Criticized artwork - the Antichrist
As my criticized artwork I chose one of films of Lars Von Trier which were almost from start of his career criticized for it’s themes, ideas and sometimes pornographic nature. I chosen his controversial film Antichrist to analyze. Lars in his works aim manly on confronting taboos, bringing them down and showing us the world from fresh point of view. He thinks we need to talk about these topic to discover ourselves. To achieve this awakening we need to see things we don’t want to look at and talk about things we don’t wanna talk about. He cocreated whole young filmaker group called Dogma 95 to reject Hollywood cliques and replacing them with something new. Von Trier for his stories often choose a tales of scorn, fallen or unstable women challenging us to watch them while judging them for their crimes agains society such as child endangerment, promiscuity, instability or just basic rudeness. But often he embrace their dysfunction as a hidden strength studying the limits of their desires and discovering true about their inner nature. After watching his film we might desire to grasp some kind of answer to phylosopical questions he pose. This is mostly false expectation cause any answer would be just another way to make us feel comfortable and last thing Lars want is us to feel comfortable. [youtube.com, the Take]
The film Antichrist at the first look seems to be just shock value exploitation which you show to your friends just to see their reaction but that would miss the point of the movie as a meditation on human nature: Are we good, are we evil or something more. The Antichrist came from Von Trier period of deep depression when after long life career as a filmmaker he thought he couldn’t make another movie but the opposite was true. He made his another film piece great study of battle of man agains nature and his inner nature. But critics wasn’t on the same page. Antichrist was accused of “rampant misogyny”, “being an abomination” and “easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes film history.” [Xan Brooks, Guardian]
For Time magazine it was “spectacle of director going mad.” And understandably so. Antichrist is deeply disturbing picture about grief and loss full of cathartic dual imagery. Right from the start film show us face of climaxing women cut oppose to her child falling to his death. Later during therapy in the woods husband character named only as He sees calm beauty of the forest contrasting with wounded fox literary devouring its organs, birds of prey eating their young as they fallen out of the nest and so on. Wife character named only as She goes as far as to drilling the hole in husbands leg, attaching it to huge whetstone making him by her words unable to leave her and continues to hack off her own body parts in ways too graphic to even mention cause she feels it connects her to her dead child. No wonder that even years after its release was film banned from french TV and cinema for scenes of unsimulated sex by actors doubles and its extreme violence. [Nancy Tartaglione, Deadline]
If the movie is just gory torture porn with no redeeming quality or brilliant master piece of misunderstood genius is judgement left upon you. For me it was deeply disturbing look into the core of Lars Von trier inner demons which still stays with me after years from my last viewing of it.
[sources: youtube.com, guardian.com, deadline.com]
