EIFF 2009: Antichrist

I reach the Cineworld Fountainbridge in the nick of time to catch Antichrist. I walk through wind and rain to get there (rather appropriately as it turns out) and in my seat only minutes before the film starts. I find a seat at the back next to a projectionist who informs me he will be taking notes throughout should there be any scratches. If only I’d had something that practical to focus on.

Anyway, the film starts, but the beautifully designed (slightly Gucci ad, but that’s the whole point) opening sex scene is marred by late arrivals (where do they think they are? At the multiplex? Oh…) who begin to irritate two pretty severe young women sitting in front of me.

And all this whilst someone else decides that it isn't too much of a sin to munch popcorn whilst watching a poetic lovemaking sequence which culminates in the death of the couple’s child - a truly harrowing counterpoint. Aaarrghh and indeed aaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhh! But it’s settling down now.

So, one hour and 44 minutes later and the mercifully quiet audience (I can’t remember a crowd being so silent since Secretary, but that was for entirely different reasons) are sighing with relief, ranting in fury, struggling to speak or laughing in nervous recognition of what has undeniably been an experience impossible to be indifferent about.

Is Antichrist a horror movie? Of course it is. Is it a European art film? Certainly. But for film snobs and gore hounds in heavy metal hoodies, drawing any correlation between the two is proving a struggle. Anyone who knows and truly loves horror will argue to the hilt that it is very bit as a legitimate a genre or artistic form as anything else.

Like science fiction, its popularity has seen it corrupted and co-opted into the mainstream in the most exploitative and frankly dumbest of ways. Horror has received more academic attention than any other popular genre (in cinema at least) and director Lars von Trier clearly understands this.

I’m finding it a hard not to go off an academic tangent about possession movies, the vaginal and phallic gaze, Carol J. Clover and Henry James, but Antichrist has been receiving such aggressively negative reactions that cultural contextualization is one of the best ways of defending it.

And what of those misogyny accusations? Has Lars von Trier, a director who has frequently courted controversy on this subject, finally let himself go and used the horror genre, with its literal definitions of good and evil, and equated womanhood with Satan?

Tricky one. The film openly acknowledges misogyny and the terrible history of men’s destructive behaviour towards women (specifically the witch-hunts), but the visual ambiguities, especially in the last scene, makes its sexual politics hard to define. But in the horror traditions I’ve mentioned, and as a drama about the tragic and overwhelming power of grief and bereavement, it’s devastating, moving and yes, very scary.

It’s hard to engage in a one-way discussion about Antichrist. Don’t take anyone else’s word for it: see it for yourself. You might love it, you might hate it. But you won’t feel indifferent.