{"id":1211,"date":"2010-03-08T11:54:23","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T16:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/03\/08\/the-horror\/"},"modified":"2010-03-08T11:54:23","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T16:54:23","slug":"the-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/03\/08\/the-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"the horror…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Antichrist2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

I went to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist<\/a> a few days ago. Of the reviews I’ve read, Brent Plate’s <\/a>captures the way in which the film’s images persist in haunting one’s consciousness. Plate, aptly I think, compares the film to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will<\/em>, the film that Adolf Hitler called “an incomparable glorification of the power and beauty of our Movement”:<\/p>\n

“Like Riefenstahl\u2019s Triumph, Lars von Trier\u2019s Antichrist is a beautiful film. Ultra slow-motion flashbacks and intercuts reminiscent of a Bill Viola video; high-contrast, black-and-white lovemaking; textured, hypnotic, surrealistic scenes of humans intertwined with nature; and extreme close-ups of human eyes, bamboo in a glass vase, and unkempt hair (the camera sporadically zooms in on the backs of heads a la Hitchcock\u2019s Vertigo) all make for a film that is impossible to get out of one\u2019s sensual body. Antichrist\u2019s images and sounds have infiltrated my dreamscape for the two weeks now since I saw it at the New York Film Festival, along with about 700 other attendees. I wish I had their phone numbers; even the disgusted dozens who walked out halfway through. I\u2019d like to call them at 3:00 a.m. and ask what they are thinking about, what they are dreaming, if indeed they are sleeping. I need some therapy. This is one messed-up film.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t need therapy from seeing the film, but I am convinced that von Trier needs it. It’s a beautiful film, cinematically masterful at times, but it goes off the rails. Whether it’s misogynist (probably, though one could legitimately debate that), misanthropic (no doubt), just troubled (it certainly is that), or merely pranksterish and provocateurial (and self-promoting to the max), von Trier plays, enchantingly, with the power of images in a way that only those who don’t believe in the power of images can fail to be perturbed by. Where Coppolla’s\/Conrad’s\/Colonel Kurtz’s “The horror, the horror…<\/a>” was motivated by something tangible (the Vietnam War, the Belgian Congo, war itself, the murky depths humans sometimes descend to), von Trier’s war is a war at the heart of nature, humanity, everything, and it is a war we lost a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Slyly dedicating the film to Andrei Tarkovsky, von Trier is Tarkovsky’s demon brother, his evil genius twin. Where Tarkovsky believes in hope against hope, salvation in a universe that sometimes seems stacked against it (though it’s really us who stack it, and in which ultimately time, nature, and beauty redeem us), von Trier’s is a hopeless beauty, a laugh in the face of cruel darkness, which happens to be a cruel darkness he imagines into existence for us and lets us wander around in at our own risk. He’s too good a filmmaker for us to watch as he drives off a cliff; someone ought to rein him in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist a few days ago. Of the reviews I’ve read, Brent Plate’s captures the way in which the film’s images persist in haunting one’s consciousness. Plate, aptly I think, compares the film to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the film that Adolf Hitler called “an incomparable glorification […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688745,691847,689354],"tags":[4470],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema_zone","category-religion-spirituality","category-image_nation","tag-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-jx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3997,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/18\/malick-vs-von-trier-cannes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":0},"title":"Malick vs. von Trier @ Cannes","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The artist of sublime faith (of the pantheistic, immanent kind) versus the artist of sublime cynicism. \"Earth is heaven (and purgatory)\" versus \"Earth is evil.\" With catastrophe and Kubrick's 2001 lurking in the background of both... http:\/\/youtu.be\/fLPe0fHuZsc MUBI has a good run-down of the reviews from Cannes of these two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/fLPe0fHuZsc\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5470,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/02\/17\/toward-an-ecophilosophical-cinema\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":1},"title":"Toward an ecophilosophical cinema","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"My paper for this year's Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, coming up next month in Boston, will focus on the two films that got a lot of side-by-side attention at last year's Cannes festival, Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Since a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/02\/39-275x116.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7499,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/04\/21\/visiting-uc-davis\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":2},"title":"Visiting UC Davis","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be participating in the Mellon-sponsored Environments and Societies Colloquium Series next Wednesday, April 30,\u00a0at the University of California Davis. My colloquium paper, entitled \u201cOn Matters of Concern: Ecology, Ontological Politics, and the Anthropo(s)cene,\u201d is\u00a0available for reading on the E & S website. (It's a variation of a chapter for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Kirsten_Dunst_Charlotte_Gainsbourg_Melancholia_LarsVonTrier_film_3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/04\/Kirsten_Dunst_Charlotte_Gainsbourg_Melancholia_LarsVonTrier_film_3-300x127.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1895,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/21\/the-tree-of-life-in-pieces\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":3},"title":"The tree of life, in pieces","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If you haven't seen the trailer for Terence Malick's forthcoming film The Tree of Life, you're just not a real cineaste, are you? What's better than burrowing analytically into the Heideggerian ecophilosophical themes of Malick's films (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World -- before making\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/12\/5-275x145.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1205,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/25\/morsels\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":4},"title":"morsels","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First, for anyone living in a JonStewartless alternate universe... Stewart (and Samantha Bee) giving Glenn Beck a history lesson (about progressivism) was pretty funny. Beck may be a cheap target, but it's also a cheap (free) history lesson. Take this country back, Glenn, way back... www.thedailyshow.com Next, Denmark's new tourist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7016,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/11\/08\/society-space-interview\/","url_meta":{"origin":1211,"position":5},"title":"Society & Space interview","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Society and Space has posted a conversation\/interview that Harlan Morehouse carried out with me in early October. While it's focused on Ecologies of the Moving Image, we talk about plenty of other things -- nature and culture, the eco-humanities, the Anthropocene, ontology, critical geography, Buddhism, Zizek, Peirce, nationalism, withdrawn objects,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}