"A crying woman is a scheming woman." Antichrist.

I first heard about Lars Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ last year during the Cannes Film Festival when Charlotte Gainsbourg took home the coveted Best Actress Palme d’Or for her portrayal of “She”. The film also received an “anti-award” from the ecumenical jury of the festival, who declared it to be “the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world.” Indeed, the film is profoundly anti-women, yet the sexism comes from She, not He (Willem Defoe).

Antichrist is depicted in four chapters and bookended by a Prologue and Epilogue. In the Prologue, we see He and She have passionate sex while their infant son, in the next room, crawls out of his crib and falls to his death from his window. The film then begins with chapter 1, ‘Grief’, in which She goes into such a profound state of mourning that she needs to be hospitalized. He, a therapist, is wary of how many pills she is taking and decides to treat her himself through exposure therapy, bringing her to their serene woodland getaway, aptly called Eden.

As She begins to unravel, the story moves on to Chapter 2, ‘Pain (Chaos Reigns)’, in which He starts to understand why She has come to fear Eden, as the very nature surrounding them seems to hold a keen sense of menace and foreboding. This leads to her explanation that nature is 'Satan's Church' and that woman's nature is fundamentally evil, a conclusion she achieved while studying Gynocide in and around the 12th century for her thesis, which she attempted to write during her last trip to Eden.

The final two chapters, ‘Despair (Gynocide)’ and ‘The Three Beggars’ bring the film to its bloody climax, involving disturbing sexual violence in which She smashes her husband’s testicles with a wooden plank, masturbates him until he ejaculates blood, and drills a hole into his leg so she can bolt him to a heavy grind-stone. In her final act of self-hatred, She severs her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors.

I knew of these scenes before seeing the film, and when I first learned of them, I immediately told myself ‘absolutely not. I am not seeing this movie.’ However, as something of a masochist, at least when it comes to film, curiosity got the best of me, and I am ultimately thankful it did. Many reviews I read describe it as being strangely beautiful, and at first I thought those people must be severely disturbed. However, now that I have seen it, I find myself in their position. Is it profoundly horrific and disturbing? Absolutely. But it also contains images so haunting and delicate that it is impossible to ignore the film’s overall sense of beauty. This is achieved through a keen use of the language of cinematography, employed most expertly in the Prologue.

Ultimately, I am still rather stumped by this film. I truly do not know what to make of it. I certainly cannot say I disliked it, it is unlike any film I have ever seen, but at the same time, I have absolutely no desire to ever go near it again. And so, no, I do not recommend Antichrist. Viewing this film is a decision that has to be made by the individual, as I truly believe it is a different experience for each member of the audience.