The film "Antichrist": reviews, actors, roles, director

The project of the main provocateur of the modern film industry Lars von Trier with the expressive title "Antichrist" is one of the most controversial and controversial movie premieres of 2009. The ribbon was presented at the Moscow and Cannes Film Festivals. After that, the film "Antichrist" reviews fell down in an incredible amount. A barrage of harsh criticism struck the creator and the film itself. Lars von Trier was charged with abuse of the film's structure with shocking sexual and aggressive episodes. Because of this, the film "Antichrist" reviews are called arthouse of pure water - meaningful, pretentious, with traditional authoring tools.

Demonstration of human situations

The author consciously and deliberately blurs the limits of what is permissible, mixing death with lust, tragedy with pleasure. This is a skilful metaphorical film of the horror genre with fairly frank, almost pornographic scenes. And yet such a clear demonstration of borderline human feelings, emotions and situations can not overshadow the psychological message, skillfully disguised by the Danish film artist. The main thing is to try to be unbiased while watching. "Antichrist" is a film, a description of which can not be done without taking into account its hidden psychological context. Even the creator himself acknowledged that his child has a certain therapeutic value.

Creators

The film "Antichrist" reviews critics as a monofilm. Indeed, this is an individual, solo work. The director originally planned to shoot genre films and drew one of the most successful screenwriters of Denmark, Anders Thomas Jensen, to work on the script, but after abandoning his services and rewriting almost the entire dramatic basis himself. In addition, he intended to act in the hypostasis of the operator, but Trier had to abandon this idea, since he had not yet recovered from his stay at the clinic where he was treated for depression. Lars's hands trembled, so his longtime companion, Anthony Dod Mantla, became the operator. It was he who managed to remove the Westphalian forests so magically.

Structure

The film "Antichrist", the content of which is divided into six conditional parts ("the number of the beast"), can be conditionally divided into a prologue, an epilogue and four chapters. And the stylistics of these middle parts is fundamentally different from the prologue and epilogue. In the beginning and the end of the picture, the author ignores the "live" camera and the muted colors of the color scheme. They are black and white (the trademark of art-art), and behind the scenes there is a tragic aria from Handel, but somehow soothing, and there is no other musical arrangement in the picture. And all movements are slowed to the limit, literally enough to count to 10 until the drop of water falls to the floor. Such a prologue is the film "Antichrist". Critics' comments noted that it is this classic beauty that allows to successfully exhibit the Man and the Woman (the heroes do not have names) who indulge in love joys. The picture is so beautiful that the beholder finds out with difficulty in the Man of the American actor Willem Defoe, and in the Woman - the French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Actors

The cast is composed of the lead actors Willem Defoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Storm Akech Salstrem. About their actor's work can be said with a certain degree of conventionality. For the performers of the roles of the main characters, participation in this project was not a risky step, in their filmography there is a suitable background. Willem Defoe starred in the role of Jesus in the project of Martin Scorsese - heretical film "The Last Temptation of Christ". Favorite child parents freethinkers, Charlotte Gainsbourg, also does not lag behind in the number of shocking film. But for director von Trier, most likely, it was completely unimportant. He tried many stage masters during the casting, but chose those who agreed to become an obedient tool in his trembling hands and did not ask unnecessary questions. Play the main female role in the film could and Eva Green, but the actress could not allow themselves to manipulate themselves fully. On the advice of the director Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, before the start of the filming, they watched the "Mirror" of Tarkovsky. And then they simply entrusted their characters to Trier. It seems that it is with his light hand that the heroes at the beginning of the film are still subject to Stanislavsky's immortal school, but after all they forget about it, as about all other schools, and about the laws of logic. Actor's composition of the painting, if worth the award, is mainly for total self-giving. And also for participating in the creation of one of the most complicated Trière works.

Plot

The plot of the film "Antichrist" is a story about the painful attempt of psychotherapeutic healing, which ended very tragically. An elderly married couple lost a child who fell out of the window either after seeing the first snow, or at the time of intimacy of parents. After some time, the main character - a psychoanalyst husband - undertakes to treat his wife's protracted depression independently. His goal is to study the fear, about which the hero tells the hero. At first, the object of her unrest is the abstract forest, which, as it turns out later, is associated with Eden paradise. "Antichrist" is a film whose description of the plot is continued by the suburban journey of the main characters. It is there, in the "field" conditions, that the main events of the picture are played out. As the depression progresses, the behavior of the main character becomes completely irrational, the woman is governed by aggression and sexual attraction. This art house story ends with the fact that the director as an Antichrist shows a group of women making their way through the forest. This is the only mention in the story of whose name is put in the headline.

Religious background

In the epilogue the meaning of the film "Antichrist" is revealed - the religious background of emotions, which the author embodied in a sophisticated cinematic form. All members of the Trierov psychotherapeutic session, deep in themselves, as expected, faced a collective unconscious - a kind of genetic memory. Therefore, they discovered the presence of psychological problems, called existential ones. Scandalously famous cinematographer did not hesitate to use the sexually biblical metaphor briskly, through her thinking about the imperfection of our world. If the viewer does not manage to tune in to this perception, he may be disappointed by the ambiguous visual series, which is oversaturated with naturalistic details.

Burn at the stake!

Trier took off a frightening, unbearably terrible film. An adequate reaction to the primitive viscous horror is either leaving the show, or a nervous laugh. The picture affects not only the organs of vision, it like the virus affects the entire body. In this it resembles a potent drug in a huge dose or a heavy drug. That is why many, in principle, civilized viewers behave as if possessed by demons during the Antichrist show. Not without reason did Lars von Trier want to burn many people at the stake before, even after "Dogvil" and "Dancing in the Dark". He, like enfant terrible, has long tried on the role of the "accursed creator", that's why he uses his author's strategy, combining the incompatible, creating an explosive cocktail of incompatible components.

No comment

With elements of pornography, Lars von Trier flirted repeatedly (most successfully in "Idiots"), this could endure many. Even in this work, some critics consider cardinal self-mutilation and sadistic scenes to be completely justified, suggesting too nervous viewers to squint, after continuing the viewing. Unforgivable even for Trier, the whole movie community considered the combination of the movie "Antichrist" with the aesthetics of Tarkovsky and direct quotes from "Stalker" and "Mirror". And the fact that the director dedicated the project to the flagship of Christian morality, Andrei Arsen'evich Tarkovsky, specialists in the majority leave without comment, in contrast to his fans and opponents. The first Trierovian homage was called blasphemy, and the latter - a sophisticated mockery of the universally recognized genius.