The sad thing about Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" is that it is an ineffective mess. The film had me leaving the theatre thinking for hours of not what it meant but why it was such an ineffective mess. The truth is that I'm still trying to piece that together but I've come up with some heavy verdicts. Von Trier has proved that his strength is manipulating our emotions and leading us through painful journeys to an emotional, honest climax or catharsis. "Breaking The Waves" is possibly a masterpiece because of this effectiveness. Later films like "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville" aspire to this as well. There is something to be said about the scaled down quality and "Dogme95" honesty that he has worked with. These are the films he was meant to make. He is in way over his head with a film such as Antichrist. He teases us with developing this interesting relationship with He and She. While I was a bit bored with the earlier development, it looked as though we were going to explore the emotionally naked territory he has led past actors into which is thrilling to watch. Instead, he begins to throw crazy visuals at us like the body parts sprouting through a tree, a talking fox proclaiming "Chaos Reigns"(WTF), a deer running away in the middle of giving birth, and more. What I was at least looking for here was for a developed connection between these wild visuals and the emotional honesty of the characters but there was obviously none and really no point to these visuals as they really don't make any connection other than to be jarring and sometimes cool-looking effects; whereas someone like a Kubrick would have found a way to connect these visuals and serve the story or the concept. Beyond that, he decides to take us into a world of shock, Eli Roth-style. Anybody up for a little blood ejaculation? How about a little snip-snip of the old clitoris? Old knife-sharpener wheel through the leg? I will say I didn't think Willem Dafoe could have had it worse than "Platoon". I was wrong. In this attempt at shock, which I guess will affect some, he insults the audience thinking he can get a payoff by assuming to reach such brave horrifying cinematic heights and crossing such boundaries by displaying such taboo, shocking, assumptively-creative, shock-gore. I could go further into this but basically, he betrays the audience and questions our intelligence by thinking that we are stupid enough to be as emotionally impacted as we have been with his earlier honest works. I could go on in general. The actors dump more than there heart and soul into this probably hoping to achieve something Bjork or Emily Watson may have reached but were instead betrayed by Von Trier's cop-out. If it is a compliment, I will continue to think about this film for some time. Unfortunately, though, it's clear he doesn't achieve anything here because he doesn't earn it as he has in the past. *1/2 out of 4
Review of Antichrist
