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The PopMatters Film Blog
‘Precious’ Is Powerful, If Problematic
There is nothing worse than child abuse of any kind - physical, psychological, sexual. It’s a demonstration of power perverted, of adults taking advantage of impressionable and vulnerable minors in the cruelest, most shocking way conceivable. For a long time, it was a hidden shame, the subject of hush-hush whispers across suburban fences and the occasional sensationalized nightly news broadcast. But sometime around the mid ‘80s, the cause of exploited children everywhere gained a massive international profile. Today, we’ve gone to the opposite extremes, making the protection of kids our main social priority. No longer is the subject pushed back into the shadows of family scandal. Instead, it’s offered up as a kind of callous cautionary tale, a reason for mothers and fathers to stay ever vigilant - both of their own actions, and the unforgiveable acts of others.
So where does this leave a movie like Precious (actually entitled Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)? Within its undeniably powerful narrative and bravura performances is something so dark, so literally unwatchable at times that the level of pain which our overweight teenage heroine endures seems worse than inhuman. It’s beyond Herculean and almost otherworldly in its terrifying truth. But this raises another, almost unthinkable issue. Why? Indeed, why does an audience have to sit through what ends up being nearly two hours of emotional and physiological torture for a final pronouncement that seems to do little except confirm the hopelessness of the situation? While amazing acting and concise direction can carry us past such problems, the overwhelming bleakness of being dragged through this character’s unfathomable torment leaves you feeling stained…and unsatisfied.
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—Bill Gibron
3:30 pm
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‘Pirate Radio’ Plots a Unnecessarily Complicated Course
Instead of being the kind of bracing, insightful docudrama that sheds light on a subject few outside the UK know about, what we wind up with is a bloated effort that tries to be everything to everyone -- coming of age comedy, pop art period piece, political satire, crafty character study, ensemble romp, and/or hilarious history lesson.
One of the most intriguing things about the early ‘60s cultural craze known as The British Invasion is how little impact the actual music had back home. While bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had their frothing fan-base, the UK’s government controlled radio rarely played their songs. That’s because the BBC dedicated less than two hours a week to rock and roll, believing that the listening audience deserved a more “sophisticated” fare. No, most English youth got their daily fix of The Hollies, The Kinks, and The Small Faces from pirate stations located on ships, off shore, in the international waters of the North Sea.
Now Richard Curtis, the writer/director behind such well-loved Brit-wit comedies as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and Love Actually, is fictionalizing the story of England’s broadcast revolution in Pirate Radio, an America-mandated retitling of his Spring 2009 international release The Boat that Rocked. Trimmed of some 20 minutes and yet still overflowing with character, plotting, and subtext the story centers on Carl (Tom Sturridge), a young boy who finds himself kicked out of school. “Sentenced” by his mother to a visit with his godfather Quentin (Bill Nighy), our hero finds himself on ‘Radio Rock’, a rundown cargo vessel broadcasting all the biggest hits 24 hours a day.
Among the crew are several madcap DJs, Felicity (Katherine Parkinson) a lesbian chef, a ‘thick’ intern, and a mysterious bloke named “Bob”. Chief among the throng are US ex-patriot The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), returning “king of the airwaves” Gavin (Rhys Ifans), lumbering ladykiller Dave (Nick Frost) and “nutty” New Zealander Angus (Rhys Darby). As their popularity soars, the British government grows desperate. They want the pirate stations shut down, and put Minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) in charge. He brings on an assistant named Twatt (Jack Davenport) and gives him a simple mandate - shut down Radio Rock in 12 months, or he’ll never work in the UK again…EVER!
Winning, witty, and wearing out its welcome toward the end, Pirate Radio is either a noble failure or the slightest of successes. Instead of being the kind of bracing, insightful docudrama that sheds light on a subject few outside the UK know about, what we wind up with is a bloated effort that tries to be everything to everyone—coming of age comedy, pop art period piece, political satire, crafty character study, ensemble romp, and/or hilarious history lesson. Toss in a regular stream of sensational ‘60s rock songs, a weird last act switch into action movie mode, and an abundance of keen individual moments, and you’ve got a movie that needed a narrower focus to truly succeed. What we have here works in phases, but just can’t come together as a cohesive experience.
Part of the problem is the introduction of the Carl character. Clearly meant as a device to bring the audience into the wacky world of Radio Rock, Curtis gives the wide-eyed innocent little more to do than sit back passively and pine away for some female companionship. It’s the typical dreary teen material, made no less weepy by actor Sturridge’s blank expression. He’s a void in the middle of some amazing talent. Indeed, while they only have small slots of time to make an impression, Hoffman, Frost, Darby, and Ifans are fascinating as disc jockey archetypes. Had the entire Carl support system been jettisoned in favor of a more “warts and all” look at these guys, Pirate Radio would have been so much better. Instead, we can instantly tell that Curtis means everything to be very courteous and polite, and if there is one thing rock and roll is not, it’s gentile.
And then there’s the government material, handled with all the subtlety of an episode of The Young Ones. Branagh brings a certain stifled, stiff upper silliness to his reading of the super-square Minister, but Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Davenport is rudderless. Having little purpose except to pursue Radio Rock’s status legally, he stands around in each scene and looks lost. Curtis’ attempts at undermining their philosophy are so heavy handed and arch that we can see the stilted, surreal Christmas party scene coming 30 minutes before it happens. Then, as Branagh and his ostrich-like wife wince at the crackling pop of traditional holiday favors, we can instantly tell that there is no affection for these buffoonish, button-down bureaucrats. Instead, Curtis means to make them look as lame as possible - and does so with a sledgehammer.
Since it’s not our legacy, since America has its own aural missteps that could readily make for cinematically incisive - of in this case, slick - entertainment (the demonization of early rock and roll, the blatant racism and payola of the ‘50s - ‘70s pop charts) we forgive most of Pirate Radio‘s excesses. Granted, by the third or fourth time Carl is seen sliding into a hormonal malaise, we’ve long since stopped caring, and the finale, which finds Radio Rock sinking Titanic style, is an odd juxtaposition with all that’s come before. Like any overlarge canvas, Curtis puts too much up on the screen, even in this supposedly truncated version. And yet oddly enough, we feel like we want more. We want more facts and famous faces. We would love to see how British citizens really reacted to the limited access to their favorite bands (the sunny vignettes with teens and various office workers dancing along to the tunes doesn’t cut it).
But more importantly, Pirate Radio needs more realism. Everything here is a fairytale reconfiguring of the truth. Sure, there is enough validity in what Curtis is doing to deliver a semi-rollicking good time, and his cast more than captures the spirit and the cunning of these counterculture revolutionaries. And yet the most intriguing aspects of the story - the who, what, when, where, why, and how - are left mostly to myth. This is not lethal to Pirate Radio‘s end result, but it’s definitely not something all the ‘Viva La Rock!’ pronouncements can fully compensate for. It’s still hard to believe that with all the amazing music coming out of the UK during that time period, most in the BBC thought the pop charts littered with junk. Richard Curtis’ retelling has its own issues with unnecessary excess. In both cases, the beliefs are more bewildering than fatal.
—Bill Gibron
2:00 pm
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Emmerich Delivers Terrifically Tacky Destruction in ‘2012’
Come on, what did you expect? Logical plotting? Complex, three dimensional characters? Some shred of recognizable scientific or technological reality? Seriously? This is Roland Emmerich we’re talking about, the man behind such mindless guilty pleasures as Stargate, Independence Day, the updated Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow. Did you honestly believe that after the less than stellar returns for that numbing Neanderthal nonsense 10,000 B.C. , the director who made destroying the planet his prime directive would avoid the upcoming Mayan cataclysm? Now who’s kidding who? 2012 is material perfectly suited for the Duke of Disaster Porn, a man who’s killed more continental populations than the Black Plague and Colonialism combined. And though it won’t end up on any critic’s Top Ten lists, it’s surely better than a certain overlong Summer epic about battle intergalactic robots.
It’s 2009, and government geologist Adrian Helmsley stumbles upon one of the greatest - and most terrifying - discoveries in the history of mankind. Recent solar flares have flooded the Earth with atomic particles known as neutrinos, and just as the Mayans predicted, the year 2012 will see these radioactive bad boys radically restructure the planet. The core will get super hot, the crust will melt, and the huge continental plates will shift and separate. It means the end of all life on the planet as we know it - earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and other humungous natural calamities. Taking the information to bureaucrat Carl Anheuser, it is three more years before a rescue plan is put into action.
Cut to present day 2012, and unsuccessful author Jackson Curtis is planning a weekend camping trip with his ungrateful kids. They just want to hang out at home with his ex-wife and super cool plastic surgeon stepdad Gordon. Still, court ordered visitation is court ordered visitation, and the clan heads out to Yellowstone for a little R&R. There, they run into conspiracy theorist Charlie Frost. Jackson learns of the upcoming apocalypse, the secret plan to save the human race, the pitfalls of bad Flash animation, and his daughter’s bedwetting issues. Cut to the next day, and all the predictions are wrong. The planet is not dying on 12/21/2012. It’s going to Hell RIGHT NOW!
Step right up folks! Step right up and prepare to be mesmerized, bowled over, and generally blown away by Roland Emmerich’s 2012, a movie that is guaranteed to be the last word on impending cinematic Armageddon for the foreseeable future. Never before has one film filled the screen with so much unbridled carnage. Indeed, the opening destruction of LA is so complete, so overflowing with images of crumbling freeways, cavernous earth cracks, and shattering skyscrapers that it literally boggles the brain. You sit staring at the images wondering what Emmerich and his award-worthy crew of F/X artists can drum up next - and then a subway trains comes spewing out of the opened ground and bullet into the immense maw of an ever widening post-after shock abyss, and our jaw goes lax again.
This happens time and time again in 2012, from the moment when Yellowstone goes Vesuvius to the hotel-like ocean liner that gets its own version of the Poseidon’s ‘adventure’. Nothing is spared - Vegas is turned into a fitting rendering of Satan’s own ‘sin city’ (complete with fire lapping up from below) while Hawaii goes back to its flowing magma past. As the massive ash cloud turns DC into a no-breathing zone, the Washington Monument crumbles. Similarly, footage from Brazil has the famous Christ the Redeemer statue shattering into pieces. Nothing is sacred - not the Sistine Chapel, not the country of India, not various significant and meaningful locations around the globe. Gigantic tidal waves wipe out everything, offering up a sense of destruction that is indeed extermination level.
How and who survives remains 2012‘s aching Achilles Heel, however. No one expects well-drawn personalities and meaningful individual reaction in a movie excessively concerned with crushing and cremating famous facades. For their part, John Cusack (as Curtis), Woody Harrelson (Frost), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Helmsley), Oliver Platt (Anheuser), Danny Glover (The Pres), Thandie Newton (his daughter), and Amanda Peet (Cusack’s ex) all acquit themselves admirably. As a matter of fact, given the shoddy script provided by Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser, they do a damn fine job. The narrative is indeed a mess, combining elements both within the Mayan myth as well as tired old templates that Irwin Allen wore out decades ago. Emmerich also finds little to like about his emotional epiphanies, staging them in such a way as to more or less drain the sentiment out of the situation.
But at least he knows how to present epic action and destructive spectacle. Unlike his younger brothers in apocalyptic arms, like McG, Stephen Sommers, or Michael Bay, there’s no hand-held crazy cam frenzy to make you nauseous, no jackrabbit jumbled editing style to render even the most simplistic chaos indecipherable and the more complicated stuntwork unrecognizable. Instead, Emmerich lingers on his money shots, allowing us to take in details that other filmmakers would simply crosscut away from or over. This is especially true when Harrelson witnesses the Yellowstone eruption. Massive vistas are framed to fill the entire screen, huge plumes of deadly smoke and ash washing over the viewer like the choice cinematic cheese it represents - and we lap up every last cheddary bite.
As a collection of stunning set-pieces interrupted by dull as dirt nap exposition, 2012 is not meant to mean much. Instead, it is created as an experiment in excess, a test of audience tolerances that skips your intellect and sense of propriety to digs right down deep into the arrested adolescent inside of us all. This is the reason movies are made - to show us things we would never be able to see in real life, to experience the end of the world as only a studio with serious mega-bucks can imagine. There is no lesson to be learned here, no call to treat Mother Nature with kindness or to keep watching the skies. No, Roland Emmerich has delivered exactly what he promised - the undeniable mother of all extinction level events - and all other pretenders to the catastrophe crack throne take heed. The king has supposedly delivered his genre swansong, and it’s a dozy!
—Bill Gibron
1:41 am
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‘Goats’ Constantly Gets In Its Own Way
At this point in the post-modern, cynical dicta, nothing really surprises us about the military. From defense contracts which result in kick-back rich toilet seats to useless wars which tend to foster the power in the purveyors, not the people, a structured citizen soldiery is an unhealthy combination of jingoism and bumbling bureaucracy - and no place is this more obvious than in Grant Heslov’s proposed satire The Men Who Stare at Goats. Based on the “mostly” true tome by UK journalist Jon Ronson, we are told that throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s, America was developing a kind of “super warrior”, one that would use a priority of peace (and a well-honed psychic ability) to resolve conflicts. But instead of resonating with the kind of comedy we expect from such oddball ideas, Heslov mismanages his narrative, bringing in ancillary elements that derail his attempts at insight.
When we first meet struggling American reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), his wife has just left him and he feels his career going nowhere. So he decides to become a war correspondent, heading to Iraq to cover the country post-“Mission Accomplished”. Stuck in Kuwait and desperate for a way in, he runs into the mysterious Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who turns out to be a deactivated black ops agent whose recently returned to the game, on a mission deep in the heart of enemy territory.
Turns out, he was once part of a top secret experiment known as Project Jedi, the brainchild of forward-thinking officer Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who employs New Age philosophies and counterculture ideas to find a way to make enlisted men as lethal in peace as they are in war. Unfortunately, a failed sci-fi writer named Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) becomes part of the company. Jealous of Lyn’s abilities, including the power to stop a goat’s heart with his mind, the angry author decides to undermine the project - an effort that continues to this very day.
Neither as quirky as it thinks it is nor as witty as it wants to be, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a low grade military send-up. There are moments when Ronson’s true “tall tale” sizzles with a kind of silly authenticity, a jaw-dropping reality that makes Americans wonder just what their men in uniform are up to. Every time the story travels back to the moment when Django and company create their re-imagined model, the movie soars. It provides a clever combination of nostalgia and insanity, Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” chugging along in the background while a long-haired Clooney shakes his booty magnificently. Whenever Bridges is onscreen, Goats gives over to his Dude-induced bliss, and everything is better for it. Along with our updated Gable, he brings a lot of hilarious heart to the material.
McGregor, sadly, has the exact opposite effect. Stuck in a one-note joke of a role (the big gag? He doesn’t understand the concept of a “Jedi”…think about for a moment…), he is a sad sack as a plot device, a means of getting us to the updated Cassady, the story behind the entire psychic project, and the last act reveal about what has happened to the concept since. He adds nothing to the narrative, and in fact draws our attention away from entertainment possibilities with his incessant whining and fake-accented antics. It seems odd that a British actor would be hired to play an American reporter (especially when Ronson himself was from Wales), but one imagines some studio interference in the decision. And let’s not even discuss a dull-eyed Spacey doing ‘villain’ in his sleep. As two facets of the failed modern material, they both sink Goat‘s chances of succeeding.
In fact, both the past and present in this particular movie offers limited entertainment value. Heslov, taking the reigns of a major feature film for the first time, clearly needs a few more turns behind the lens before tackling material this complex. It’s not just a question of comic timing or overall tone. As a director, he truly doesn’t understand where the best bits lie. Whenever the flashbacks fill the screen, Bridges et. al. doing their best bemused hippy shtick, we are immediately whisked away to a more innocent - and enjoyable - era. The jokes flow and the sight gags click. But then, just as we are getting into the groove, Heslov brings back the War in Iraq road movie and things simply die. No matter their level of talent, Clooney and McGregor are an unsuccessful Hope and Crosby.
But more importantly, Goats really has no point. The script doesn’t find a fresh way of dealing with military incompetence or the often surreal situations surrounding same. In fact, the most telling attempt comes at the expense of excellent actor Stephen Lang, who definitely gets the deranged Dr. Strangelove nuttiness involved. Yet beyond one or two brief moments of comedic clarity, Goats doesn’t “get” it. Instead, it throws random scenes at the audience and hopes that they make the necessary critical connections. With Bridges, such cinematic heavy lifting is easy. Everyone else, however, only increases the burden. While Heslov should get most of the blame, the script by Peter Straughan doesn’t help. After all, this is the man responsible for disemboweling Toby Young’s bitter magazine publishing rant How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, turning it into a tired media spoof.
Somewhere buried in all the screwball struggles and inconsistent time shifts is a potent film about outsized ideas and the perversion of same. When Bridges is explaining his notion of an “Earth First” army, we easily recognize his goal. Too bad few in the film follow in his footsteps. As another example of Clooney’s patented “mainstream/iconoclastic” back and forth, career wise, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a likeable failure. There may not be enough here to completely satisfy, given the inconsistency behind the scenes, but at the very least there are individual sequences that illustrate what this wacky military farce could have been. We expect a little lunacy from those invested with keeping out country safe. Unfortunately, the bumpy approach to this particular “true” story thwarts its intentions.
—Bill Gibron
11:10 am
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When the Event is Everything: Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’
We will never see the final version of Michael Jackson’s This Is It concert. We will never experience the full blown macabre mastery of the epic “Thriller” number, complete with 3D zombies and a stunning recreation of perhaps the most well-known dance in all of pop music. We will never get to see how a 50 year old Jackson would truly sell his pre-teen Motown legacy, the perfunctory run through as part of Kenny Ortega’s inspired film doing little to inspire confidence. We’ll also never know how audiences would react to the moment in “Earth Song” when a giant bulldozer crashes through the stage backing and threatens the fading King of Pop. In fact, we will never know if the actual event would have lived up to its creator’s varied vision and posthumous hype. One thing is certain, however, Jackson was game to try.
Offering little of the money-grubbing graverobbing that the project’s announcement inferred, This Is It is like a DVD bonus feature without an actual movie to support. One could easily see this hodgepodge of rehearsal takes, expertly edited together by a team that deserves some kind of award for consistency and continuity, as a guide or animatic. Indeed, it is very much like the computer created cartoons that action filmmakers used to pre-visualize their stunt sequences, except this time, we have our own human special effect at the center. Jackson, acting half his notorious age, dances, prances, demonstrates, and illustrates as he puts his band and back-up “flare” through their paces. While the opening of the film gives us a glimpse at the devoted artists who come whenever Mr. Jackson calls, any additional personal insight is decidedly absent. In its place are several sensational musical numbers, followed by a few flashes of what this famed 50 show stand in London would have looked like.
As with many of Jackson’s shows, this is a greatest hits package carefully choreographed for maximum impact and guaranteed audience appreciation. The King is not breaking out new material, or mining his albums for unusual cuts to spice up the set-list. We move from dance hit to power ballad, “Wanna Be Starting Something” reminding us of how fresh early Michael sounded, while “Human Nature” highlights the singer’s sensational voice. Sadly, there is no take on “Rock with You” (Off the Wall is almost always forgotten by Jackson live) and the equally effective title track to Bad is missing as well. Other major hits not making the cut include “Remember the Time”, “In the Closet” and “You Are Not Alone”, while you can forget about seeing anything from Invincible. Indeed, what director Kenny Ortega (who also handled the same duties for the concert “experience”) understands is, as an elegy to a man taken too soon from his fanbase, familiarity eases the lingering pain.
Still, it’s hard to sync up the man on stage with the media maelstrom of the last five months. There are no signs of drug abuse or use, no obvious physical symptomology of the addiction that would supposedly kill him. In his element, Jackson is strong, if scarily bone thin, and while a bit out there in his ability to interact, he is still in command of his craft and how it is presented. He comments frequently on preserving his voice, admits to slacking off in some of the dance numbers to guarantee that the staging is just right. He is present for all the film work forged to amplify the overall live show experience, and even adds his two cents to sequences he feels need to “sizzle” or “simmer” more. As his muscular back-ups bob and weave around him, Jackson’s ever-present magnetism never lets him down. Even when he’s merely going through the practice motions, he’s as dynamic as he ever was.
All of which begs the question - what happened? How could someone this confident and carefree onstage (he is so light on his feet and lithe that it’s the very definition of “effortless”) become a press room pariah, unable to live a leisurely life in the public eye. It’s a weird dichotomy, one that This Is It has no desire to delve into. Even with all the tabloid tattling and clever character assassination surrounding the icon, his musical ability belies all the gossip and grotesqueries that have come to define him - even in bereavement. As a matter of fact, one of the best things that This Is It does is rewrite the legacy that Jackson left at the time of his death. TMZ nation would have us believe he was half off his nut, doped to the gills with human aesthetic on top of an already near-lethal cocktail of various narcotics. But reality - or careful editing - argues otherwise.
And then there is the notion of Jackson repeating this immense spectacle day in and day out for 50 grueling shows once he headed over to England. It’s sad to think that some promoter saw an opportunity to exploit the entertainer’s recent financial distress and decided to bludgeon his coy cash cow for as much milk money as possible. One truly believes the singer when he smiles and says “this is really it” during the promotional press conferences that announced the “tour”. No matter what he did after the concerts, he could never top the ideas he was trying to showcase here. That this rehearsal material provides actual glimpses of what could have been stands as a testament to what Jackson conceived, as well as how nimble Ortega is at cobbling together what was clearly meant as nothing more than random reference footage.
So instead of spending almost two months making sure that fans from around the world got one last shot of seeing their idol in person, This Is It will be the event that facilitates the final chapter in the myth of Michael Jackson - and then that’s truly “it”. Even if another album of amazing material is lifted from the vaults (and the original tune presented here as the movie’s theme is no great shakes) and the artist who once owned the pop charts scales them once again, there will never be more than “this”. No more videos. No more news cycles. No more music. As titles go, Jackson’s own self-penned label lingers with hints of what could have been and what never will be. Still, for anyone still looking for a little bit of his magic, This Is It contains more than enough.
—Bill Gibron
1:30 pm
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‘Antichrist’ is an Ambitious, Audacious Masterpiece
It’s fairly obvious that vision is in short supply in Hollywood. Just look at what passes for art among the mindless mainstream movies that make their weekly pilgrimage to your local Cineplex and see if it’s not true. We live in blank, bland times. But there’s something that goes hand in hand with imagination and daring, a word that many misconstrue as consistent with arrogance, pretention, and ego. Some even use it as an excuse for limiting clear creativity. Yet “audacity” is equally lacking in today’s motion picture landscape. Few filmmakers simply take their ideas and run wild with them. Typically, they simply slink along, looking to make their money before moving on to the next journeyman job.
To put it mildly, Lars Von Trier is not your typical anything. Over a career that has seen him embrace the strictures of the no-frills Dogme ‘95, dabble in TV terror, and defy convention with musicals and haughty historical period pieces, he has avoided easy description as his films have lacked commercial consideration. Now comes Antichrist, a work of unqualified brilliance - and impudence. Some have even dubbed it the most misogynistic movie ever created. Actually, it will probably stand as Von Trier’s masterpiece.
A married couple experiences a horrific tragedy when their infant son leaves his crib and crawls out an open window, falling to his death. Overtaking by grief, the mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) spends over a month in a mental hospital while her therapist husband (Willem Dafoe) disagrees with her chemical course of treatment. Removing her from the facility and forcing her to do away with all medication, he feels he can talk her through the pain. When she reveals an unnatural fear of the woods surrounding a cabin in a place called Eden, he decides to take her there.
Initially, she is frightened into a state of near inertia. He finds her anxieties almost comical. Slowly, they begin to probe her wounded psyche. But as her attitude improves, he begins to suspect something sinister. Indeed, she has used her research into historical crimes against women to conclude that the female gender is inherently evil. It’s become her post-motherhood mantra. He believes that is utter nonsense - until his wife turns violent, physically, emotionally, and above all, sexually.
Absolutely stunning in its visual flourishes, horrifying in its aggressive violence, and knowing in its psycho-sexual philosophical bent, Von Trier’s Antichrist is simply astonishing. It’s a structured walk through one woman’s terrifying mental breakdown, a deconstructed cry for relief and understanding. So obsessed with birth and biology that the symbols practically stand up and shout their intent, this is New Age therapeutics as Grand Guignol geek show.
It is obvious what Von Trier is messing with - what happens to a “mother” when she loses that title (perhaps by her own actions, or lack thereof) - and along with the awkward supposition that history has prove the woman wicked, he intends to explore every possible angle of attack. That’s why we get sequences of passion, bloodletting, comforting conversation, and unhinged insanity. In the end, he offers no real conclusions. Instead, we see one couple completely disintegrate over the impact of grief, and wonder what will come next.
Like Dante’s Inferno, what we wind up with is a literal trip through Hell, a beautiful, beguiling place that holds many horrific truths barely simmering under its lush surface. Several times throughout the course of Antichrist, Von Trier pulls back the curtain to reveal the redolence underneath. Limbs are hacked. Body parts are beaten. We aren’t supposed to take what happens to the characters as being wholly realistic. Instead, the moment they leave their quiet urban apartment and head into this mythic wilderness, the lens purposefully distorts to argue against authenticity. It’s a piece of filmic finesse that happens several times during the story.
Unlike Breaking the Waves, which took an almost documentary approach on a similar subject and theme (human degradation and the females role in same), we get the kind of aesthetic aggressiveness that makes Antichrist another ‘love it or loathe it’ extreme. The prologue with its abundant monochrome slow motion is so remarkable, so hypnotic in its carefully composed presentation that we are instantly taken aback by its power. It’s shockingly handsome. Luckily, the rest of the movie lives up to this opening promise.
Indeed, the cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle (Oscar Winner for Slumdog Millionaire and previous Von Trier collaborator) deserves considerable praise. There are times when the movie almost stands still, the filmmakers using their incredibly long holds and static shot framing to build a considerable amount of texture and suspense. Of course, there are also handheld close-ups and action elements that tend to forward the film’s intimate, in your face nature. Along with the amazing work by Gainsbourg and Dafoe, Von Trier creates an insular realm where his dream logic and nightmare scenarios can play out - and the results aren’t always pleasant.
Both actors are required to bare everything onscreen - from their bodies to their souls - and they do so magnificently. Some will still be bothered by the narrative’s lack of crystal clarity. Others will take the obvious step and scream ‘hate’. But there is an intriguing middle ground which suggests we are watching Dafoe work through his emotional attachment to his wife and dead child. The violent struggle to resolve same appears to be part of the movie’s motive. The finale foretells his decision.
By delivering a faux horror film that’s as much about the bloodletting as it is about the basis for all human fear, Lars Von Trier provides a statement so profound, so difficult to embrace fully and honestly that Antichrist will leave many confused and angry. It will be seen as a blight, as exploitation disguised as artistic arrogance, all meant to cover up that most typical of complaints against the director - he hates women. But even as it embraces a similar stance and offers up one character’s physical proof of an anti-female agenda (Gainsbourg’s final act is too horrific to even consider calmly), it’s obvious that this movie is merely a meditation on what’s it’s like to give birth, to lose said biological immortality, and wonder if it was such a horrible crime not to care.
When our heroine argues that she’s afraid of Nature, that it’s “Satan’s Kingdom” on Earth, her husband translates that as a simple statement of self-loathing. For more than 90 minutes we’ve watched as she acts out on such irrational, apocalyptic ire. By the end, Antichrist suggests that almost anything is survival - except, perhaps, the battle within. It’s one cosmic war that never produces an actual victor.
—Bill Gibron
9:55 pm
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