The Most Misogynist Movie from the Self-Proclaimed Biggest Director in the World

What is it that attracts me to the films that get booed at during film festivals? And the directors who are arrogant enough to answer a question like, "Why did you make this film," with a response that goes something like, "I don't think I need to answer that question. I am here to show my film and you are my guests watching it. I owe you nothing." Lars Von Trier is one of my favorite directors and will forever remain a genius in my eyes. He is attacked left and right for being Anti-American, misogynistic, crude, and disgusting. To me, he is all these things, yet that is what draws me to his films even more. They shed light on so many things in life that are, by their very nature, cruel, manipulative, and heart-wrenching. He doesn't tip-toe around any subject he is exploring. He doesn't feel the need to stay on the surface - he always goes deep inside whatever it is he wants to show his audience. I was first introduced to him when I saw the film Dogville. Since then, I am becoming more and more obsessed. While watching his latest film, Antichrist, I realized how powerful a director he is and how powerful the medium of film can be, when its boundaries are pulled further out. By breaking all the rules, he instigated timeless, unforgettable discoveries.

Antichrist is a film about a married couple whose 2-year old son jumps out of a window to his death. The mother progressively goes insane and the father decides he will leave his position as husband and take on the role of psychiatrist in hopes of healing his wife's pain. The two go to their vacation cabin in the woods to take on and conquer their biggest fears, but instead are met with more insanity and uncontrollable grief. The lead actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg horrifies the audience with a performance that feels so real you want to turn away. The physical and emotional pain that she goes through on screen seems intangible, yet Gainsbourg acts as though she herself had lost her only child. Her night terrors, and other such moments when her body is taken over by something outside of herself, a grief that takes control of her even physically - these scenes are forever ingrained in my mind. I was shaking for two hours after the screening. Driving in the car, on the way to dinner, I had an uncontrollable physical reaction to the film - I had short and sudden convulsions. My shoulders would twist suddenly, for example. I could barely believe that this was happening to me as the result of a film.

The movie itself is not all that gruesome or violent, up until the last half-hour, when all hell breaks loose, quite literally. Though the last portion of the film will forever frighten me, when I think back to how I feel, it is the overall tone and visual style of the film that will always remind me of the mood of the film. The camera is manipulated perfectly and sets the viewer into the heads of the somewhat deranged subjects that appear on the screen. We feel the nausea they feel, the horror, the intimacy. With Antichrist, Lars Von Trier brings the audience a new form of cinema. A kind of style that defines a movement. While being so intellectually stimulating and involved, the film is so guttural and raw that one cannot help but feel infected. At a certain point in the film, I felt my body sinking into my seat and I had never felt that way before while watching a movie. The acting, cinematography, and overall sense of direction proves that this Swedish filmmaker understands how to horrify an audience. The medium of film is used as a hypnotic force that moves viewers physically, as I can vouch for the fact that I felt physically as much as I did emotionally during the screening. The amount of power that a film director can have over a group of people sitting in the dark is now obvious to me. The opening sequence alone proves how very chilling, gripping, and mythical a film can be: