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ANTICHRIST EXPLAINED - Let's Look At The Facts / Not The Symbology

posted 14 years ago by goodshots
127 replies | jump to latest

THIS THREAD DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS - PLEASE BEWARE!!

I am not going to go in to the artistic merit of this film - I think that topic has been well discussed in other threads. Also, I am not going to even raise the subject of whether you have to be intelligent to understand this film. Often there are films that have so many red herrings that you can be left perplexed. In other instances, a film can be so heavily layered in complex 'symbolic' imagery that it detracts from the story. I think that this film is a case of the latter. I will not go in to the symbology of the deer, the fox and the crow - the so called 'three beggars' - as I feel that they don't actually contribute to the essence of the story.

Finally, I don't want to discuss whether the movie was too graphic or gratuitous. That topic has also been well covered in other threads.

I saw this film a couple of days ago, and after initially leaving me confused and bewildered - I now have had some time to think about it. By no means do I think that my interpretation is 100% correct, and please don't leave any abusive posts if you disagree with me. If, however, there is anything that I have missed then please respond. I welcome your thoughts.

I don't believe that Dafoe's character is the Antichrist, as mentioned in another thread. If that was the case, then why did he try to help his wife throught the grieving process. The Devil/Antichrist is purely out for self-gain and manipulates every situation to that end. Dafoe's character shows genuine concern for his wife and tries very hard to support her through their time of loss.

Here are the facts. In the Prologue, Dafoe [He] & Gainsbourg [She] are having sex as their young son climbs out an open window and falls to his death. [The parallels to this and the death of Eric Clapton's son are nothing short of chilling.]

After a month of deep depression and heavy medication for Gainsbourg, Dafoe feels that [in his infinite wisdom] he is better prepared to accelerate his wife's recovery through the mourning process and checks her out of hospital for some one-on-one therapy. [At this point, we do not know if her depressed state is more related to Grief with the loss of her son, or is it more about the Guilt related to the combination of having the baby monitor left on silent, the safety gate left unlocked, the window left open and the fact that she saw the boy climb on to the table and fall to his death without doing anything about it. It could even be both the Guilt and the Grief - but to what extent does one dominate the other?]

At home, Dafoe initially fights-off his wife's sexual advances because He tries to keep his therapy sessions professional. Foolishly, He eventually gives in to her despite knowing that She is merely using sex as a means to temporarily forget her guilt/grief pain. Using sexual gratification [sometimes rather inappropriately] as a means of a temporary antidote becomes a central theme in her feeble attempts to dull the pain that she is constantly feeling.

It is during their therapy sessions together that He discovers that something had happened to his wife while She was working on her thesis at their holiday cabin at/or called Eden. [This is where the biblical references begin.]

It is at this point that his total aloofness/disconnection from his family is revealed. He was not even aware that She had given up working on her thesis. Furthermore, apart from the emotion that He had shown at his son's funeral, there appeared to be no other grieving shown on his part. Clearly, He was so absorbed in his psychotherapeutic work that he could only focus on the techniques as they would be applied to his wife, rather than also applying these techniques on himself.

After moving to the Eden cabin, the psychotherapy techniques become more intense - and so too does her disintegration between what she perceives as real and unreal. After all, you can't wake up from one good night's sleep and claim to be cured of your depression - now can you? He is not convinced and neither should the viewer be.

After another rough sexual encounter between He and She, She reveals why she gave up on her thesis. Her initial perspective on Gynocide [or Gynaecide/Gynecide which is defined as 'the killing of a woman/women] was that 'Nature is Satan' [i.e. 'Nature' refers to human nature and 'Satan' is the reference to the Antichrist in the title] and that men can't help themselves from hurting/torturing/killing women because evil is inherent in their nature. It is after her deep analysis of the information that She had collected that She had concluded that it is because women are also inherently evil that they bring the hurt/torture/death upon themselves. So therefore it is only natural that Gynocide happens.

Her slow descent in to madness begins at the point of this realisation. This is evident in the decline of legibility of her handwriting in the journal/scrapbook that holds all her data. Can you fight evil if it is inherent in your nature?

The autopsy report on the death of their son revealed that the boy had a deformity in his feet. The thing to consider is that young children's bones are very malleable, and can be affected by external forces to change shape. Much like oral braces can move teeth – and the application of rings can elongate the necks of young girls in Burma [Myanmar] to make them appear to be more sexually attractive to the opposite sex - She's [perhaps subconscious] attempts to torture her son by placing the wrong shoes on the wrong feet could very easily cause a growth deformity in a child so young. Let's be clear, here, it is never stated that the deformity occurred at birth - all that is said is that the deformity was unrelated to the events leading to the child's death.

[As a side note: Is it possible that She tried to deform her son's feet as a form of MBPS [Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome], in which she was seeking attention for herself by gaining sympathy from others by making her own son unwell? This idea is unlikely as there is no indication that anyone else was aware of any problem with the boy's feet, or even aware of what she was doing to his feet. The deformation was only discovered during the autopsy - whereas in most cases of MBPS the main aim is to prolong the sickness as long as possible so that the parent/caregiver causing the child's illness can maximise the attention gained from medical staff and those friends/family around her/him.]

So, is She evil? When He confronts She about the photos depicting their son with his shoes on the wrong feet, She snaps and attacks him - first by physically trying to punch and kick him and then by overpowering him in another rough sexual encounter. It is at this point that She smashes the large log in to his engorged loins and then proceeds to...well you know the rest [if you’ve already seen the film].

Does She snap because He has revealed her true evil [or Antichrist] nature, or is it because She fears that He will leave her like She claims is the case? It is hard to say what the real answer is. I do believe, though, that the act of bolting the stone wheel to his leg was done to prevent him from leaving her. Would She be able to cope with the last important person in her life leaving for good? Most definitely not, especially in her current fragile Grief/Guilt pain-ridden state.

However, if She was not evil then why did She continue with her sexual encounter when She saw her son heading for the open window that lead to his untimely death? She did have enough time to respond because the boy was only just starting to climb the table. So why didn't She save her son? Therein lies the answer. Perhaps her true evil is both inherent and uncontrollable - and that it is foolish to believe that the evil in all of us does not exist. [In much the same way that it is believed that the greatest trick that Satan had ever pulled was that he, himself, did not exist.]

When She realises that She cannot release the inner evil [or Antichrist] in her husband, thereby unleashing his 'true' nature to physically punish or torture her [in fact, her first attempt to unleash it was when she asked/begged him to beat her during sex and all he could do was slap her a couple of times], She then takes it upon herself in the act of genital self-mutilation. After all, if He won't torture her, then someone has to - and if you want a job done properly, sometimes it is just better to do it yourself.

When He awakens after being dragged back in to the cabin from the forest and tries to unbolt the stone wheel, she comes at him with the scissors and this finally unleashes his true inherent evil [or Antichrist] self.

By grabbing her by the throat and strangling her to death, he actualises her self-fulfilling prophecy that it is in all our nature to be evil and that by her acts of evil she has brought about her own act of Gynocide, by revealing/releasing his true evil [or Antichrist] self.

So, was the action of killing his wife an act of self-preservation or had He finally snapped? It's hard to say whether the answer is one or the other - or perhaps even both. At the end of the day the result is still the same - She is dead by his hands. 'Nature is Satan.'

[–] procreate 9 years ago

hmmm. How about if the child is the antichrist? Knowing the true nature of humans, he 'sacrifice' himself to unleash the true nature of both. After all he was tortured by his mom, who deform his feets to never, ever leave her. And using the animals as witness of the hell is about to break through. Killing that pigeon at the beginning to trigger in her something that in the end cost her life.
And yes, both are part of the nature, she is crazy and sociopath and he is a victim of both.
At the end, when he see all that women who were 'sacrifice' by the 'evil' men, at that moment, when the true antichrist shows up, again.

[–] The_Boxing_Cat 8 years ago

To VICSTER111 - WOW, what movie did YOU see?

[–] Hecate-3 8 years ago

** SPOILERS ABOUND **

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I have come to the conclusion that I will never understand this film. But that's okay. I'm also not convinced that the director does.

I will never understand this film, because it's impossible to determine what actually happened.

Was Eden just a vacation cabin where a woman drove herself nuts? Was it an inherently evil place that drove her nuts? Was it an imaginary place that her husband sent her to through hypnosis sessions as someone on this board suggested? Don't know.

Was she torturing her son by putting his shoes on the wrong feet or was she simply trying to prevent him from leaving her? Don't know.

Did she really see him just before he fell out the window or did she only imagine later that she did because she had convinced herself that she was evil and deserving only of punishment and death? Don't know.

For that matter, even if Eden really was a real cabin to which she took her son, did she really deform his feet there by constantly putting his shoes on the wrong feet? That's what the husband saw in the photograph, but at that point, the husband had seen a deer running around in the woods with a half-delivered, long-dead fetus; he had seen a talking fox devouring itself. How reliable were the husband's perceptions at that point? Are we supposed to believe that she had been putting the kid's feet into the wrong shoes ever since her thesis sojourn in Eden and yet the Dad had never noticed until he looked at the pictures?

About the only weirdness in the film that I'm pretty sure wasn't a hallucination was all of the naked bodies writhing around the dead tree while the couple had sex, and the only reason I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be a hallucination is because neither the man nor the woman seemed to be aware of it. But that doesn't mean that it was necessarily "real", because it might well have been intended as nothing more than metaphor conveyed through artistic imagery.

So until the director takes the time to tell me what actually happened and what was hallucination and what was just metaphor, I WILL NOT attempt to make sense of this film.

But it sure was gruesome, and whoever listed it as erotic needs to be fired from his job. Explicit images of genitalia are not enough to make a film erotic.

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Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.

[–] Brazillian 8 years ago

I think is simple as a woman starts to grieve badly for her dead child because of the nature of her work, also the distant and strictly sexual nature of her relationship with her patronizing husband. If you have the patience I will lay down below the whole movie iMHO

After the usual social ritual(funeral, meds etc), her husband goes on a lone ranger mentality to treat her in the same cabin she snapped about the realization of loneliness and abandonment, while working in a thesis about the misogynistic nature of Man. This situation only aggravates her condition, one that she sees herself in the center(infanticide?) of being a lustful/evil/murderous woman herself, perhaps due to an inherently evil nature.

I see her own mutillation as a way to atone for the sin(she thinks it is one), of being aware about her son going through the window, while having sex and being unable to respond accordingly. It is an act of damnation of her femininity.

Regarding the attacks on her husband, I see as a spiral of insanity that both go down together, mostly because of the incapacity of him to grieve for their son, just because he thinks he is above that. I guess one thing is being able to cope with grief and get out, another is not even feeling it to begin with.

So she takes him into a tour de force in regards to grief, she spiritually puts him there, where she lost it all that was important and once gave meaning to her existance. Her sexuallity, maternity, insanity on the losing of both and the feeling of repulsiveness on sleeping with the main reason for it everyday, exposed to no signs of real compassion, just professional misplaced attention. He doesn't even contemplate her agony/angst, he always says "I know it hurts". I know he was there with her and is coping with it, but he is not there with her coping with it. He is trying to cure her and I don't think you can cure a mother over her son's grief, it is like breaking the most sacred, natural manifestation of the divine, social man ever had a glimpse of.

The three beggars are only the manifestation of the suffering this woman has gone through and they are there to help them going through it, I even see his manifestation as troublesome, gruesome and distorted. But someone must die, and I really don't think it would matter, they are both already dead at that point.

Anyway I think the movie is trying to fish for misogynic mimics to embarass themselves. I hope I didn't do that myself. I think LVT tries to fish for hatred behaviour from his audience on his movies or himself has some issues on coping with his own and shoots his therapy. I liked this movie way more than Nympho I and II.

“Gentlemen, You Can’t Fight In Here! This is The War Room!”: Dr. Strangelove

[–] Orr971-2 8 years ago

Good interpretation/analysis.
One thong though: you forgot to mention that the self mutilation thing was not to torture herself, or not only to torture herself. The way I understood it, She suddenly remembers that she in fact SAW the kid climbing the chair-table-window, and she had time to save him, you said it. (Question is: will she only remembers it now, or did she knew/remembered it all this time, that She in fact killed her own son?)
But why didn't she act? Well, maybe, it was because she preferred not to stop the sex for this, even for this. (Nice thing: the third installment of Lars' Trilogy of Depression is Nymphomaniac, starring Gainsbourg, that if what I just said is true, she's kind of a Nymphomaniac here too..)

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My favorite TV shows list: www.imdb.com/list/ls002906535

[–] trixietrx 8 years ago

Late to the party, have the movie on DVD, but finally got around to watching it on Netflix last night and I'm still processing.

LOVE this thread. Agree with most arguments made, although not all, but that's minor.

But what my mind constantly keeps coming to is: ENTROPY!

Everything. EXCEPT, the tree.

Another question or two (please forgive typos, having issues with keyboard):

Is He distancing from She or is She merely seeing that reflected back at her?

How does He end up with the same psychotic visions, all which start with wind, IIRC, that she has symbolized? Not as symbols, but how does he get dragged into the psychosis? Whose psychosis is it anyway? Both? Did he bury his own grief down so far to help She that He never dealt with it? Is this actually all in His mind and not Hers?

Also, if you'll remember, She cannot find the wrench to get the thing off his leg, yet he happens to be right over it on the floor and gets it to free himself.

I need to watch again, but so many theories I like to review here before I view again.

[–] Brazillian 8 years ago

As I said, he refused to grief because he understood all the process as a professional would do. She is so enraged with him for doing it, by leaving all the grief for her alone while he emotionally distances himself from feeling it, because he is a know it all on it you know? He'll fix her.

She simply goes insane and takes him on a tour de force on what it is to be inside her mind, she shows him with all her power, including the hinted extra-sensorial divine feminine alleged by LVT on his movies.

“Gentlemen, You Can’t Fight In Here! This is The War Room!”: Dr. Strangelove

[–] trixietrx 8 years ago

OK, I didn't get that the first time, that he put all the grief on her, good analysis.

And I like the idea, and forgot, the divine feminine. I haven't watched Nympho yet, but have watched and love the one with Kirstin Dunst many, many times and LOVE it.

I guess that is the thing, I can understand his movies because I understand depression.

[–] 7 years ago

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