Not being bold enough is not likely to be one of the criticisms to meet Lars Von Triers Antichrist, which caused quite the stir in its press screenings Sunday and is sure to be the talk of Cannes as it screens officially tomorrow. Roger Ebert called it the most despairing film hes ever seen: It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. Its been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell.
In a blog entry entitled Antichrist = Fartbomb, Jeffrey Wells seems to disagree, calling the film easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist in a way that invites comparison to the sinking of the Titanic.
Austin 360s Charles Ealy, however, said he felt like he just experienced a moment in cinematic history. The movies violence has an emotional impact that hasnt been seen since Gaspar Noes Irreversible, which premiered here a few years ago, he says. Critics will be debating whether these images were justified by the story, but part of the point is apparently to shock. Cinematic precedents exist, of course, but the explicitness of these scenes take Antichrist way beyond whats come before.
indieWIREs Anthony Kaufman also found cautiously positive things to say about the film in his review, noting that while theres no doubt that the place he goes is off a precipitous edge, one cant deny the films continuing primal power.
Finally, in a not-quite review , Entertainment Weeklys Lisa Schwarzbaum suggests it was the kind of scandal-courting press premiere on Sunday evening that the wily Danish bad-boy filmmaker must have hoped for: The movie looks almost tauntingly great, of course, with von Triers longtime collaborator (and Slumdog Millionaire Oscar winner) Anthony Dod Mantle as cinematographer. So its one good-looking, publicity-grabbing provocation, with an overlay of pseudo-Christian allegory thrown in to deflect a reasonable persons accusations of misogyny. As a kicker, the director dedicates the picture to the memory of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovskya final flip of the bird to the Cannes audience.
