Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I got nothing for you. If you’re looking for insight, intelligent thought, valid opinions or perhaps interpretation of Lars Von Trier’s movie ‘Antichrist’, and you’re looking for me to provide this… I got nothing for you so I would greatly advise you to move on to the next guy. I have no idea what I’ve just seen, I have no idea what the director was trying to say and I don’t know what the meaning or the point of this exercise was. But remember those days in college when you had to take some art appreciation class and your teacher showed some painting and required a written five page report on this painting? To you it looked like some clown just randomly splashed colors on a canvas but you can’t write that because you need that ‘C’ in this required class so you can get the hell out of school, and as such you just make up some bullshit and hope it flew. considering I did see this movie and it is required that I give an opinion of this movie, once I finish my description of this movie, as I usually do, I will then make up some bullshit at the end in an effort to eke out that C-grade.

Dude is having sex with his wife in the shower amidst an obnoxiously loud classical music score. This dude is played by Willem Dafoe and his wife is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. So this couple is getting on down, and I guess getting down for real since I got see, for the first time in my life on a huge multiplex screen, erect penis slipping into vagina. Never seen that before. I don’t know why I had to see this which is only the tip of the iceberg of things I won’t get in this movie, but there it goes.

Anyway, while they’re sexing it up something fierce their toddler has crawled out of his crib, unlocked the baby gate, found an open window and plummets to his death. The Wife is distraught to the point of suicide over this event which leads to her husband, a therapist, to break the unwritten rules and begin treating her with his theory behind this being that no one knows his wife like he does.

Eventually his treatment efforts leads the couple to a secluded cabin they own in a place called ‘Eden’. Hmmmm… Somewhere in Eden girlfriend discovers she has a lot of pent up fears locked away and the husband wants to ‘expose’ these fears, confront those fears and allow his wife’s grief process to continue normally. But that wife of his… man, she’s a tough nut to crack. Happy one minute, sad the next minute. One day she’s making progress the next day she’s nuts again. One minute she making crazy love to you, the next minute you wake up with a two foot metal rod screwed into your leg. Love is a mother fucker. Nietzsche said that, not me.

I will be the first one to stand up in a crowded room and let everybody know that I can plainly see that the emperor has no clothes on. I like to think I know bullshit masquerading as art when I see it and I will call it out. Oddly enough I didn’t think this about ‘Antichrist’. I honestly believe there were all kinds of messages and meaning and subtleties and not so subtleties in the screwed up imagery of Von Trier’s movie, I just didn’t get it. And as the movie played on and became more grotesque I didn’t WANT to get it. I just wanted it to end.

SPOILERS: However, let’s pretend for a minute that I did get it. And with that allow us to begin with the most obvious message that Von Trier is trying to get across to us, this being that Bitches Ain’t Shit. You can’t trust these ho’s and you certainly can’t love these ho’s. They are manipulative, scheming, duplicitous, murderous and contradictory. And those are these ho’s good points. Why do you think our couple, Man and Woman, went back to Eden? The birthplace of the duplicitous ho, and, if you decipher the information that Von Trier is pushing your way, these ho’s haven’t improved since. And don’t think for a minute the pathology of this pair is unique to this couple. This is why the director didn’t give these characters names as he feels they are representative to the species at large. There was a scene in this movie when the woman masturbates her husband and he ejaculates blood. What does that mean? Come on man, it obviously represent the depths of his love for this woman, a love that goes so deep that he’s willing to give her his true life’s blood, even in a state of unconsciousness. How does she thank him for this blind faithfulness? By mutilating him, that’s how.

Let’s not forget the dead child. After Original Sin took place in Eden, where would man’s salvation lie? The blood of the lamb, the birth of the child. Who doesn’t want to see man saved? The Great Deceiver himself… Satan of course. At the end of days mans destruction will be piloted by the antichrist, and who in this story allowed this child to die? The child that should’ve saved our couple and thus saved mankind? The Woman did. And thus the identity of the antichrist has been revealed. The final scene of our film shows our bloody, beaten, broken hearted hero, having just set his dead wife on fire, sending her back to the hell from which she obviously sprung, being descended upon, in Eden, by thousands of bitches. Just in case you thought that it was just that one bitch that is that cause of the destruction of man. No sir, it’s every last one of them.

I have no earthly clue why Lars Von Trier hates women, but he obviously does. Can’t freaking stand them. And now I can take off my pretend cap, submit my paper to my college professor and pray that I get that C.