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Antichrist: A Brief Review

One of the best movies I’ve seen recently is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist from 2009, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, a truly unique and provocative experience. It’s almost impossible to describe what this film is like, or “about.” It’s like a slow-moving, beautiful, irresistible nightmare. I would describe it as psychological/surreal arty horror.

The movie is divided into four chapters, titled “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” and “The Three Beggars.” It tells the story of a nameless couple whose child dies in an accident, and who subsequently go to a cabin in the woods to cope with the mother’s trauma. The film seems divided into two distinct parts, very different in terms of what they give away about the story. In the first part, it seems very much as if the movie is really simply about her boyfriend-cum-psychologist trying to help her overcome her anxiety and panic attacks. Nothing that happens in the first part isn’t within the realm of reality. Once they move to the cabin, strange things begin to occur, and the movie shifts into a more surreal, nightmarish atmosphere, gradually building in horror until it reaches a fever pitch.

The cinematography is absolutely beautiful. It is worth watching for that alone. Overall the movie is eerie, highly atmospheric, erotic, intense and visceral, bizarre and gorgeous. It deals with the occult but not nearly in a literal fashion. It has these lovely scenes of surreal, disturbing beauty, like the piles of pale limbs and naked bodies entwined with tree roots in the promotional image above. Antichrist is a strange gem, mysterious, powerful, and profoundly psychological.

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Poetry Corner: “Angel of Flight” by Anne Sexton

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act—the lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angel of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world’s bicycle goes by.

— Anne Sexton

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Edo-Period Pregnancy Dolls

These obstetrical dolls from 19th-century Edo (modern-day Tokyo) were used to educate midwives on the delivery of babies, as well as to entertain the public at sideshow carnivals known as misemono. Realistic and articulated, some of them even included models of the fetus in various stages of its development.