"Antichrist", a 2009
movie, tries really hard to be art but fails miserably. This story pretty much reinforces the Cartesian man/woman, mind/body binary.
The whole idea is woman = nature and therefore, woman embodies irrationality,
passion, flesh, desire. Meanwhile, man = culture. He is everything she
is not, thus man personifies intellect, rationality, mind, logic. The only way the female can escape this unfair binary is to either die or become mad (which she did both in this film).
The
opening scene is awesome. A shower scene with a pair of hubby and wife
boinking each other like rabbits. Droplets of water flying in slow
motion.
While they're bumping uglies, their child opened a window, fell down and died. Parenting fail lolz.
They tried to deal with the grief and trauma of losing a child. Hubby is a cool-headed man who likes playing shrink to his ultra-emotional wife. He, who personifies culture, overcomes grief through controlling his wife using objective, scientific methods. She, who symbolizes nature, conquers grief through enjoying great sexual activities. Anyway, hubby suggested exposure therapy to "cure" his spouse without acknowledging the validity of her grief. Arrogant bastard.
They retreated to Eden, a wild and idyllic garden. Since nature is woman's playground, wifey began to grow strong, in a psychotic kind of way. She started to plot against man.
Hubby discovered a talking fox. This is supposed to be scary, but aww.... so cute :)
Soon, hubby realized wifey is evil. Autopsy report showed that their kid had deformed feet which was caused by mama tying his shoes the wrong side. Like. All the time.
So woman attacked man. She bashed a rock against his dick, crushing it, splurting blood all over. She took a heavy iron wheel...
And drilled a hole into his leg...
Then inserted a finger into his bones...
Before screwing the iron wheel to his leg, maiming poor hubby.
When man tried to escape, she chased him into a fox hole and poked him with a shovel. There's some weird Freudian symbolism here... fox hole is probably a mother's womb but whatever.
Full of self-hatred, woman then mutilates her own genitals with scissors.
To cut a long story short, hubby got fed up and strangles wife to death.
He sets fire to destroy evidence of his crime. Burn, baby, burn!
The ending is just plain psycho. Man is now liberated. He eats poisonous berries in Eden and starts to hallucinate. Hundreds of faceless, nameless women start to appear on the hill, overrunning Eden. The end.
Verdict: If the movie had taken itself less seriously, I would have awarded it higher marks. As such, it is trying too hard to be meaningful and artful. Half-baked symbolisms and metaphors abound. The lack of clarity in message severely dilutes the power and impact of the film.
Rating: 6/10
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