Antichrist [DVD]

Description

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a grieving couple retreat to Eden , their isolated cabin in the woods, where they hope to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse... Following its award winning success at this year s Cannes Film Festival and explosive box office performance, one of the most controversial films ever to receive a cinema release in the UK finally makes it way on to the DVD and Blu-Ray SPECIAL FEATURES: Feature Commentary with Director Lars von Trier, Interview with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Interview with Willem Dafoe FEATURETTES The Evil of Woman, The Visual Style of Antichrist, The Make-Up Effects and Props of Antichrist, The Three Beggars, Eden, Confessions about Anxiety, The Sound and Music of Antichrist, The Antichrist Test, Behind the test, Antichrist Chaos Reigns at the Cannes Film Festival Review: Star Wars rip off... - This films owes so much to George Lucas' epic flop Star Wars than any other film you can mention. Its premise is an attack upon the apparently logical assumptions made by the quackish therapy industry, and more recently the faddish 70's throwback to NLP, and its 'ability' to help people grieve. It also tries to pin the baddie status upon the woman for a welcome change instead of the typical male baddie. The film also contains a scene of symbolic visualisation of the heterosexual penetrative sexual congress act ie a close up of Mr Defoes part slipping into Mrs Gainsbourgs gill in black and white not color. Dried up people and fools tend to focus upon split second elements of this film such as this 'porny bit' to detract from the rest of the well shot film. The film is well shot because they used a robot version of Lars von Trier. The violence too is rather tame for all the talk about certain scenes. It is more to do with the parts of the body it is inflicted upon rather than the scene itself. Somehow its okay to decapitate and shoot people, dip them in acid or run them over in an automobile, but snipping a budgie tongue off is more shocking. All violence should be shocking, but the genital mutilation scene is in context in this film and so loses any kind of impact of shock. What is more shocking is the amount of satanic imagery and symbolism that has managed to get past the censors. The talking fox especially. Some people say that it is a spirit or a ghost that causes all the trouble, but for me, it is about evil being people themselves, not some fake spiritual weak explanation for the cruelty that people do to each other offered by faith companies. In summary, though not Lars best film, its not as bad as some less serious reviewers make out, particularly the most talked about bits. If anything would drag down this films score it would be the fact that it serves more as a practice run for the technology and techniques explored in the films visual journey to be better employed in a later film with a more challenging storyline by the director. In short, a good film with some sex bits chucked in with a few violent flashes and some fancy camerawork with posh film symbolism shoehorned in too. Great first date film! Review: The talking fox says: "Chaos reigns..." - Love it or hate it, you can't deny that there's something very hypnotic about this film. I must admit that it's the only Lars von Trier film I've seen and it took a second viewing to realise that it's a work of genius, but a work of genius that definitely isn't to everyone's taste. It must be one of the most dividing films of modern times due to it's shocking and now infamous scenes of sex, violence and genital mutilation. But the body horror isn't the reason I grew to like the film so much: it's the simplicity and the visual power of Von Trier's directing. He (Dafoe) and She (Gainsbourg) loose their only child when it falls from a high window and dies. She goes into a prolonged state of mourning and He, a psychiatrist, decides to expose her to her fears in order to overcome grief. In this case her fear is the aptly-named Eden, a vast forest with a log cabin at its centre. Retreating into the woods the couple find paradise, lost; as She points out later, "Nature is Satan's church". The film is a barrage of symbolism ruled over by the Three Beggars (a deer carrying a stillborn faun fetus, a fox disembowling itself and a crow that never dies) who represent Grief, Pain and Despair. The abstract nature of the film is emphasised by the dreamlike scenes that occur, inspired, as it says at the end, by Andrei Tarkovsky himself. The film's bizarre imagery is made possible by Von Trier's use of the "Phantom Camera" that shoots at 1000 frames per second, allowing for super slow motion that is implemented in the film's stunning black and white prologue and She's eerie dream sequences. There is something very primal about the film -- a couple alone in an isolated forest surrounded by Nature. Von Trier often lingers upon the sights and sounds of the woods such as the shadows of the trees, the falling of acorns and the forest itself stretching for miles into the distance. You can feel the weight of Nature itself crushing down on She especially: she succumbs and is driven to madness. Von Trier has even been accused of misogyny, as the film deals frequently with the "evil nature of women" (hence the symbol of female in the film's title); the fact that She could represent Eve, the cause of the Fall of Man, suggests this. She was also writing a thesis on gynodice, a book filled with disturbing woodcuts of witch trials and covens. The second half of the film is dark and bleak and where most of the controvery lies, but don't let that put you off. Lastly, the film is a testament to the two leads, Gainsbourg in particular. The acting is top notch, the best I've seen in a while. When you realise how physically gruelling and demanding the film must've been for the actors it is good to know that the final product shows off their abilities as much as possible. Frankly it is Oscar-winning material, but due to the film's very un-Hollywood nature it could sadly go unnoticed. But already the film has become something of a phenomenon, particularly the talking fox and its words "Chaos reigns". All sorts of things pop up when you type it into Google images, you can watch Youtube videos of the phrase superimposed into Fantastic Mr. Fox, and there is even a t-shirt available with the phrase on it. For all its hate the film (or a part of it) has become a cultural hit. I do highly recommend this film, though most of the people I know would probably be disgusted. You have been warned...but watch it anyway and you could be unpleasantly surprised.