Synopsis
“I would like to invite you for a tiny glimpse behind the curtain, a glimpse into the dark world of my imagination: into the nature of my fears, into the nature of Antichrist.” -Lars von Trier
This enormously controversial psychodrama/horror film from Danish director Lars von Trier charts the degeneration of a marriage into apocalyptic violence, chaos, and insanity following an unthinkable domestic tragedy. Following a prologue in which a couple ("He" and "She") experiences the tragic death of their young child, Von Trier divides the film into four chapters, beginning with "Grief." In that segment, the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) finishes a month's hospitalization, and accuses her husband (Willem Defoe) of apathy over the child's death, but proceeds to take responsibility for it herself; he calmly and rationally guides her through this process. In the second segment, "Pain," she confesses to him that she's most terrified of their property in the forest, because she spent time with her son there over the preceding summer; as a form of therapy, he takes her to that locale on a wilderness retreat. She appears to grow more calm and rational over their first days in that milieu. Yet the recovery, it seems, was only illusory, and the subsequent two chapters, "Despair (Gynocide)" and "The Three Beggars," depict the woman's shocking and abrupt regression into unbridled insanity, culminating with grotesque violence against herself, gruesome acts of destruction against her husband, and an apocalyptic climax.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Two years ago, I suffered from depression. It was a new experience for me. Everything, no matter what, seemed unimportant, trivial. I couldn’t work. Six months later, just as an exercise, I wrote a script. It was a kind of therapy, but also a search, a test to see if I would ever make another film. The script was finished and filmed without much enthusiasm, made as it was using about half of my physical and intellectual capacity. The work on the script did not follow my usual modus operandi. Scenes were added for no reason. Images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking. They often came from dreams I was having at the time, or dreams I’d had earlier in my life. Once again, the subject was ”Nature,” but in a different and more direct way than before. In a more personal way. The film does not contain any specific moral code and only has what some might call ‘the bare necessities’ in the way of a plot. I read Strindberg when I was young. I read with enthusiasm the things he wrote before he went to Paris to become an alchemist and during his stay there ... the period later called his “inferno crisis” – was “Antichrist” my Inferno Crisis? My affinity with Strindberg? In any case, I can offer no excuse for ”Antichrist”. Other than my absolute belief in the film - the most important film of my entire career!
-Lars von Trier, Copenhagen, 3/25/09.
