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Its hard to know where to start with this. Is it a good film? well its early to tell for me. I certainly wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but felt that it was an experience watching it. Its definately shocking, and should not be watched by anyone easily offended – and believe me when I say that sex features heavily in it. One of the first scenes had a passage of actual penetrative sex – which I had a problem identifying initially as obviously its not something you see in anything other than a porn film. Secondly there are very graphic images of violence and often connected with sex as well – although its almost exclusively aimed at the films main male character played by Willem Dafoe. Scenes of torture and mutilation obviously put it squarely in the horror genre which is played with throughout the film. Add to this the main story is about the death of a couples child and you can begin to see why this was a very difficult film, and controversial in many ways. There are quite a few other complexities as there is a lot of symbolism, most of the film is set in a very dark and moody forest. Willem Dafoe’s character is meant to be a therapist and initially the film starts out on that direction but eventually his academic knowledge and spelled out theories give way to reading the signs and understanding there is something far more fundamental at play. Often he is spoken to by animals in a dream like state. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character I started to loose sympathy with as she becomes increasingly sadistic and chaotic, which was of course the film makers intention.
It’s hard not to lampoon a film when its shot in slow motion black and white ( in parts ). He obviously intended to do this to remove any emotional response from the initial scenes but it does have that ultimate art house pretentiousness to it initially. The film also has a funny little lull just after it starts where nothing really happens for ages. Other than that I can really aim very little criticism at it. It is an art house film and draws very heavily on painting for some of the scenes besides all the symbolic imagery, Goya comes to mind, and probably Breugel amongst quite a few. Obviously it will be hated by the Daily Mail brigade and anyone else easily upset by something thats clearly intended as a work of art but will ultimately be read as a corruption of sensibility.
In terms of the HD, its definately a quality experience. Many of the scenes are shot with very high resolution B&W film and are tangibly rich. The colour work is also drenched in atmosphere and mood. The main hurdle to its success as a blu-ray is the fact that its going to be just such a controversial film. It one click up the art house scale away from something like the Shinning which it has a lot in common with, but I cant see that many people going for it. It makes a great change for me to be reviewing something that is definately not mainstream though.

Tags: Antichrist, Art House, b&w, Lars Von Trier, Willem Dafoe

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Art, Film, USA indie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.