I’m guessing it will be in the realm of Shame but of course try to push the boundaries of comfortability even further, and probably be heavy on allegory and shock value.
like all Von Trier films, it has the potential to be great, but we’ll just have to see…
Lars doesn’t hate women…….he hates the world they live in. If people were more conscious one could easily assign lose labels to women in Ozu and Mizoguchi films. Women are treated appealingly in those films too. But why do they get away with it? An excuse I once heard is that they had something positive to say about humanity. Bollocks to that.
i don’t deny his talent. i think he’s trying to work out some issues. in a very public way
so u think mizoguchi hated women because he depicted their suffering? at a time when women had virtually no power in society btw
I’ll agree with you there. His films are really about his own issues, something I wish people were more aware of.
i can easily argue for either side of the “von trier’s a misogynist” debate, but it’s obvious that he has some very skewed opinions on females.
Ozu and Mizoguchi have done it, many directors have done it. But it’s literally ALL von trier does. he needs to branch out a bit, in my opinion…the “helpless woman who learns and grows because of all of the terrible things that have happened to her” routine is tired, and bordering offensive and lazy.
Melancholia didn’t do this, but of course EVERY female character had to be emotionally disturbed or disabled in some way.
thank you ^
according to wiki, his mother confessed on her deathbed the identity of his biological father. von trier was 33 years old at the time. that’s a pretty major headfuck. i think he is still angry. just speculating…
quote [ Until that point I thought I had a Jewish background. But I’m really more of a Nazi. I believe that my biological father’s German family went back two further generations. Before she died, my mother told me to be happy that I was the son of this other man. She said my foster father had had no goals and no strength. But he was a loving man. And I was very sad about this revelation. And you then feel manipulated when you really do turn out to be creative. If I’d known that my mother had this plan, I would have become something else. I would have shown her. The slut! ] endquote
I think he’s fantastic, but i also think that maybe he’s just scared to try something “new.”
i really wish he would.
If these were men in Lars’ films no one would call him a misandrist. He get’s shit because all his films feature women who are suffering from a male dominated society which is the underlying theme in most of his works just as it was in Mizoguchi’s. Lars is misanthropic and doesn’t see people in a very positive light.
The women in Lars’ movies are far better than 95% of anything Hollywood turns out and people know it.
most of mizo’s films were set in an era when women had no power. i don’t deny society isn’t still male dominated but things have changed A LOT. anyway i hope he seeks professional help and someday makes another film i want to watch
The real question is: Does he have the gall and fearlessness to switch the gender roles and show men being dominated by a matriarchal society and being horribly abused physically and mentally, only to “triumph” in the end (whatever that means in Von Trier’s standards)?
I highly doubt it. and i would love to see it.
@Ben
I am a very big fan of Von Trier as well, but that doesn’t change the fact that he continually deals with the same subjects in all of his films. Why not branch out? He calls himself the “world’s greatest film director,” yet almost 30 years of making films with the same themes and subject matters weighs more in the direction of a one-trick pony.
maybe i’ll make myself watch antichrist since it’s streaming on netflix. it seems to me like the genesis story and we all know how that turns out: men=civilization, women=nature. and the wall of opposites separates us from god
@Ruby
I enjoyed the film, but an even simpler, base-level reading of it would be: “Men, watch out because women are all evil and will hurt you in the penis”
LOL i suspected as much ;)
Antichrist is secretly a feminist film regardless of what people say. If I could write better I could explain it better. The final shot is the most important in the film and it pains me that people don’t understand it.
@Ben.
Since Ruby hasn’t seen the film, i won’t discuss it in depth, but there is a very vivid, intense shot that immediately disproves almost any feminism held in the film.
I understand the movie just fine, that doesn’t mean i won’t poke fun at it. lighten up! :P
anyways, this is getting way off-topic.
Back to the OP:
I will say again, I would love to see Emma Watson in the main role of this film, see if Von Trier can squeeze some real emotional acting out of her!
Every act of violence in Antichrist has a historical context in which in can be placed. Every act is a type of oppression including the films most infamous scene, as certain women in Africa can attest to. People who aren’t familiar with all the references in the film get angry and confused and label the film inappropriate.
Read the book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” for more in depth coverage.
Thanks, I will look into the book, sounds very interesting! As i said earlier, yes i understand the film, but that doesn’t change the fact that it can be read multiple ways.
And doesn’t the woman doing all these things to herself, not because her society or community says so, but because her mental instability says so, say something about the entire film as a whole? I sure think it does…
and i would hardly say that the film makes me “angry, confused or label it as inappropriate” … i bought the DVD!
Fascinated is the most signifying word i’d use for my experiences watching it.
But all this aside, i think i can safely say that von Trier is the most misunderstood filmmaker in the limelight nowadays.
She’s mentally ill. Schizophrenia would be a good fit. If one convinces oneself that one is “evil” in the middle of mental illness one can come to believe it. It doesn’t help that her child dies either. Willem Dafoe doesn’t help either believing he can “fix” all her problems. Everything could have been prevented had he given her the help she needed.
She’s mentally ill.
That takes us back to my previous argument:
von Trier must always cripple his female characters somehow. Why? Is he saying that all women are crippled? Is he saying that we’re all crippled as humans? Why not cripple the men then? Dafoe’s character discusses with Gainsbourg’s in the film that he heavily disagrees with her psychiatrist’s assessments. He is very heavily decorated psychiatrist, and we aren’t given any evidence on the credibility of the other psych. Why not? Dafoe’s only disability in the film is that he wants to save the woman he loves from herself? This doesn’t seem like a ‘feminist’ agenda to me.
Lars’ agenda is feminist. Dafoe is the the villain of the film and always will be. The characters are simply known as He and She as they represent everyone of their respective genders both good and bad. That ending? That’s all the victims of men faceless and forgotten rising up against their oppressor.
so women just don’t understand that lars is secretly feminist. interesting
ok i’ma quit giving u a hard time now, ben.
BUT if i force myself to watch antichrist i will be back!!
That ending? That’s all the victims of men faceless and forgotten rising up against their oppressor.
or is it the female kind rising to swallow men?
…we will never know.
never dismiss other readings of the film. the day von Trier tells us everything is the day we can be happy, but in his words he “has better things to do than discuss his cinema…he is the best film director in the world”
@Ruby
that’s been fucking with him his whole life :P
I wouldn’t count out Fanning though I doubt it will happen. I’ve always said she should work with Von Trier
and she’ll be 18 when the film starts shooting lol…..
Just saying
People do realize “the world’s greatest director” bit he did was merely to add insult to the injury he felt he received from the Cannes reaction toward his “Antichrist”, right? He’s become like Kubrick in the sensationalism that abounds him and says a lot more about what people seem to enjoy thinking of him as than what he actually is. The joke is on everyone who enjoys criticizing him, I say.
Some said that Antichrist’s prologue looks like a perfume commercial. His response? Maybe it was that in his next film he made the main character a designer for advertisements.
I’d add that he’s risked himself in a way by flirting with this sensationalism. Sure, playing with it is fine, but you have to be careful that you don’t end up fuelling the fire that ends up turning you to dust. He nearly did this with the Nazi comments; those who’ve known of him for long know that he was just being the type to stir up an issue, and in this case it backfired on him.
ruby stevens
so… it’s purportedly about a nymphomaniac and has explicit sex scenes but it won’t be arousing?? isn’t a nymphomaniac the ultimate porn fantasy?
i’m just givin ya shit, ben. i am of the camp that thinks von trier is a misogynist and possibly mentally ill. i seriously doubt i’ll be watching this film but i can certainly imagine a large audience for it. von trier will go just as far as he can go. the wiki article is illuminating. it states that he was never disciplined as a child. it shows lol