Antichrist (2009)

[Fairweather Pure]

While a husband and wife are in their bedroom having sex, their unattended toddler falls out a window and dies. This fucks the woman up something aweful. The husband is a therapist and decides to take the wife out to a remote cabin in the woods for some intense therapy to cure her of her depression.

This is an artsy fartsy movie with extremely dense themes and symbolism. Normal people will likely be disturbed and confused in equal measure while watching this movie. Who am I kidding, normal people likely would never watch this movie anyway. This is a movie made for people who love cinema, not mere movies. (Was that pretentious enough?) If you are just an average joe, for the love of god avoid this movie. (how about that?) The depressing atmosphere in Antichrist borders on suffocating. It is intense. It reminds me, strangely, of The Fountain. I believe that both movies have more to do with the feelings they inspire than about what is actually happening on screen. Both movies are much closer to art than they are to traditional cinematic storytelling. Having said that, both movies are like oposite sides of the same coin. Where The Fountain was about love, life, peace, acceptence of death, and eternity, Anitichrist is about ugliness, loathing, hatred, depression, murder, and death. There is nothing beautiful about the themes in this movie. It is revolting and dirty from beginning to end.

You will see things in this movie that will shock and disturb you long after the movie is over. It is a very hard movie to watch. By the end it felt as if my usual jovial spirit had been submerged deep underwater and left to drown.

Just as I gave The Fountain a 10/10, I am forced to do the same to it's evil counterpart. 10/10 for digging deeper into the darkest side of the human experience than I ever thought possible from an arthouse flick. Even if you do not enjoy movies like this, you have got to give the creator credit for making you feel something so profound, even if that feeling is not a good one.

I watched this streaming on Netflix, but I plan on buying the Criterion Collection's Blu Ray version and possibly never watching it again in my entire life.

[Hesten]

I just DLed this, and hope to see it withinin a week or so. I usually cant stand Trier movies, even though he is danish, but I'll give this one a shot, to get some light entertainment after A Serbian Film