Lars von Trier's "AntiChrist"

There has been a lot written so far about Lars von Trier’s new film “AntiChrist”, and, despite its explicit character (is is not rated but would surely get an NC-17), it is not far from Von Trier’s more obviously cerebral “dogme” work. Like many of his other films, it is structured in parts (here, grief, pain and despair, with a prologue and epilogue), and uses woodcut-like illustrations to introduce the movements.

Furthermore, most of the film has an otherworldly, extraterrestrial quality. The prologue, where Willem Dafoe and wife Charlotte Gainsbourg are celebrating the Song of Solomon, is in black and white, and the fall of the little boy to the snowy pavement has a slow-motion, abstract quality to it, as if it were part of a drawing. Then in the movie proper, the couple is in the woods, presumably in Germany, but Von Trier gives the fern-laden forest a misty, bluish tent, almost like vegetation imagined to grow on a small planet around an M-star. This road trip and apotheosis in the cabin take on an other worldly quality.


Some of the things that the couple do to each other are among the most explicit ever seen in the legitimate art market, and they may satisfy voyeuristic curiousity. The music is interesting: Handel in the prologue and epilogue, and horror fare in the three main sections, especially in the scenes involving the deer, fox and crow.

Has the couple slipped into evil? Has "He" out of lack of forgiveness? At least he is "opposed to Christ."

The earlier film of Von Trier that comes closest to this is probably “Breaking the Waves”; remember that Dogville and Mandalay are laid out on mapped stages. Many of Von Trier’s films, including this one, are filmed in 2.35:1 even though that supposedly violates the concepts of Dogme.

The film bears comparison to the gay horror road-movie short "Bugcrush" by Carter Smith, where there is some conceptual similarity.

I have a screenplay script called "Prescience" where the "aliens" have laid out a set of civilizations along a circular railroad track, radially identical but representing different time periods in history, where the characters abucted from earth go on a "treasure hunt" bringing artifacts back into the earlier "civilization" segments, as the entire planet prepare to evacuate because of an approaching brown dwarf. Since this would be laid out on a stage, it sounds like a Von Trier concept.

The website for "AnitChrist" is here. The distributor is IFC Films.

YouTube Trailer from "TheIndependent" about Cannes:



Note: May 19, 2011: In the heading, the last name had been misspelled with an "a" instead of an "o", as well as in a few places in the text. It's fixed now.  It should have read "Lars von Trier" everywhere.