MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Antichrist’

“Antichrist” feels less like an art house film than a parody of one: Pretentious, meandering, misogynistic and beautifully shot, the latest from Lars von Trier would be considered a provocation if it wasn’t so laughable.

Famously debuting to derisive hoots from the assembled cineastes at Cannes earlier this year, “Antichrist” is just as bad as you may have heard. It’s a ruthless mixture of torture porn and pop psychology as shot by a man enamored with black-and-white perfume commercials.

Indeed, the opening section — in which He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) make passionate love while their toddler son falls out of an open window to his death — is shot in monochromatic slow motion, calling to mind the sillier excesses inserted into advertisements for jewelry and eau du toilette by bored film school grads.

Crushed by a crippling depression after the death of their child, He and She retire to Eden (get it?) to talk through her problems and see if they can salvage their relationship. Along the way we discover that She has been seized by the idea that women are innately evil because of their sexuality, encounter a talking fox and watch She crush He’s testicles with a log before doing similar violence to herself.

That last bit — you know, the genital mutilation — is relatively self-explanatory and probably not fit for analysis in a family newspaper, so let’s circle back to the rampant misogyny and the talking fox for a moment, shall we?

As the movie progresses, we discover that She is a frustrated academic whose work on gynocide — the mass killing of women throughout the centuries — has stalled, in part because She has come to believe that women are, in fact, evil and bring the murders upon themselves. As if to confirm this diagnosis we are presented with the aforementioned sexual violence and learn that She forced their son to wear his shoes on the wrong feet, causing him excruciating pain and deforming his tootsies.

I’m loath to throw around terms like “misogyny” because they’re so loaded and so often misapplied, but “Antichrist” goes out if its way to earn the label.

The real question isn’t whether or not “Antichrist” is misogynistic, but whether or not a movie with a talking fox can be taken seriously enough to count as misogynistic. Can a movie that inspires so much unintentional laughter by having its protagonist encounter a fox that calmly proclaims “Chaos reigns” while chewing on its own entrails really contain a thoughtful examination of the role of women in the world?

The only thing that saves “Antichrist” from being a total waste of time is the lush, often ethereal, photography. It is striking and more than a little beautiful, both in its self-parodic perfume ad phase and its dreamlike waltz through Eden phase. Mr. Von Trier may be a woman-hater, but he sure knows how to shoot a film.

★
TITLE: “Antichrist”
RATING: R (for graphic violence, sexuality, language and nudity)
CREDITS: Written and directed by Lars von Trier
RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes
WEB SITE: https://www.antichristthemovie.com/
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS