I think Lars von Trier is Dumb

This is an aside titled 'I think Lars von Trier is Dumb' dated 10/25/09

I seem to be a particularly ideal audience for Antichrist, described once by a Cannes blogger as a hybrid of Scenes from a Marriage and Saw (two movies I really like for — clearly — very different reasons.) Plus the lead actress looks enough like me that coffee shop baristas sometimes comment on it and the men in the audience all sort of looked at me funny after the screening. I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it’s arduous. And not for the gore. That I don’t mind. It’s von Trier’s simplistic notion of a relationship. It’s not quite misogyny. It’s dumbness. Von Trier just isn’t as smart as say, Michael Haneke. Certainly not worthly of comparison with a brain like Ingmar Bergman. He’s just clever enough to come up with an idea that could be a great art film, but too thick to follow through with it. I did like The Idiots, well, at least I did in college when my appetite for “transgressive” film made me forgive some seriously terrible stuff. Maybe it wouldn’t hold up in a second viewing.) Still curious? Karina Longworth puts it best “It’s essentially a revenge of the witch/bitch movie, one that stacks together a few basic horror movie themes: ancient burial grounds, mythology come to life, sex as a precursor to death, and female sexuality in particular as potentially equivalent to a supernatural force of nature. After touching on all manner of hallmarks of classic supernatural cinema, Antichrist finally flips the script of the modern gore fest by putting a relatively chaste man at the mercy of a female whose sexuality is in crisis, thus turning Carol Clover’s ‘final girl’ theory on its head.”

Posted by Joanne on Oct. 25, 2009

Erin Donovan

Well put. I think we were hanging out during Cannes, talking about how excited everyone was about this film. It turned out to just be so soft-skulled!

And you do totally look like, CG. I liked her in it at least.

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