Hacker Cinema
Antichrist
2009 · Film · 104 min
Directed by Lars von Trier
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
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5 comments on Hacker News
Just wanted to watch a relatively recent movie yesterday (Antichrist) and the only place that has it is a streaming service called Mooby. Not signing up for a service to watch one movie. Would have gladly paid 4 bucks to watch it, so had to find it in the usual places instead.
Compared to Midsommar, Audition, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Antichrist, A Clockwork Orange, American History X, or The Human Centipede?
Yeah I would describe GTA as pretty tame compared to those movies some of which have broken through to the mainstream. The average horror movie is more violent and gruesome than even the worst we see from video games.
The Witcher and Mass Effect? Those are adult games with very lame sex scenes all of which are consensual. I don't see that as particularly scandalous.
I'm certainly not up for censorship. A lot of it just comes across as American power projection (always the good guy American torturing the bad foreigner doing evil things), which I guess is just a fact of life unless you avoid Hollywood and stick to international/art house cinema. Aside from glorifying war and torture, it's such a low-effort cliche and it fails at evoking disgust when it's shrouded in a plot that absolves the good guys of all wrong doing. You know, the end justifies the means, and a side-effect is that now people think torture is good so long as you think the victim is bad.
Imagine how many people in Guantanamo have been subjected to over a decade of this treatment under the utterly delusional belief that they must have some information to offer and cannot, under any circumstance, be innocent, so therefore they deserve it.
As a counter-example, Antichrist features some scenes that could be seen as torture if the story was reframed. Same with Nymphomania. While that kind of shock value is par for the course for Lars von Trier, it doesn't necessarily celebrate it. I'm sure plenty wanted to ban or censor that; I just wanted to see something genuinely disturbing.
> During the year Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she composed a note that was downright ominous. “My dear,” she wrote, “I am now going away for some time. I hope you will be well . . .” She set aside the sheet, took up a second one, and wrote, “My dear, I am now going away for some time. I hope you will be well.” A third sheet consisted of pen marks that did not add up to any intelligible lines.
Reading this part sent chills down my spine. If anyone has seen the movie Antichrist, they might recall a particular scene that echoes (and was perhaps inspired by) this anecdote. I truly think losing ones mind is one of the most terrifying things to imagine -- the very fabric of reality coming apart at the seams.
I don't agree with the author's characterization. Little of the sex scenes in Hollywood films are "bold" or "daring" in the slightest. They're timid, lifeless and quite often completely pointless. They're put in there more to appease some informal filmmaking convention rather than to drive the film itself. A few are explicit, most are comical and still suffer from puritan tropes (like the infamous "his-and-hers bed sheets").
Lars von Trier is certainly controversial, too. Antichrist received quite a bit of opposition from ratings and censorship boards. Then, in the USA, even if your film isn't censored, the NC-17 is a de facto death penalty.