反基督者 英文影评 Antichrist

The embodiment of unalloyed evil in a parable without mercy

The term antichrist is commonly used to mean "the opposite of Christ." It actually translates from the original Greek as "opposed to Christ." This is a useful place to begin in considering Lars von Trier's new film. The central character in "Antichrist" is not supernatural, but an ordinary man, who loses our common moral values. He lacks all good and embodies evil, but that reflects his nature and not his theological identity.

This man, known only as He, is played by Willem Dafoe as a somber, driven, tortured soul. The film opens with He and his wife, She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), making passionate love. This is a moment of complete good. In the next room, their infant son begins to crawl around to explore and falls to his death. This in itself is a neutral act. It inspires the rest of the film, which labels itself in three stages: Grief, Pain and Despair.

We must begin by assuming that He and She are already at psychological tipping points. She has been doing research on witchcraft, and it leads her to wonder if women are inherently evil. That may cause her to devalue herself. He is a controlling, dominant personality, who I believe is moved by the traumatic death to punish the woman who delivered his child into the world.

Their first stage, Grief, is legitimate. Their error is in trying to treat it instead of accepting it and living it through. Of course they blame themselves for having when they should have been attentive to the infant. Guilt requires punishment. She mentally punishes herself. For reasons he may not be aware of, he is driven to deal with her guilt as a problem, lecturing her in calm, patient, detached psychobabble. Her grief is her fault, you see, and he will blame her for it.

This leads to pain, most directly when he insists, at this of all times, on their going to their remote cabin in a dark woods that she fears at the best of times. The cabin is named Eden; make of that what you will. They have already eaten of the fruit, and it will never be Eden for them again.

The psychic pain of his counseling and their removal to the forest are now joined by pain inflicted upon them by nature and each other. The woods are inhabited by strange animals that look ordinary -- a deer, a fox, a crow -- but are possessed and unnatural. He and She don't much seek refuge in their cabin but increasingly find themselves outside in the wilderness. They begin to inflict pain on each other in unspeakable and shockingly intimate ways.

These passages have been referred to as "torture porn." Sadomasochistic they certainly are, but porn is entirely in the mind of the beholder. Will even a single audience member find these scenes erotic? That is hard to imagine. They are extreme in a deliberate way; von Trier, who has always been a provocateur, is driven to confront and shake his audience more than any other serious filmmaker -- even Bunuel and Herzog. He will do this with , pain, boredom, theology and bizarre stylistic experiments. And why not? We are at least convinced we're watching a film precisely as he intended it, and not after a watering down by a fearful studio executive. www.130q.com

That said, I know what's in it for von Trier. What was in it for me? More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. Who can say what von Trier intended? His own explanations have been vague. The actors take the words and actions at face value and invest them with all the conviction they can. The result, in a sense, is that He and She get away from von Trier's theoretical control and act on their own, as they are compelled to.

We don't know as much as we think we do about acting. In a recent interview, I asked Dafoe what discussions he had with Gainsbourg before their most difficult scenes. He said they discussed very little: "We had great intimacy on the set but the truth is we barely knew each other. We kissed in front of the camera the first time, we got naked for the first time with the camera rolling. This is pure pretending. Since our intimacy only exists before the camera, it makes it more potent for us."

So it is a documentary in one way. What does it document? The courage of the actors, for one thing. The realization of von Trier's images, for another. And on the personal level, our fear that evil does exist in the world, that our fellow men are capable of limitless cruelty, and that it might lead, as it does in the film, to the obliteration of human hope. The third stage is Despair.

我一直都认为拉斯冯特里尔就是个能钻到你心灵深处去的导演，去静静回忆他的作品，总有振聋发聩的声响和影像能在脑中回响和浮现。脑子里想着特里尔那满脸胡茬子的胖脸，一闭上眼睛，我就看到了《狗镇》中格蕾丝在遭遇到最痛楚的背叛与伤害后绝望无助的眼神；似乎也恍惚间听到了《黑暗中的舞者》里塞尔玛即将踏上绞刑架时那震撼人性的歌声；脸颊上似乎也感受到了《白痴》中经历了丧子之痛的凯伦在遭遇社会和家庭的唾弃与背离之后慢慢滑落的泪水。
 
格雷斯成为了现代社会基督教义下的的牺牲品和破坏者；凯伦也经历了从传统基督教义下道德的维护者到社会家庭宗教的反叛者的痛彻心扉的转变；而《破浪而出》中的贝丝则是个矛盾体，在宗教信仰和情欲肉欲以及对自己丈夫忠诚的爱之间徘徊彷徨苦痛，以自己的在性和肉身的毁灭换来最纯洁的爱和对基督鄙夷的一瞥。
 
特里尔就这么不遗余力的向社会宣布着自己的反叛与异端，这次更是极端，单单是看到这个名字就足以把你震撼了——《反基督者》。作为东方的观众也许还不足以感受到基督（Christ）这个词深重，我们都知道，大部分中国人是不信教的，可是西方则不同，在他们的心中总会有个宗教信仰，在遭遇到911之后，布什一个劲的冲着民众喊“GOD BLESS AMERICA”就可以使美国人重新恢复信心，相信上帝还与他们同在的。再拿拉斯冯特里尔的家乡丹麦来说吧，大约 95% 的信教人士的信仰是受国家支持的基督教福音派路德宗。福音派神学强调“神爱世人”，而路德宗在教义上主要强调因信称义。这两点都被特里尔做了颠覆性的表现。 www.130q.com
 
《反基督者》这部电影，在视觉上和叙事的内容上都堪称是碰触在人类生理和心理接受层面的底线。威廉-达福和夏洛特-甘斯布饰演的两夫妻经历了由于自身的疏忽而带来的丧子之痛。作为心理学家的丈夫为了治疗妻子精神的崩溃，为了挖掘妻子内心恐惧的源泉，将其带到了山中名为“伊甸园”的小木屋，试图在这里得到心灵的平衡。森林中的一切俨然从美好的自然转变成神秘难以操控的魔鬼的寓所，而两人的关系也急转直下，作为精神统领如同上帝般的丈夫，也演变成了被肉欲侵蚀的妻子的牺牲品。
  
从影像层面上也是分成了两极，美丽的让人窒息的画面比比皆是，茂密的令人压抑的森林是一种梦境的呈现，优雅的慢速镜头，完美的黄金分割比例构图，柔和细腻的光线处理，加上优美抒情的歌剧选段，女主角轻盈的踏过清晨满是苔藓的地面的画面简直是美丽的一塌糊涂。可是后来这种极端的美变成了一种极端的黑暗与恐怖，蝙蝠等象征着攻击与破坏的动物出现，对身体的自残与冷酷的场面也充斥了屏幕。画面和情节也越来越挑战观众的心理与生理的承受底线。
 
特里尔对女性的表现依旧是残忍并且丝毫不妥协的，在《狗镇》里历经磨难的妮可-基德曼曾经质问导演，为何如此憎恨女人？特里尔也许并不是对女性这一性别的憎恶而给予她们磨难，也许是正是因为宗教对女性的迫害和将女性作为天然的反宗教的工具性加以利用，所以总是呈现给观众女性在经历了无法承受的耶稣般来自上帝的痛苦和惩罚之后的一次次的抵抗与挣扎。
  
冯·特里尔曾形容自己的电影为“对自己幻想的黑暗世界的一瞥，探索自我恐惧以及反基督者的原始本性”。看看这张剧照吧，影片中的这次的体验可以说成是最快乐的痛苦，在黑暗、冰冷、迷幻到恐怖的环境中，体验着性高潮带来的快感。树根的纠结盘错，和手臂的交叉与挣扎似乎都可以理解为特里尔没有办法摆脱的对宗教束缚的内心深处的恐惧。而带来的肉欲和情欲的解脱般的高潮，正是对这种痛苦和恐惧的挑战。

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