“Life’s a bitch—then you die.”  That’s a bit too flippant and shallow to be considered philosophy.  But if to take that to the nth degree, seek to plumb its depths and eliminate any sense of irony or whimsy from the statement, you will be entering the realm of Lars von Trier’s film Antichrist.

Antichrist is the outgrowth of von Trier’s bout with depression.  Even as he pondered if he would ever make another film, he began writing this screenplay as a sort of therapy.  As such this is a very personal film.  It is filled with his own anxieties, nightmares, and terrors.  It is in every sense a horror film: there is blood, danger, and a strong sense of evil seeking to control lives.

The story focuses on a man and his wife (known only as He and She).  After the death of their young son (seen in the Prologue) She goes into a deep depression.  After much time in the hospital and being medicated (too medicated according to He), She stops her meds and allows He to become her therapist through a series of exercises that eventually lead them to “Eden,” their rustic cabin far from civilization.  Von Trier structures their interaction and the process or regression through the mental trials of grief in chapters: 1. Grief, 2. Pain (Chaos Reigns), 3. Despair (Gynocide), 4. The Three Beggars, and an Epilogue.  It is not so much a delving into the psychology of grief or depression as it is voyeurism of She’s sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness that is devouring her.  He has to try to be both a loving husband and a detached therapist—a dichotomy that is doomed to failure.  Much of the psychological struggle is acted out sexually—in She’s seeming insatiability, her masturbation, masochism, sadism, and eventually mutilation.

It seems a familiar set up: He, She, Eden, a world of nature.  But nature is not the benevolent force we expect.  Rather it is represented in very disturbing images.  For example, as He wanders through the woods, he sees a deer in a clearing.  As he come nearer he see that it has a stillborn fawn hanging halfway out of its womb.  The images of birth and death can be very vivid.  We see that nature is not our friend in this film.  Indeed, we come to understand that this “Eden” (and by extension the whole world in which it is set) is Hell to which we have all been condemned.

In time the discussion between He and She shifts from the nature around them to the nature within.  Earlier She had spent time at Eden working on her thesis (Gynocide) about “the kind of nature that cause people to do evil things against women.” But she discovered something more:

She: If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature…

He: … of the female.  Female nature.

She: The nature of all sisters.  Women do not control their own bodies, nature does.

Von Trier has often been accused of misogyny because of the things that happen to women in his films.  There have also been those who have seen his work as very feminist in perspective.  Maybe it depends on if we think he is telling us women are evil and deserve what happens to them or are victimized by a male dominant society.  Perhaps one of the reasons I am often drawn to his work is the paradox between these ideas that are both present.

The intensely personal nature of this film may be its biggest weakness from a viewer’s point of view.  This really is a nightmarish experience, except there are never any distinctions between what might be dream and what is waking life.  The surreal is blended with the natural to such an extent that one can’t really get one’s bearings. I think the self-therapeutic nature of this is evident. I don’t know if it’s really meant to be watched—but it seems to have been important for von Trier to make it. Perhaps he’s not far from She’s masturbation. I don’t mean that in a condemnatory sense, but I think this film is much more a von-Trier-for-von-Trier film than it is something for the mutual relationship of director and viewer.