542 Antichrist

[Nothing]

I think we're overlooking the real motivtion here - Von Trier wins the prize as the first to make both RED and Phantom porn.

[T99]

Dedicating the film to Tarkovsky seems approriate for Lars, especially considering that it is one of those unspoken things a film director never should do. I'm sure his intention was to upset the critics.

[Barmy]

This is all great publicity for Larsie. :-k

[Tom Hagen]

Associated Pess basically repeats the last ten posts.

Great stuff:

. . . I am the best film director in the world.

And:

[Antichrist is] a very dark dream about guilt and sex and stuff.

"and stuff!" Lars wrote his own AICN pull quote! =D>

[broadwayrock]

Video of the Cannes Antichrist press conference.

[Jeff]

Mike D'Angelo (who outs himself as an LVT fanboy, for those who didn't already get the message) writes an open letter to Von Trier at the AV Club.

[Finch]

Thanks for posting this broadwayrock. I had a blast. Von Trier clearly riled many journalists with this one but then it's not the first and probably not the last time either that his works have been booed at Cannes. If anything, he's given the festival something to talk about, given that the other films in the competiton up to that point didn't cause a stir (unsurprisingly, Lee's Woodstock picture has been called "well-made but insipid" by one critic). It'll be a tough act to follow for the other provocateurs in the line-up (Tarantino and Noe). Was going to see Antichrist even before all this hysteria though I kind of wish I had stayed unspoiled with regards to the big talking points (opener and pic's final third).

[aox]

Mike D'Angelo (who outs himself as an LVT fanboy, for those who didn't already get the message) writes an open letter to Von Trier at the AV Club.

That's the kind of hyperbole that will drive me to see any film.

Thanks!

[Tom Hagen]

Mike D'Angelo (who outs himself as an LVT fanboy, for those who didn't already get the message) writes an open letter to Von Trier at the AV Club.

Spoiler

And if you think your depiction of man in nature resembles anything Tarkovsky ever did, you really need to take another look at his films, which tend not to feature hot naked actresses masturbating among the roots of trees.

Brilliant. Along with his quip about Scenes from a Marriage and Autumn Sonata, that was one of the best lines I've read in a review in a long, long time.

[Tribe]

Manohla Dargis weighs in:

May 19, 2009
Film
Lars von Trier Is Still Provocateur of Cannes
By MANOHLA DARGIS

CANNES, France — There’s no question that Lars von Trier knows how to get a rise out of the Cannes press — along with its rapt attention, its incredulous laughter and this year at least, its lusty jeers. The Danish middle-aged enfant terrible, who has been shaking up both the festival and world cinema for more than a decade with films like “Breaking the Waves” and “Dogville,” is clearly intent on holding on to his provocateur status, even if it means alienating (dividing, baffling) his audience further. This, in any event, seems one explanation for his latest, “Antichrist,” an alternately deadly serious and highly ironic exploration of psychosexual trauma, with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple grieving the death of their only child.

Spoiler

The first two images in “Antichrist” — a shot of the director’s name bluntly juxtaposed with a second shot of the movie’s title — seemed to tip his hand at once. Although the combination of “Lars von Trier/Antichrist” inspired some guffaws (how could it not?), the press audience at Cannes is not always given to easy laughter, particularly when gathered to witness the latest emission from an official auteur. The insistence on sobriety is partly a testament to the (welcome) reverence with which cinema is treated here, but it can also be deadening. Certainly temperance can be off the mark with Mr. von Trier, a master of mixing seemingly inappropriate tones who can be truly hilarious (“The Kingdom”) when he’s not being a sadist.

If the laughs are slow to boil in “Antichrist,” it’s largely because of the ugly opener, in which the couple’s toddler falls out an upper-story window to his death. That’s a tough way for any movie to begin, but it’s especially unpleasant because the death has no meaning in and of itself and certainly no emotional resonance. Rather, it’s a narrative device, as evident from how the death, shown in slow motion, is crosscut with images of the couple making passionate love. From the way Mr. von Trier trains his camera on Ms. Gainsbourg’s open mouth, gaping in a pantomime of ecstasy, it’s also all too obvious that mother love is a kind of abyss, one into which everyone — child and husband included — are destined to tumble.

And tumble they do, as death leads to bereavement leads to psycho high jinks in the couple’s secluded cabin in the woods. As acorns fall like hail, and the trees stir portentously, maternal love grows monstrous and more and more interchangeable with Mother Nature. At one point one of the characters ominously refers to nature as Satan’s playground or some such, which sounds like a line from Woody Allen by way of Ingmar Bergman. By the time the animatronic fox warns the understandably baffled-looking Mr. Dafoe that “chaos reigns,” it’s clear we’re not in Kansas anymore or even a serious movie. Chaos reigns, if not narrative sense, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this impossible movie kept me hooked from start to finish.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

New York Magazine spoils the money shot

Not suitable for spoiler-free types, or humanity in general

[domino harvey]

Don't even hover over the link if you don't want it spoiled (sigh)-- It looks like this spoiler is going to be impossible to avoid beforehand

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Good point, changed to a TinyURL link.

If it makes you feel better, whatever you're imagining based on the original URL probably isn't quite "there", unless you're writing from a padded cell somewhere.

[swo17]

Mental note: steer clear of the eventual DVDBeaver review of Antichrist.

[PaganPoet]

Any word on how last night's official competition screening went?

[Dadapass]

I have had a couple of close calls these past 2 days so I think it wise to stop reading up on it until I go see it.

[Jeff]

Ebert can't get it out of his head. He's written another lengthy piece about it.

[jesus the mexican boi]

O, for fuck's sake.

Spoiler

Smash, rip, splooge, snip.

Roll credits.

[PaganPoet]

Apparently, IFC has picked it up for distribution in the US.

[HarryLong]

Ebert can't get it out of his head.

A brilliant essay. And though Ebert doesn't mention it (& may not be aware of it) there is, I believe, a Gnostic Gospel that posits Satan as the creator.
Possibly someone whose study of Gnostic texts is a bit more recent than mine can confirm & elaborate.

[Matt]

And though Ebert doesn't mention it (& may not be aware of it) there is, I believe, a Gnostic Gospel that posits Satan as the creator.

Well, there is the Demiurge, who is usually considered the "creator," but who is not the Supreme Being. To but it bluntly, it is God's building contractor who got everything wrong, possibly on purpose. The Cathars (to name one group) believed the Demiurge was Satan.

[domino harvey]

Apparently, IFC has picked it up for distribution in the US.

Great, now here's a film that makes sense as a Blockbuster exclusive

[tartarlamb]

Well, there is the Demiurge, who is usually considered the "creator," but who is not the Supreme Being. To put it bluntly, it is God's building contractor who got everything wrong, possibly on purpose. The Cathars (to name one group) believed the Demiurge was Satan.

There's also the Ophites, so-called because they worshipped the snake in Genesis for convincing Adam and Eve to revolt against the Demiurge (who falsely claimed to be the Supreme Being). I suppose a general theme in a lot of early Christian sects is that the creator of the material world must have been a different, lesser, and possibly evil counterpart to the creator of the loftier spiritual/Platonic world than is entrapt in material.

BTW if, like me, you're the very squeamish type, do yourself a favor and read the spoiler before you run to that theater-near-you. I've been mildly traumatized but far more tame things in film that what's being described. Better yet, don't read it and just skip this one.

[PaganPoet]

Von Trier agrees cuts to beat censors

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has agreed to a toned-down cut of his new film "Antichrist", which features graphic scenes of sexual mutilation, to satisfy foreign censors, his production company said Wednesday.

"We reached an agreement with Lars more than a year ago to make a 'Catholic' version of the movie, to cut some scenes and replace them with others," Peter Aalbaek Jensen, the head of the Zentropa production group, told AFP.

"Otherwise it would be impossible to sell (it) to prude markets like southern Europe, Asia and the United States, where you can't show a naked man from the front," he said.

The film's close-ups of sex and mutilation left audiences gasping, squirming and jeering when it was screened on Monday at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jensen said he "does not know yet which scenes will be censored" and will "talk to distributors in these countries to seek out their opinions on the subject."

The edited version will also enable Zentropa to sell it to television worldwide, he added.

Von Trier will begin work on the new version "after the Cannes festival," he said.

The uncut version of the film, which opens in Denmark on Wednesday, is one of 20 competing for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It has been hailed by Danish critics, though viewers in Cannes on Monday gave it both cheers and boos.

It was written by von Trier as a form of therapy at the end of a long depression and inspired by his dreams and obsessions.

Willem Dafoe and France's Charlotte Gainsbourg deliver powerful performances in the movie as a couple who retreat to the woods to try to overcome grief at the death of their baby son.

Spoiler

It opens with a slow-motion close-up of sexual penetration, veers into a dramatic escalation of violence, and climaxes with an excruciating shot of Gainsbourg slicing off her clitoris with a pair of scissors.

[knives]

So, wait for the DVD?