Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 344: Thu Dec 20

Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009): Genesis Cinema, 6.35pm


The Genesis Cinema’s monthly Cult Classic Collective screening with Nick Walker of Rochester Kino returns with a 35mm presentation of this infamous Lars Von Trier film. The screening will be introduced by Nick and will be followed by a salon discussion upstairs at the bar.

Chicago Reader review:
This grueling 2009 psychodrama by Lars von Trier (DogvilleBreaking the Waves) is the sort of movie that dares you not to take it seriously—it's dedicated to the Soviet metaphysical filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and the end credits cite research assistants in theology, mythology, misogyny, and the horror movie. If you're easily cowed by that sort of thing, then this is a masterpiece exposing the divide between human intellect (equated here with male oppression) and nature (defined as "Satan's church"); if you're not, then it's a grisly fuck fest with a library card. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are a couple whose toddler tumbles out a window to his death while they're boffing in the bathroom (a scene that transpires in slow-motion black and white to a moody string score). A professional shrink, Dafoe decides that Gainsbourg can overcome her crippling grief only by confronting her fear of the forest, so he takes her out to a remote cabin in the woods and all hell breaks loose. I can't deny this is filled with powerfully primal images, but at least one of them—an eviscerated fox that bellows at Dafoe, "Chaos reigns!"—made me burst out laughing.
J.R. Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.


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