Antichrist
Last night, I found myself with the chance to actually watch Antichrist, one of the two films I mentioned last week here.
We were about 10 seconds in when we got to see the first close-up shot of full penetration during sex. Which was certainly one hell of a way to start the film, I must say. After that, though, things slowed down a lot - there was some plot about a couple who lost their child (he fell out of a window while they were having sex) and the woman wasn't coping well with it all. Her husband, who was apparently a therapist, was trying to help her and so took her out to an old cabin in a forest (called Eden) that she had become scared of. There, we got to see a (CGI) deer with her stillborf fawn hanging out of her and a talking fox that was disembowling itself.
Then there was some stuff about how nature is evil, and how because women are connected to nature that means they're all evil too. I have to say I wasn't too impressed by any of this, despite Nick trying to argue that, as it was the woman saying this and she was obviously batshit insane, it didn't actually count. Then things started getting really fucked up.
The couple start having sex again on the floor of the woodshed, but the woman has what can only be described as the psychotic break to end all psychotic breaks, grabs a large piece of wood and whacks her husband in the gonads with it. This understandably makes him pass out with the pain, and so she proceeds to masturbate him to orgasm, where he ejaculates blood all over her. Then she takes a drill and drills a hole in his calf (he's still unconscious through this, by the way), puts a metal shaft through the hole and screws on a millstone to his leg.
When he wakes up, he's surprisingly not in nearly as much pain as he actually should be, but all things considered he decides that he should probably get the hell out of there. He hides in a cave and has to beat a crow to death when it nearly gives him away, but she finds him again and nearly buries him alive trying to dig him out. Then she drags him back to the cabin and, in some sort of revelation, decides to punish herself. She she has him masturbate her and then cuts off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors. In close up. Meanwhile, he's finally managed to get that bloody millstone off his foot and gets up to leave, but she attacks him with the scissors and he has to strangle her to death.
The film ends with him burning her body on a funeral pyre and then limping off to get out of the woods, only to be met and surrounded by hundreds of women who come out of nowhere.
In trying to come up with something good to say about this film, I can only come up with, "Well, at least it has equal opportunity cringe-inducing scenes..." Seriously, what the fuck?
This is why I've never liked Lars Von Trier. I really just don't get most of what he's trying to say with his films, and personally I think he's too pretentious for his own good and too obsessed with seeing what he can get away with in the name of art.
But seriously, I say again, what the fuck?
(Last.fm is being bitterly ironic with the music too, I see...
We were about 10 seconds in when we got to see the first close-up shot of full penetration during sex. Which was certainly one hell of a way to start the film, I must say. After that, though, things slowed down a lot - there was some plot about a couple who lost their child (he fell out of a window while they were having sex) and the woman wasn't coping well with it all. Her husband, who was apparently a therapist, was trying to help her and so took her out to an old cabin in a forest (called Eden) that she had become scared of. There, we got to see a (CGI) deer with her stillborf fawn hanging out of her and a talking fox that was disembowling itself.
Then there was some stuff about how nature is evil, and how because women are connected to nature that means they're all evil too. I have to say I wasn't too impressed by any of this, despite Nick trying to argue that, as it was the woman saying this and she was obviously batshit insane, it didn't actually count. Then things started getting really fucked up.
The couple start having sex again on the floor of the woodshed, but the woman has what can only be described as the psychotic break to end all psychotic breaks, grabs a large piece of wood and whacks her husband in the gonads with it. This understandably makes him pass out with the pain, and so she proceeds to masturbate him to orgasm, where he ejaculates blood all over her. Then she takes a drill and drills a hole in his calf (he's still unconscious through this, by the way), puts a metal shaft through the hole and screws on a millstone to his leg.
When he wakes up, he's surprisingly not in nearly as much pain as he actually should be, but all things considered he decides that he should probably get the hell out of there. He hides in a cave and has to beat a crow to death when it nearly gives him away, but she finds him again and nearly buries him alive trying to dig him out. Then she drags him back to the cabin and, in some sort of revelation, decides to punish herself. She she has him masturbate her and then cuts off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors. In close up. Meanwhile, he's finally managed to get that bloody millstone off his foot and gets up to leave, but she attacks him with the scissors and he has to strangle her to death.
The film ends with him burning her body on a funeral pyre and then limping off to get out of the woods, only to be met and surrounded by hundreds of women who come out of nowhere.
In trying to come up with something good to say about this film, I can only come up with, "Well, at least it has equal opportunity cringe-inducing scenes..." Seriously, what the fuck?
This is why I've never liked Lars Von Trier. I really just don't get most of what he's trying to say with his films, and personally I think he's too pretentious for his own good and too obsessed with seeing what he can get away with in the name of art.
But seriously, I say again, what the fuck?
(Last.fm is being bitterly ironic with the music too, I see...