Top 10 Films of the Year:
#8
Antichrist
Oh dear, not this again. It's hard for me to talk about Antichrist, especially when there is so much to be said, and so much that already has. Though I'm not sure how much I actually liked the film, I do know how much it effected me in the end. To still be thinking about it, to this day, nearly a month after I first watched, and still be mining through all the different possibilites, with absoloutly no clue at all which ones are right or wrong is just extraordinary to me. At first the only reason I wanted to watch the film is because I knew that it was going to have something shocking, then I learned of Lars von Trier's involvment, and then saw the trailer, and I was sold. The film is brutal and shocking, and disgusting, and violent, and depraved, and all the better for it. I am the kind of person that just eats that stuff up. Graphic violence? Sign me up. Controversy? I'm there. There is just something about that sort of outlaw film making that attracts me to them, and for that very reason I have sat through a lot of bad movies, Antichrist however is not one of them. The sheer beauty of the film is enough to watch it for alone. The opening sequence is just pure, pure genius, and has some of the most beautiful cinematography I've ever seen, the entire film just weaves this dreamlike quality that is impossible to shake. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe give some of the strongest performances of all time, and Von Trier directs like a pro, because he is, he really is. The succes of the film comes with mixing together beauty, and violence, and making these two polar opposites mesh in such a way that emotion stirs within the viewer, and all this goes on around a complexly wonderful story, and psychological study that almost puts the film over the top. It walks a very fine line between pushing boundaries, and just being over the top, and I think it found a near perfect balance. Antichrist is a fear to beautiful to resist.
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