ANTICHRIST
REVENGE IN THE CINEMA HAS RARELY TASTED SO SWEET
and responded to her tormentors by burning down their town and ordering their execution. Revenge in the cinema had rarely tasted so sweet. Antichrist is sure to reignite the debate about Von Trier’s motives, as Charlote Gainsbourg’s character is shown to be a human embodiment of the primitive elements in nature – she may have failed to save her child from his fatal plunge and once again can only achieve a form of peace through self-sacrifice. Von Trier’s take on events in Antichrist is far less clear cut as he explains: ‘Whether the film illustrates the battle between the sexes or not, I don’t know. I don’t see him as the proto-man or her as the proto-woman. If anything I can see myself in the portrait of her. He is more of a caricature; she has more human facets.’ Charlotte Gainsbourg won the Cannes Best Actress prize for her performance and told one interviewer: ‘I find it unjust when people say he hates women. I really have the impression that I was playing him, that he was the woman, that he was going through that misery, the physical condition, the panic attacks.’
Von Trier is famous as a man of many anxieties. His fear of flying means that every trip to Cannes has been a five-day journey via camper van from Copenhagen. His family background is the stuff of Freudian nightmare. He has recalled being bullied as a schoolchild. Shortly before her death in 1995, his mother confessed that her late husband was not his biological father, an event he has described as ‘a bombshell that is still exploding’. A year later, Von Trier had divorced his first wife and converted to Catholicism. It is hardly surprising that critics feel obliged to search for autobiography in his films and that Von Trier is reluctant to satisfy their hunger for easy answers. ‘Truthfully, I can only say I was driven to make the film, that these images came to me and I did not question them. My only defence is: ‘Forgive me, for I know not what I do.’ I am the wrong person to ask what the film means or why it is as it is. It is a bit like asking the chicken about the chicken soup.’
Antichrist is released on 24 Jul. 23 Jul–6 Aug 2009 THE LIST 27
also has echoes of themes and preoccupations from his earliest films, including the notion of ‘the danger of nature’ from The Element Of Crime (1984). He dedicates the film to Andrei Tarkovsky, a move that felt like rubbing salt in the wounds of those who hated Antichrist. ‘Tarkovsky, now, he’s a real god,’ he says with rare enthusiasm. ‘When I saw The Mirror for the first time on a small TV set, I was in ecstasy. If we talk about religion, this is a religious relationship. I’ve seen his films many, many times. I know he saw my very first film, and violently hated it, which I feel is an honest reaction. He’s the generation before me. I feel related to him. I felt related to Ingmar Bergman also – he didn’t feel related to me. If you dedicate a film to a director, then nobody will say that you’re stealing from him, so this was the easy way out.’
Antichrist is steeped in topsy turvy religious notions of a couple’s fall from grace that leads them to an Eden that is a form of hell on earth. A fox feasting on its own entrails informs us that chaos reigns underlining Von Trier’s view of the natural world as a primitive place steeped in suffering and death. Some images could have come from a Heironymous Bosch painting. On a simplistic level, it is also a battle of the sexes that pits the cool rationality of man against the unruly emotion of woman. Von Trier’s career has been dogged by accusations of misogyny. Breaking The Waves (1996), which he shot in the north west Highlands of Scotland, and his Cannes Palme D’Or winner Dancer In The Dark (2000) are built around female characters whose destiny is achieved through pain and self-sacrifice. Dogville (2003) seemed to represent a breakthrough for him as Nicole Kidman’s Grace ultimately refused to accept the role of victim
hero