...against classical music, shots of seemingly connected arty cutaways and roving vérité handheld.
This arthouse style isn't unpleasant but mercifully, unlike most of Lars Von Trier's surrounding films, which seem to drag on under the weight of this experimental style, Antichrist is a tight hour 45 minutes. This intensifies it's rawness and boldness and distils Lars Von Trier's autership and influences better than any of his other films.
Charlottë Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe are perfectly cast; both pleasantly reckless actors in which you can't anticipate how they would typically react. The driving plot is a nifty one, wringing plenty of drama from the premise before it gets weird.
And weird it gets! Although it's hard to imagine anyone getting deeply disturbed or offended by this film the way that apparently they did. I suppose people were a little underexposed to films like this in 2009. I mean it does go pretty far but it seems rooted in the context of its themes and points, none of it seems there to shock specifically or to generate disgust solely like torture porn for example.
There's some superb photography and there's a magnetism to the film. I much preferred the more cerebral rather than esoteric films of Lars Von Trier, but there's a madness in this film that is bursting from the director's own troubled mind at the time and as a parable for grief or a look at the hell of nature, it seems to work well.