Antichrist

Antichrist (2009) is about a couple who lose their child and withdraw to a cabin in the woods, and it is not an easy film to watch. The opening is black and white and in extreme slow motion: while they are making love their small son falls from a window. She cannot manage the grief. Her husband, a therapist, takes her off her medication, takes over the treatment himself, and brings her to the house in the woods to face her fear. Things do not improve there; they invert. Von Trier wrote it while coming out of a severe depression and said so openly; the screenplay began as part of the treatment. The Cannes screening in 2009 became an event. There were walkouts, people who fainted, and hostile exchanges at the press conference. The festival's ecumenical jury took an unprecedented step and issued an anti award condemning the film; no jury had done that before. Charlotte Gainsbourg won best actress at the same festival. Anthony Dod Mantle photographed it; the opening and closing sections are shot at extreme slow speed and the rest is handheld and unsteady. The film is remembered for two scenes and both are genuinely graphic. An argument about misogyny surrounded it for years; von Trier rejected it. It runs 108 minutes. Good for: art cinema, von Trier, and extreme work. Less good for: self harm and sexual violence are explicit; it is not suitable for most viewers.