Antichrist

Filmmaker Lars von Trier’s relentless (and undeniable) spiral into irrelevance continues with Antichrist, an effort that admittedly opens with some promise but inevitably becomes as tedious and interminable an experience as one could possibly envision. The film follows a nameless married couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) as they attempt to cope with the tragic death of their infant son, with his background as a psychiatrist leading him to insist that the two take a trip to their cabin in the woods – where they’ll be forced to confront and conquer their greatest fears (it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that things start to go awry almost immediately). Von Trier’s decision to kick the proceedings off with an almost hilariously over-the-top (yet undeniably striking) slow-motion sequence proves effective at immediately capturing the viewer’s interest, although, as becomes clear quick enough, the remainder of Antichrist boasts a total absence of compelling elements and it’s certainly not surprising to note that the film moves from intriguing to unwatchable with astounding expediency. The oppressively deliberate pace with which von Trier has infused the movie is exacerbated by his aggressively uneventful screenplay, as the lack of plot becomes increasingly impossible to overlook due primarily to the infuriatingly banal conversations between “He” and “She” – with the psychobabble-heavy dialogue ensuring that the viewer has exceedingly little invested in the well being of the two central characters. And, as expected, von Trier has suffused Antichrist with a whole host of eye-rollingly avant garde and downright inexplicable elements that succeed only in provoking unintentional laughter from the viewer (ie what the hell is up with that talking fox?), while the movie’s now-legendary third act, though admittedly quite impressive in its brutality, is rendered completely meaningless by the incompetence of everything preceding it. Antichrist‘s abject failure is particularly frustrating given the effectiveness of both Dafoe and Gainsbourg’s work here, as the actors have thrown themselves into their thinly-developed characters with a courageousness that would be Oscar-worthy in a better movie – which, when coupled with the sporadically creepy atmosphere, cements the film’s place as an aggravatingly misguided and thoroughly pointless endeavor.

1/2* out of ****