ANTICHRIST

The greatest trouble with Antichrist, as a widely popular and often accepted theological construct, is that it presupposes a benevolent Christ, the Anointed. Though most current narratives put down the title exclusively to Jesus, a man believed to have lived and preached two millennia ago, the concept is much more universal and problematic. Saviors pop up here and there with promises of emancipation are a normal part and process of social ventilation. The claims staked by, attributed to or imposed upon the putative figure of Jesus are amazing and intriguing because the age had produced many an aspiring messiah—from the largely forgotten Appolonius to Simon Magus, who was worthy of a reference in the Bible. Unlike his predecessors, successors and rivals, Jesus seems sort of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. This has translated into controversies and endless deliberations over his ‘true’ nature among clergy: is he human, divine or a blend? Is it proper to call Mary the mother of god? The argument continues. His feelings, gestures, actions and cryptic words have consumed reams, and these days bytes.

He was a pioneering economist who stressed poverty eradication (feeding five thousand with a few loaves of bread), a dedicated doctor who specialized in the most dreaded disease of the day (successfully curing leprosy), an effective psychoanalyst (driving out spirits from the possessed)l, a maverick bold enough to question institution (storming the temple and driving off the traders), a researcher capable of bring the dead back (Lazarus in back) and above all an exemplary martyr we are on constant lookout for. A versatile genius, all rolled into one. Couched in ambiguous words and deeds, he seems to be a character like Hamlet or Macbeth. Perhaps that accounts for his enduring charm. Perhaps that is why Richard Hollowoway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, goes to the extent of playing down his historical existence while highlighting the tremendous influence he has exerted on the course of history since his times. (http://www.thehindu.com/2006/12/25/stories/2006122502400900.htm006/12/25/stories/2006122502400900.htm).
The perfection of Christ is present in the Antichrist in plunging humanity into destruction and death. Prophet Mohammed, Martin Luther, Napolean and Hitler have been named as the antichrist from time to time. Is the Lars von Trier movie Antichrist to be read as a foil to the Jesus discourse? Does it require a Christian background at all? I don’t know. But who then is to say no? It was a pleasure to watch Willem Dafoe play the mentally tormented Jesus with the pangs of angst written all over him in the Martin Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. We have the same man as the nameless He in Antichrist. ("He comes to us as one unknown, without a name." said Albert Schweitzer. From the last citation). The signs of torment, doubt and fear are too clear to miss. But everything seems to be in the reverse, chronologically and structurally. He and She returns to Eden, the mythical space of ‘delight’, from where Adam and Eve were expelled by an irascible god for knowing things. Unlike the Biblical abode of innocence and tranquility, what await the couple are grief, pain, chaos, despair and gynocide. To worsen things, the place is soaked with sex and harbors disquieting secrets waiting to be discovered and covered. The parody of the idyllic paradise, however, has no Satan sneaking around with the promises of superior knowledge but is stuffed and stifled with dark mental caves where anything is possible. Maybe the Prince of Darkness is within us. It is a physical unconscious with much to explore: ferns, foxholes, attics and more. A deer giving birth to a dead calf, a fox disemboweling itself while uttering the ominous words “chaos reigns” and a crow refuses to be killed are there portending more uncanny sights and visions.

Unlike Adam and Eva, He and She come back to the Eden after losing the fruit of knowledge: a toddling son. He is a therapist with rather strong convictions: he knows traditional medications are not going to cure She. His attempts to save her soul take a different direction and attain new dimensions in the Eden. Instead of letting others kill him and thus purify mankind, He walks away strangling his own wife/patient who becomes sure that women are inherently evil and that she is directly and inexorably responsible for the death of their son. She masturbates the unconscious He to have an ejaculation of blood and cuts her clitoris using a pair of scissors. Before limping out of the place, He cremates her as if she were a vampire. Jesus was crucified and I can’t help imaging the iron nails piercing his flesh as the stakes driven through the vampire or the vampired. There are no returns. hopefully.

A movie that deserves mention is the 1972/3 Bernardo Bertolucci piece The Last Tango in Paris. Exactly as in Antichrist, here we have Paul and Jeanne, without knowing other’s name, hiding and drowning grief and losses through wild sex and masturbation before the woman shoots him in the apartment— “little old but full of memories.” The tiny room and behavior happily detached from the sociocultural norms, unfortunately, are too good to last.

Alfred Hitcock, is a natural reference to the film: “In a full color handout given to press and potential buyers at some Cannes screenings, opposite a few uniquely blank excerpts from a Danish Film Institute interview with the director there’s a photo of him . . . that seems to directly reference, down to the three-quarter profile with the smug facial expression, the famous publicity shot of Alfred Hitchcock, turned to face a live crow perched on his shoulder, that was distributed to promote the film of his that most directly drew lines between female sexuality and the unpredictable horrors of nature, The Birds. Von Trier alters the image a little bit: in his shot, the crow lies at his feet, dead. In other words, this time, nature’s not going to get away with it.” (http://blog.spout.com/2009/05/20/antichrist-review/ ). As a psychological thriller Antichrist pictures a tiled bathroom, resembling the one in which the heroine is stabbed to death in Psycho. Again, the reversed postures are notable.

(It is said that Gandhi developed aversion to sex because he was making love when his father was breathing the last. Nothing was more fitting than watching Antichrist on his birthday, October 2)