Lars Von Trier – The Misogynistic Pig
Okay, I’m currently at the Cannes Film Festival and was going to wait to post an overall summation when I returned home but I just finished watching Lars Von Trier’s new film, ‘AntiChrist’ and feel compelled to write something.
Firstly, I queued yesterday for an hour and a half to view it but the theatre was full so no go there, then today for the final viewing I arrived 2 hours early and managed to nab a good seat. The film started off with a beautiful, slow motion montage to Handel; it was stylistic and masterful; I thought, a great omen to what was to follow. Unfortunately for me, the movie turned out to be a monstrous, slap in the face to the female gender. It was THE most misogynistic piece of cinema I have ever seen and what bothers me the most is that no-one is mentioning the blatant depiction of hatred towards women! The press are using words like ’shocking’, ‘perverse’, ‘audacious’ but not ‘MISOGYNISTIC’ – it is the most prevailing, damning and offensive theme of the movie.
In wrap up as I don’t like to dwell too long for it doth boil my blood with fury, the movie is about a couple whose child dies tragically by falling from a balcony window whilst the couple are engaging in sexual intercourse or you know, crass sex from the male perspective. The mother is obviously overwhelmed with grief and confesses to her therapist husband (Willem Defoe) that her despair has led her to fear the woods, aptly named Eden. He takes her there in order to bury her grief but instead she succumbs to what can only be described as insanity; she says she believes that all women are intrinsically evil. Blatant. Blunt. In your face. The film progresses to indulge in a medley of torture that She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) inflicts on both herself and her husband. She (for that is the character’s name) is ferocious all the way through, desperate for rough sex (as women are apparently) and determined to destroy men (again, as women obviously are). Well the denouement reveals that She, during the montage at the beginning, watched her son crawl onto the table and approach the balcony but was so involved in her own self-indulgent pleasure that she did not stop him, the film also reveals that she actually tortured her son by inflicting deliberate pain on him by making him wear his shoes the wrong way around (just another little jab of the knife by Von Prick). Later, during a sexual romp (obviously) She grabs a log and proceeds to bash Defoe’s penis with it, then she screws some kind of old fashioned tool to his leg and jacks him off with blood/cum squirting all over her top (I’m not joking). Towards the end, after copious back and forth, She uses Defoe’s hand to masturbate and then…in one of the most offensive scenes I have ever seen, she takes a pair off scissors and cuts off her clitoris; symbolizing without apologies that women’s intrinsic evil comes from their pleasure, perhaps the idea that women are able to orgasm without a man is a problem for Von Prick? or perhaps he is deathly traumatized by his teeny, tiny penis. Okay, after all this, Defoe strangles her. Then, THE biggest slap in the face comes when he burns her outside; an ode (if you can believe it) to the 15th-18th century Witch Hunts where hundreds of thousands of innocent women were murdered and brutalized simply because they were women. Finally the scene ends with Willem Defoe PICKING BERRIES!! BERRIES!! As in; man is prevalent, man is the survivor, the keeper of nature. I’m still fuming about the whole film.
It met with boos during the press screening and a few sporadic claps and general silence in ours but the resounding murmur leaving the auditorium was of shock and disgust. The women in the audience were genuinely horrified. Lars Von Trier, you are an embarrassment to yourself and the film industry. As for Cannes, I am completely bewildered as to why they screened it at all. The film should be burned. And my god, Charlotte Gainsbourg? are you an idiot? do you know what you have allowed yourself to represent?? I also happen to think Defoe will also be supremely embarrassed at the outrage that will surely ensue upon the release of this disgusting piece of male-misogynistic-bravada.
