A horror flick masquerading as art house cinema, Lars von Trier's
"Antichrist" succeeds where Neil LaBute's
"The Wicker Man", an art house film artlessly propped up as Hollywood fare, so gravely failed. It is well worth comparing these two movies, considering frequent accusations of misogyny against their directors. With a markedly wooden Nicolas Cage as its leading man, "The Wicker Man" built suspense like a good mystery should, yet fizzled out thanks to an overwrought (and over-thought) plot stuffed with Wiccan mysticism and over-the-top misandry. "Antichrist", bolstered by a far more talented male lead in Willem DaFoe, drinks from a similar well of influence, yet leads viewers to its shocking, violent, and vulgar third act without forcing its slowly revealed thesis down the audience's collective throat.
That much-discussed third act is preceded by three fantastic others, each pushing forward the storyline of a couple caught in the throes of grief. The film's elegantly stylized slow-motion prologue begins with passion and ends in tragedy, a child's death that occurs seemingly at the point of his parents' coital climax. We are next brought to the child's funeral, where his mother, the talented Charlotte Gainsbourg, collapses and suffers great emotional pain. DaFoe, with a somewhat aloof affect, attempts to care for his wife as best he can, which is ultimately to both of their detriments. A therapist, DaFoe breaks one of the most basic tenets of his field by treating Gainsbourg as his patient. Relentless in his newfound role, he is almost numb to his wife's charges of arrogance for thinking he is somehow best suited to cure her, though barely able to withstand her inappropriate and unsettlingly aggressive sexual advances. When Gainsbourg engages in a form of self-harm, comparatively mild in the context of what is yet to come, DaFoe grows frustrated enough to change locales to Eden, an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere. This is the place where, as an as-yet unseen character reveals, "chaos reigns."
What follows is a procession of events both plausible and supernatural, fueled in part by emotionally daunting therapeutic exercises and the weight of a failing marriage. Mood swings can explain some of these, but certainly not all. Something more sinister is at work here in these woods; something that at least one--and maybe both--parties were privy to prior to arriving. The plentiful amount of graphic sex that occurs throughout the film could be dismissed as gratuitous--that is, until the unexpected first of a series of savage acts involving the flesh. Indeed, were DaFoe and Gainsbourg's genitals not so flagrantly displayed throughout, these next scenes would be downright preposterous. In context, however, their nudity makes sense, even as things edge towards familiar terrain covered by the "Saw" and "Hostel" franchises. Actually, torture porn is perhaps the best description for "Antichrist", and I can only hope that fans of that horror subgenre will come around to this film when it is eventually released on DVD. Though seemingly sluggish in its approach, the final twenty-or-so minutes would satiate the escalating bloodlust of moviegoers growing weary of and desensitized to Jigsaw's latest contraptions.
This leads back to the question of misogyny. I'd make the case that "Antichrist" and "The Wicker Man", respectively, serve as responses to the longstanding charges levied at their directors by feminists and film critics alike. The difference is that von Trier does so by revealing evil as something natural and inherent, while LaBute poorly portrays the banality of evil with his "difficult" women. When DaFoe despairs, one empathizes with him; when Cage does, you can't help but laugh.
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