The image is at once breathtakingly beautiful and chilling.Ĭharlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, Antichrist Yet, her face and eyes are slightly blurred, giving the viewer the impression that she can see us, but we cannot see her, instilling the feeling of being watched by some unknown and indiscernible entity. What is most unsettling about this shot is that we can clearly see her figure from afar, and that She is gazing straight at us. It is a long shot from above, and her figure is glowing an incandescent, ghostly white in contrast to the gray and rust-colored wood. Gainsbourg when, almost like a macabre fairy tale, She is shown in a dream-like sequence – in extreme slow motion – walking over a wooded bridge. Likewise, the eerie white glow of the branches also illuminates Ms. Some branches are shaped like arches, almost as if they are portals to a parallel state of reality where, as She later asserts, “nature is Satan’s church.” The trees and brambles are bone-white and skeletal, jutting out from the underbrush like the claws of some indiscernible but omnipotent beast. The color is so contrasted that it looks more like a painting than actual woods. There is no music, but only a sinister, restrained roaring noise, as if the woods are seething.
Lars von Trier Is Cannes’ Persona Non Grata Following Hitler RemarkĪfter She accuses He of indifference towards their son’s death, the scene shifts from their bedroom to a starkly black-and-white image of a wooded area. The first image we see of the woods is when He ( Willem Dafoe) and She (a mesmerizing Charlotte Gainsbourg) are still in the drab but nevertheless safe surroundings of their apartment. Von Trier’s use of the woods as a representation of paranoia, anxiety, and dread of the natural world. Much of Antichrist‘s terror stems from Mr. What I will say is this: for me, the most troubling, terrifying moments in Antichrist were essentially sexless and bloodless. From what interviews I have read, I don’t even think Mr. Just to be clear–I am not here to justify or explain these inconceivably vivid depictions of, among other things, male and female castration with found objects in a tool shed. Yet, even after witnessing through half-shielded eyes the brutal sexual violence and jarring images which eventually came to pass in the film’s second half, I realized that those unbelievably graphic, brutal scenes where not what haunted me long after Antichrist ended. These precautions proved to be unnecessary–at least for the first three quarters of the film. With this in mind, I tentatively began watching Antichrist on my laptop with one finger poised on the pause button and my other hand against my cheek, ready to veil my uncorrupted eyes at a moment’s notice. I had read articles in various newspapers and film reviews depicting the aftermath of the film’s screening at Cannes, where audience members walked out, booed, laughed, and allegedly fainted. I will not lie the only reason I decided to watch it was because it was a play instantly on my Netflix queue, and even then, it took me a good three months to muster up the stomach to press “play now.” It goes without saying that Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is a disturbing and controversial film.
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