"На "Антихристе" журналистский зал реагировал на самые рискованные сцены нервным смехом. Публика любит охаивать своих бывших кумиров, мстительно вспоминая, что от великого до смешного один шаг. Но Триеру в новом фильме удалось быть великим и смешным одновременно. Это не мы смеемся над ним, а он над человечеством — своим ядовитым, саркастическим смехом. Другое дело, что своим экстремизмом и воинствующим радикализмом режиссер рискует предельно сузить аудиторию своих поклонников. Помог ли ему самому "Антихрист" выйти из депрессии? Не похоже."
http://kommersant.ru/doc-rss.aspx?DocsID=1172004
"Слишком рабское следование канону и слишком демонстративное его нарушение, как правило, приводят к провалу. Триер хватает дубину жанра фильма ужасов и машет ею во все стороны, но мимо, мимо, мимо.
Над историей героини «Рассекая волны» мы плакали. Когда позвонки Бьорк хрустели в петле, мы содрогались от ужаса. Когда Грейс уничтожала подлый Догвиль, мы торжествовали. Сейчас просто хихикаем. И лишь пара моментов в фильме, когда героиня мысленно представляет себе внушающий ей ужас лес, сделаны так здорово, что их не стыдно посвятить памяти Андрея Арсеньевича."
http://vremya.ru/2009/84/10/228920.html
"Many viewers in the large Debussy cinema also appeared to take objection to von Trier's decision to dedicate his film to the revered Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. Applause from a handful of viewers was drowned out by booing at the end.[...] In production notes for Antichrist, the 53-year-old director said that the movie was a "kind of therapy" for depression he was suffering from two years ago."I can offer no excuse for 'Antichrist' ... other than my absolute belief in the film -- the most important film of my entire career!"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090517/film_nm/us_cannes_antichrist
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/05/cannes-report-t.html
"At the news conference, one reporter compared the director to Dostoyevsky and Chekhov, another to Italian shlock horror-meister Dario Argento.
Von Trier, who often appears reluctant to analyze his films, described "Antichrist" as "a very dark dream about guilt and sex and stuff."
"I don't think I have to justify it," said von Trier, who said he made the film as a way of recovering from a period of severe depression.
"I work for myself and I do this little film that I am now kind of fond of. I haven't done it for you or an audience, so I don't think I owe anybody an explanation."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D988MAN00&show_article=1
"The film's most successful thematic confrontation is that between frail reason (embodied in the pathetic, infantilizing attempt by the husband, who's a psychotherapist, to treat his deeply disturbed wife with cognitive therapy) and the uncontrollable forces of emotion and mystery that emerge victorious.
Another powerful idea, that nature is cruel and vicious and completely antithetical to human welfare, seems to align von Trier with the German visionary director Werner Herzog. ("Nature is Satan's church," the wife utters apocalyptically at one point.) This focus on nature subsequently gets conflated with human nature and finally with female nature, where von Trier's careerlong misogyny comes into fullest bloom. In any case, all the ideas of the film are so extravagantly and feverishly expressed that one fears that von Trier, always working on the edge, has finally become unhinged.
The film works much better on a purely visual level, if only viewers were able to forget that these are real people being represented in these voluptuous images, abetted by an often superb sound design. From the opening titles, abstract expressionism reigns powerfully and conveys a great deal of intense, if finally unspecifiable, meaning. Unfortunately at some point a story has to be told, no matter how minimalist, and with actual human beings, no matter how symbolically freighted. This is where the film falls apart."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/film-review-antichrist-1003973946.story
"There’s always one film in the Cannes competition selection that seems calculated to outrage in the most cynical and manipulative way imaginable. This year, that film is Antichrist. Lars von Trier, we get it. You really, really don’t like women."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6312877.ece
