How I’m feeling a day after watching Antichrist:
1. It’s worse than watching porn with your parents.
2. Nevertheless, I’m not disappointed that I saw it.
The first thing I’ve been telling people when they ask about it is that it’s incredibly beautiful. The visuals are exactly what I want out of cinematography. While every single frame is breathtaking and worthy of being printed and hung on my walls, Anthony Dod Mantel (I just Googled him) is unquestionably a cinematographer rather than a director of photography. (He also did – in addition to a slew of Scandinavian films – Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later, which is one of my favs.) One of my biggest film pet peeves is when scenes start like compelling photographs but feel flat and contrived translated to a medium with motion.
On a related note, I wish I had watched it on mute. The ambient sounds were fair. The music was appropriate. The writing was horrible. Laughable. In rare form, Bobby and I giggled our way through explicit sex scenes more because of the inane and unrealistic dialogue than out of immaturity.
Nevertheless, it lived up to my expectations. Which is an unusual thing for a movie to do lately (see: Where the Wild Things Are, Paranormal Activity). I watched the movie after building it up for 3 weeks wanting to be shocked, disturbed, or at the very least creeped out, and it did not let me down. I respect the movie for grossing me out and horrifying me with sadomasochism legitimately used to further the plot without being the main focus. But I think Lars von Trier has to be absurdly arrogant to think that he made a huge statement with it. I get it. Human Nature and Mourning and Desire and Self-Flagellation-as-Repentance. Cool. The script made me feel like he thinks I, personally, am an idiot. But who’s the one who used a talking fox?
As much as I would miss the dreamy forest images, I could have done without anything past the Prologue. The Prologue is moving, unsettling, and beautiful, there’s no obnoxious dialogue, and it leaves all the violent guilt to your imagination rather than spelling it out, alongside impressively realistic vulgar doodles, in washable marker on wide-ruled notebook paper.