Originally Posted by Mike Collett-White

Lars von Trier film "Antichrist" shocks Cannes

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Danish director Lars von Trier elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos on Sunday as the credits rolled on his drama "Antichrist" at the Cannes film festival.

The film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple seeking to overcome the grief of losing their only child, has quickly become the most talked-about at this year's festival, which ends on May 24.

Cannes' notoriously picky critics and press often react audibly to films during screenings, but Sunday evening's viewing was unusually demonstrative.

Jeers and laughter broke out during scenes ranging from a talking fox to graphically-portrayed sexual mutilation.

Many viewers in the large Debussy cinema also appeared to take objection to von Trier's decision to dedicate his film to the revered Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. Applause from a handful of viewers was drowned out by booing at the end.

Antichrist opens with a heavily stylized, black-and-white, slow-motion portrayal of the child's accidental death set to soaring music by Handel.

Dafoe's character, who is a therapist, tries to help his wife deal with her grief and encourages her to come off heavy medication that sedates her for weeks after the death.

They decide to go to an isolated wooden cabin in an unspecified forest to recover, but the woman Gainsbourg portrays loses control of her senses.

The abuse she submits herself and her husband to drew shocked gasps from the audience.

The reaction suggested that von Trier, who won the top prize in Cannes with "Dancer in the Dark" in 2000, could be in for a rough ride from reviewers and journalists on Monday.

One U.S. critic said he and others found the film "offensive," and questioned why it was included in the main competition of 20 films in Cannes.

In production notes for Antichrist, the 53-year-old director said that the movie was a "kind of therapy" for depression he was suffering from two years ago.

"I can offer no excuse for 'Antichrist' ... other than my absolute belief in the film -- the most important film of my entire career!"

Originally Posted by Roger Ebert

There's electricity in the air. Every seat is filled, even the little fold-down seats at the end of every row. It is the first screening of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," and we are ready for anything. We'd better be. Von Trier's film goes beyond malevolence into the monstrous. Never before have a man and woman inflicted more pain upon each other in a movie. We looked in disbelief. There were piteous groans. Sometimes a voice would cry out, "No!" At certain moments there was nervous laughter. When it was all over, we staggered up the aisles. Manohla Dargis, the merry film critic of The New York Times, could be heard singing "That's Entertainment!"

Whether this is a bad, good or great film is entirely beside the point. It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. It's been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell. This is the most despairing film I've ever have seen.

If, as they say, you are not prepared for "disturbing images," I advise you to just just stop reading now.

The film involves a couple, He and She, whose infant child falls out a window and smashes to the pavement while they are making explicit love. They feel devastating grief. He, a psychologist, takes She off medications, and they go to live in their secluded hideaway in the forest, a cottage named Eden.

He subjects her to probing questions and the discussion of the Meaning of it All, which must affect her like a needle stab to an inflamed tooth. He is quite intelligent and insightful, and brings passive aggression to a brutally intimate level. Then she wounds him, and while he's unconscious she drills a hole through his leg and bolts a grindstone to it. He drags himself into the forest and tries to hide in an animal burrow. She finds him, and pounds him with a shovel to force him deeper. Then she tries to bury him alive. I won't mention two gruesome scenes involving the genital areas.

What does this metaphor (with a Prologue, an Epilogue and Four Chapters) mean? The dinner conversations all over town must not have been appetizing. Some read it this way: Perhaps the world began with man evil instead of good, guilty instead of innocent. That the Garden of Eden was visited by the Antichrist, not the Lord. That man's Original Sin was not eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but not vomiting forth knowledge and purging himself.

All for this will be discussed at great length. What can be said is that von Trier, after what many found the agonizing boredom of his previous Cannes films "Dogville" and "Manderlay," has made a film that is not boring. Unendurable, perhaps, but not boring. For relief I am looking forward to the overnight reviews of those who think they can explain exactly what it means. In this case, perhaps, a film should not mean, but be.

Originally Posted by golden_rod

I like Von Trier just because he's so contrary. The man is a total gas.

Most of the critics are a bunch of dolts, however. They're reacting exactly the way he wants them to by saying his flick is "offensive" & jeering at the screen. The man intentionally thumbs his nose at the critics with his movies and they're too dumb to realize it. It's fabulous. My favorite moment of antagonism from the man is the end credit sequence from Dogville. The reactions found in the reviews were so LOL.

Originally Posted by golden_rod

I like Von Trier just because he's so contrary. The man is a total gas.

Most of the critics are a bunch of dolts, however. They're reacting exactly the way he wants them to by saying his flick is "offensive" & jeering at the screen. The man intentionally thumbs his nose at the critics with his movies and they're too dumb to realize it. It's fabulous. My favorite moment of antagonism from the man is the end credit sequence from Dogville. The reactions found in the reviews were so LOL.

Originally Posted by Gunde

Well this one is offensive (to most people). 2 scenes in particular are...well, fucking nasty.
But I agree. Trier knows exactly what he's doing and he doesn't care if you're an idiot

Originally Posted by Kurtie Dee

So if we don't like what Von Trier is doing then we are idiots? Is this according to you, or him? Or both?

Originally Posted by Gunde

Him, but no that's not what I meant. I wans't being very clear, it was just an extension of golden_rod calling the critics a 'bunch of dolts'