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We saw Antichrist (2009, written and directed by Lars von Trier) on the opening night of 2009′s Toronto International Film Festival. What a way to start my 30 films! I had been totally into the hype surrounding this film, from its early announcements, trailers and then crazy feedback from its Cannes screening, including the awesome “I am the best film director in the world” statement from Lars von Trier (youtube).

I became increasingly more nervous as the screening approached. I don’t know why… I have never anticipated a film with such conflict before! I am not a fan of spoilers but I couldn’t stop myself from reading article after review after interview about it.

The film is about many things: Chaos, Grief, Pain, Despair, misogyny, Nature vs. Nature vs. Nature vs. Nature… all pretty uplifting stuff. The prologue was absolutely brilliant. Shot in B&W and in slow-mo, with some opera music playing (clearly I do not know what piece it was)… it was both beautiful and terrible as we see two very conflicting things happening. I am not going to get much into the story as you can easily find spoilers elsewhere.

It was beautifully shot. It features some incredible shots of nature and a very dream-like and hypnotizing use of slo-mo. There are disturbing images of animals in perverted states. Do they help him, or do they help her? The extreme images of torture and mutilation were well led-up to. I felt it was a pretty powerful study of some dark themes. And then there was “The Scene” – even though I kind of knew what to expect, I still felt like it was pretty shocking. There were moans and groans throughout the audience and apparently somebody near the front threw up on people. Awesome!

Dafoe was good; actually he was pretty unspectacular and bordering on annoying until around the time the torture began… but maybe that was intentional. Gainsbourg was amazing but I did find her to be pretty bad in the scene where she’s running around screaming “You bastard!” over and over again. She was, however, playing a crazy person…

Willem Dafoe was present for a Q&A in which most questions were about von Trier. That’s fair enough, though, and Dafoe was very gracious with his answers and candor. He talked a lot about how he became involved with the project and also the clearly dark and depressed state that von Trier when he wrote the screenplay.

All in all, I think this is an important film but I don’t necessarily recommend it. I’m very glad that I saw it and I think it’s safe to say that von Trier remains one of my favourite directors – not really because I think he makes the best films, but because he consistently challenges not only his audience, but also himself.