3 Stars
CANNES: Say what you like about Lars Von Trier (and I'll reckon we're about to hear quite a lot about what people don't like about him), but he has the courage of his convictions. It takes a lot to make an auditorium full of film critics squirm and there was a near orgy of squirming, including utterances of the "Oh, no!" variety, on either side of me during the Cannes press screening of Antichrist.
In a prologue, 4 chapters and an epilogue, Von Trier tackles the topic of grief. Unspeakable, not-in-the-natural-order of things grief. When their young son dies a probably preventable death, a man (Willem Dafoe) and a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) fall into the maw of something as powerful as it is inexplicable.
A therapist by profession, the man believes his permanently grieving wife should confront her greatest remaining fear. This she defines as "the woods," specifically those around a rustic cabin to which she had gone the previous summer with their boy to complete a thesis.
The clearly satisfying sex that reinforced the couple's bond before tragedy struck can no more be the same than the lower Manhattan skyline after the Twin Towers crumbled. The couple's shared emotional landscape is dicey, uncharted territory. And from extreme feelings, stem extreme acts.
In the press kit, Von Trier confesses that this is "the most important film of my entire career!" Although the writer/director/provocateur has always had a talent for self-promotion, he'd be hard pressed to top the praise in the press release for the complete retrospective of Von Trier's work (including films he shot between the ages of 11 and 13) to take place at the Pompidou Center in Paris from June 8-22. He is described as "a Danish filmmaker both adulated and decried, and heir to Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles."
Oh.
And here I was thinking that he sure knows how to film stuff that people don't necessarily care to see.
When the two protagonists in Antichrist hike into the woods, it's unlikely they suspect just what will hobble their recovery. The steamy, heart-breaking prologue and the otherworldly epilogue are in black & white, with the central portion of the film in colour. DP Anthony Dod Mantle, whose work on Slumdog Millionaire it's safe to say has been seen by more viewers than will ever even hear of Antichrist also shot Von Trier's Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005).
Distinctive as Von Trier's latest is, there are thematic and visual similarities with last year's Vinyan by Fabrice Du Welz, in which Emmannuelle Beart and Rufus Sewell embark on an open ended journey after their son is presumably drowned in the 2004 Tsunami.
In both cases, a rational man who loves his wife puts himself in harm's way in hopes of healing his cherished spouse. In both films, Nature with a capital "N" is an unbilled but starring member of the cast.
