DEVILS ADVOCATES
DEVILS ADVOCATES is a series of books devoted to exploring the classics of horror cinema. Contributors to the series come from the fields of teaching, academia, journalism and fiction, but all have one thing in common: a passion for the horror film and a desire to share it with the widest possible audience.
The admirable Devils Advocates series is not only essential and fun reading for the serious horror fan but should be set texts on any genre course.
Dr Ian Hunter, Reader in Film Studies, De Montfort University, Leicester
Auteur Publishings new Devils Advocates critiques on individual titles offer bracingly fresh perspectives from passionate writers. The series will perfectly complement the BFI archive volumes. Christopher Fowler, Independent on Sunday
Devils Advocates has proven itself more than capable of producing impassioned, intelligent analyses of genre cinema quickly becoming the go-to guys for intelligent, easily digestible film criticism. Horror Talk.com
Auteur Publishing continue the good work of giving serious critical attention to significant horror films. Black Static
DevilsAdvocatesbooks
DevilsAdBooksALSO AVAILABLE IN THIS SERIES
Black Sunday Martyn Conterio
The Blair Witch Project Peter Turner
Carrie Neil Mitchell
The Curse of Frankenstein Marcus K. Harmes
The Descent James Marriot
Halloween Murray Leeder
Let the Right One In Anne Billson
Saw Benjamin Poole
The Silence of the Lambs Barry Forshaw
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre James Rose
The Thing Jez Conolly
Witchfinder General Ian Cooper
FORTHCOMING
Cannibal Holocaust Calum Waddell
Dead of Night Jez Conolly & David Owain Bates
Frenzy Ian Cooper
Near Dark John Berra
Nosferatu Cristina Massaccesi
Psychomania I.Q. Hunter & Jamie Sherry
Suspiria Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
DEVILS ADVOCATES
ANTICHRIST
AMY SIMMONS
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank John Atkinson of Auteur Publishing for his support and patience during the writing of this book. I also want to express my gratitude to fellow Devils Advocate, Neil Mitchell, and to film critic, Peter Matthews; the most memorable and inspirational of all my teachers. Finally, a special thanks to my mum, Diana, for her continued enthusiasm and encouragement, and Alan, for all the good curry, and bad jokes.
First published in 2015 by
Auteur, 24 Hartwell Crescent, Leighton Buzzard LU7 1NP
www.auteur.co.uk
Copyright Auteur 2015
Series design: Nikki Hamlett at Cassels Design
Set by Cassels Design www.casselsdesign.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the permission of the copyright owner.
E-ISBN 978-0-993-07171-3
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-906733-41-4
ebook ISBN: 978-0-9930717-1-3
CONTENTS
I can offer no excuse for Antichrist, other than my absolute belief in the film, the most important film of my entire career. (Lars von Trier)
Written and directed by Lars von Trier, Antichrist (2009) tells a story of parental loss, mourning and despair that result from the tragic death of a child. The two main characters in the film are not specifically named; their distinction in the credits is only by their gender; She, a researcher into witchcraft and gynocide (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and He, a cognitive therapist (Willem Dafoe).
The film is divided into four chapters, chapters Grief, Pain (Chaos Reigns), Despair (Gynocide) and The Three Beggars book-ended by a prologue and an epilogue.
Antichrist is the first film in von Triers Depression Trilogy, which features Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac (2013).
SYNOPSIS
Prologue. While having sex in their apartment on a winter afternoon, a husband and wife fail to keep an eye on their young toddler, Nic. The child walks over to an open window, entranced by the snow cascading down, and falls to his death.
Chapter one: Grief: The woman collapses at Nics funeral and is hospitalised. After a month, her husband insists that she discharge herself. He decides exposure therapy will be effective, and that she must re-live her deepest fears. The woman declares that she associates fear with Eden, a cabin in the woods, where she spent the previous summer with Nic writing her thesis on gynocide. They both travel to Eden by train and start hiking through the woods. She tires, and while she sleeps, he sees a deer giving birth to a stillborn foetus.
Chapter two: Pain (Chaos Reigns). When the couple arrive at their cabin, the man directs his wife in therapeutic exercises, yet she becomes increasingly manic and grief-stricken. Meanwhile, the natural world surrounding them continually proves itself to be hostile. He wakes the following morning to find his arm swollen from tick bites. Out walking, he comes across a self-disembowelling fox, which utters the words, chaos reigns.
Chapter three: Despair (Gynocide). While searching the attic, the man finds disturbing materials from his wifes thesis. Due to intense self-blame over Nics death, she has apparently come to embrace the belief that women are inherently evil. The couple have sex beneath a tree, while human arms materialise among its roots. The man discovers his sons autopsy report, which states that the bones in his feet were oddly deformed. When he confronts his wife, she knocks him unconscious, crushing his genitals with a block of wood. She then proceeds to drill a hole through his calf, and bolts a heavy grindstone to his leg. He drags himself away and hides in a fox-hole. She finds him and unsuccessfully attempts to dig him out of the mud with a shovel. She walks away, leaving him partially buried alive.
Chapter four: The Three Beggars. Remorseful, the woman drags him back inside the cabin. In a flashback, it is revealed that she was watching Nic as he climbed up to the window before he fell. Agitated and delirious, she mutilates her clitoris with a pair of scissors. During the night they are visited by the Three Beggars (a doe, a fox and a raven). Breaking through the floorboards, the man discovers the wrench to free himself. She stabs him in the back with the scissors, but he is able to remove the grindstone. He strangles her to death and burns her body on a pyre outside the cabin.
Epilogue. The man limps away from the cabin and stops to eat wild berries, as the Three Beggars look on. Upon reaching the top of a hill, he looks down towards the valley, to see hundreds of women ascending towards him, their faces blurred.
PROVOCATEUR
I have a trolls shard in my eyeI remember there is a boy who at some stage gets a troll shard in his eye and sees things ugly. (Lars von Trier)
