31 Days Of Horror Day 28: The Unseen 48: The Kingdom

(Note this pertains only to the first season of The Kingdom)

Why’d I Buy It?: Picked It Up at the Hollywood Video is burning down sale.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Let me put this as delicately as I can. Lars Von Trier is considered to be one of the most important cinematic voices working today. And I more or less think he’s full of shit. (Mostly)

My problem with Von Trier, is simply I have not seen a single frame of a single one of his films in which I did not believe that he was just fucking with me. I may think that Michael Haneke makes glorified Skinner Boxes instead of films, but I believe he at least is upfront about the terms of his experimentation.

Von Trier on the other hand never makes films that are about what they are about. Dogville isn’t really about American hypocracy. It’s about Von Trier getting to gang rape one of the most famous women in the world. Dancer In The Dark is about Von Trier getting to torment another, not the story at hand. Some find the closing shots of Breaking The Waves to be among the most transcendant in cinema. I see it as little more then a giant floating middle finger pointed right at the audience.

Whether this failure is Von Trier’s as a director or mine as a viewer, I’ll leave as an open question. The point is I get very little to nil out of Von Trier’s films and feel I could live a full and happy life without ever seeing another one. So I don’t exactly go out of my way to watch them. Particularly when my first exposure to the material is the well meaning, ahead of its time, and completely disastrous Kingdom Hospital. A show that featured a wise cracking Anteater who was also the lord of the dead.

How Was It?:



Grr… It was actually pretty good.

Yes, though I can’t say it’s changed my opinion towards Von Trier as a whole, there’s no denying that The Kingdom is a seriously creepy, seriously strange, and seriously affective piece of horror filmmaking.

With it’s eccentric cast, bizarre subplots, and absurd perpendicular sense of humor, The Kingdom resembles Twin Peaks more then the full on horror film I expected.

Many of Von Trier’s best scenes involve nothing supernatural at all. Like the part in episode one where the Head of the hospital, joining a secret society, is solemnly made to swear to be an enemy of the occult and a servant of reason, before participating in a ritual so arcane, so sublimely silly, that it almost beggars description.

It gets as much mileage from subplots involving office politics (Operation Morning Air) severed heads and diseased livers, as it does from the ghost ambulance that pulls up to it’s door’s every night.

Some of the old Von Trier Bullshit does creep up. Particularly in a down syndrome greek chorus/kitchen staff, who are literally magic and also omniscient. Luckily these are cases are few and far between.

Of course when The Kingdom does want to scare you, it comes prepared. And it’s that quality, the ability to put away his subplots and sick games, and face his subject head on, if only for a few scenes, that I find so lacking in the rest of his work. And that makes The Kingdom such an unforgettable ride.

That Von Trier. He ever finds something that engages him, he might make one heck of a film someday.

Antichrist

I have a confession to make.

I don’t like Lars Von Trier.

Like at all.

The reason is simple. Von Trier is someone I don’t trust. And as the old truism goes, without trust there can be no love. Now let me be clear here, when I say trust I don’t mean I don’t trust Von Trier to give me a safe experience. Many of the filmmakers I cherish most Herzog, Jodorowsky, and Afronsky are filmmakers dedicated to making unsafe films.

But they mean it. And that to me is the core of the problem with Von Trier. I don’t trust him to mean what he makes. There is never a moment in any Von Trier film where I am sure that Von Trier is not simply fucking with me.

Once again, this is not so much a problem in and of itself. I could spin off a list of filmmakers I delight in, who take nothing but the greatest pleasure in fucking with me. The problem is Von Trier combines his terminal insincerity with a ponderous solemnity that makes them night unbearable for me to watch.

I think you can boil down my problems with Von Trier to one film, Breaking The Waves. Ironic because it’s the film his defenders usually flock to. But look at that film, really look at it. Von Trier cheats, by making God literally a big scary voice he makes it a story of madness not faith (the line is true exceedingly thin). So when the big moving Bergman on steroids climax comes, the one that breaks so many hearts, I sit arms crossed unmoved. Because I can’t shake the feeling that he is. Just. Fucking. With me.

And sadly this is the case with so many of his films. It is not simply enough to execute Bjork or stage the version of Our Town they play in hell, you must have some reason to do it, beyond the love outrage (and this is where Michael Haeneke that other ponderous titan of European cinema gets the one up on Von Trier for me. I at least believe Haeneke buys his own ponderous bullshit). Von Trier’s entire career, his invention and abandonment of Dogme, his empty provocation, his occasional experiments with genre cinema, the fact that he let a fucking robot direct The Boss Of It All, seems like one long nasty mean spirited prank. The joke is of course directly on us. Because we’re dumb enough to care. Not just because we dare to care about his films, but any film. And that’s a punchline where the laugh catches in my throat.

So why am I even bothering to watch Antichrist? Because critics I like and respect have been fascinated by it. Because I’m drawn to filmmakers I don’t understand always hoping to find the window that’ll let me understand them. Because the batshit craziness of the Chaos Reigns Meme intrigued me. Because Willem Dafoe is one of my favorite actors. And because its been sitting there, a challenge a major film by a major filmmaker.



How was it?

Well at first it seemed like more of the same. Even the infamous opening, featuring a baby plummeting to its death seemed like empty provocation. A dare to stop watching, little more then the world’s classiest dead baby joke, (What’s the difference between a dozen dead babies and the despair and hopelessness of the human condition? I don’t have the despair and hopelessness of the human condition in my garage.)

The film continues merrily on, making a vague allegory of therapy’s uselessness, and the desire for male dominance, more exploitive pieta like suffering from his women and yada yada yada, There’s a deer with a dead fetus hanging out its backside, and I’m just about to give up when this happens.



This particular instant meme marks a shift in the film and in my thinking of it. What follows, is less of a planned out film then a psychological purge. Its like what The Shining might have been like if Kubrick had woken up every night shrieking from a reoccurring night terror. As the film spiraled further and further into the realm of performance art, I thought “Holy shit he actually means it this time.”

Because make no mistake, The last forty minutes of Antichrist is as primal and unguarded a piece of film as I’ve ever seen. By the timee you have Willem Dafoe burrowing his way into the Earth only to be dug out by a shrieking frothing Gainsborough, you can’t help but wonder just what the fuck is going on.

Antichrist, is a film that’s more or less useless to write about, since watching it is almost a physical experience. There’s nothing passive about it. I can for example say that I find it odd, that the scene in which Willem Dafoe has his testicles mashed with a large block of wood and then is given a handjob until he comes blood has gotten more attention then the scene in which Gainsborough severs her own clitoris. But what does that even mean?

Antichrist almost seems beyond film criticism. Sure Gainsborough and Dafoe give fearless performances but, trying to judge them against is an exercise in futility. The film is a genuine… well a genuine something, but its less a film then an object. Criticizing it feels like trying to criticize a rock. It just kind of is.

Of course, maybe all this means is that Von Trier has fooled me at last. Well if so more power to him. I can’t help but think that someone who’d make this as a lark, is in some ways even more disturbing then someone who’d make this as a primal scream.

Brilliant

Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourism Ads Directed By Lars Von Trier