“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:
and they shall be one flesh.”
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Those who would call Antichrist “controversial” without offering a judgment of their own likely lack the ability to form an opinion they’re willing or able to defend. As for those who accuse the film’s director (Lars von Trier) of misogyny, at least they have the courage of their conviction, even if such a charge also belies a certain kind of laziness, latching onto the most convenient scapegoat for the discomfort elicited by the screen. Such a gesture not only replicates the violence of confusion at the heart of Antichrist’s story, it also fails to consider the trap within which the film’s protagonists are caught, the extremes to which they will go to relieve themselves of their torment, and the director’s intent in subjecting them – and us – to such pain.
In the end, the misogynist accusation can only be understood as a secular rite of (self) absolution, in which the stance of indignation is called upon to veil the far-reaching implications of the anger and mutilation put on display. For the nameless characters around whom the film revolves signal how the battle being waged is not particular to them: some might call it the war of the sexes; others would prefer the language of Good and Evil. In the end, the story’s the same. For it provides a visual – and visceral – display of the breakdown of the marital bond and the horror brought upon by this violation of their sacred union, in which the two that had become one are abruptly returned to a state of separation, alienated from the very meaning that had come to govern their lives.
We are not left unaided in the task of divining the purpose of this story. In one promotional image, the protagonists are portrayed as the blades constituting a pair of scissors, cleaved together and joined at the hip, even as she struggles under his gaze. Her closed eyes suggest a turn in their relationship, one in which she can no longer rely on his eyes as her mirror, for what is reflected there is more a measure of his imagination than anything else. Turning inward, she will seek another kind of validation, one independent of what he is able to provide. But with this shift, the pivot of their relationship will begin to resemble a prison, immobilized by what was designed to hold them together … until separated by death. The very emotional and sexual bond that had brought them together in celebration and delight will, quite cruelly, become the site of emotional and psychic torture, as a different kind of imperative comes to the fore. For what once brought them together in celebration and delight will give way to another force, just as beautiful and natural but which, because unrecognized, will take on another face.
The fact that the film’s title is drawn using a symbol to signify “woman” points to the ambiguity that lies at the center of this story: Are we to consider her the antichrist and, if so, what are we to make of such an appellation? This is the conundrum with which “He” will be faced, and it is the challenge that Antichrist puts to us. The limbs of the dead that surround the couple’s carnal embrace gesture towards the grapplings of the dispossessed and the forgotten, that which has been pushed aside in their union. It is the condition for their lovemaking as well as its aftermath, for they are the ghosts that “She” desperately has sought to escape when turning to him for comfort, and the nightmare that invariably returns.
He will be painfully oblivious to this, Her torment, for he is implicated in ways he couldn’t imagine. So, oblivious he will remain. Unless someone or something intervenes on their behalf …
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