" and profoundly exploring what that means.  But I can't - the film is too insulting. 

They say art imitates life, so whose life does Antichrist imitate with its scenes of genital mutilation, talking wildlife and pummeling, possibly evil foliage?  Well, if you are to believe Roger Ebert, then the lives imitated on screen are Adam and Eve - credited as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) - but an Adam and Eve from an alternative theology in which the world was created by Satan and not God.  Ebert claims, "[if] you have to ask what a film symbolizes, it doesn't.  With this one, I didn't have to ask.  It told me."  More power to him for deciphering that enigma, because I couldn't see anything resembling his interpretation no matter how hard I looked. 

What did I see?  I didn't see a profound alternative theology.  I didn't see controversy.  I didn't even see ambition.  I saw a film that was almost all of these things and that could've been so much more.  Dafoe and Gainsbourg are both stellar in their roles, and they have to be, because of the three acts - titled Grief, Despair and Pain - only the third and final act, Pain, contains any semblance of a building tension or emotional climax.  Grief and Despair revolve heavily around psychological probing and torture and it's the performances of both leads that will keep audiences somewhat interested. 

Other than that, Antichrist falls short on a lot of things.  The cinematography, provided by Academy Award-winner Anthony Dod Mantle, fluctuates between breathtaking static shots and boring handheld.  It's also hard to support the argument of a religious allegory when von Trier himself admitted in a press conference during the New York Film Festival that not only is he uncertain about where the idea originated, but that if he took the time to go over the script again, he would've removed much of the so called religious allegory, i.e., naming the woods in which He and She spend most of the film, "Eden."  Oddly enough, with just a few shots added here and there, Antichrist could've been a very interesting horror film - there's an ominous soundtrack, a heavy sense of foreboding, an evil Other, and yes, even a jump scare.  But the film doesn't commit to that.  It doesn't commit to blasphemy.  It doesn't commit to anything.

So where does the insult come in?  Rest assured, the insult comes not from the blasphemy that seeps out of every frame - if that were the case, I could at least appreciate, if not agree with, the strong stance the film takes.  Instead, the insult comes from von Trier half-assing his way through a feature and passing it off as "the most important film of [his] career!"  Yes, in a director's statement made in Copenhagen in March, von Trier admitted "the script was finished and filmed without much enthusiasm, made as it was using about half of my physical and intellectual capacity."  Perhaps I'm bringing in an element inappropriate for a film review by talking about the background behind the film, but I can't help but shake this declaration from my mind.  So von Trier half-heartedly stumbled his way through a movie - a movie that contains a fox barking "chaos reigns," blood ejaculate, and a scene of vaginal penetration - had his name precede the title as though he should receive primary attention and then declared it the most important film of his career.  It's disrespectful for von Trier to push a product on an audience that he himself isn't enthusiastic about.  In fact, it's insulting.

Antichrist is currently playing at the 2009 New York Film Festival.