Swelling Liquid On Knuckles

Last night I saw "Antichrist" the new film by Lars Von Trier, presented at the Cannes Film Festival (between whistles and buuuuu) and was worth the palm Gold Award for best actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.
We know that this film is the first job of the director after his depression led him to the hospital for months. And if, like me, you do not have a personal drawing of therapies to overcome phobias, guilt and anxiety and do not know what the sensory effect of the drugs may not fully appreciate the film. As rightly has defended the film saying it is not a job for the public or the critics but a cathartic film about his fears and his pain.

The protagonists are a young couple who lost his son who falls from a window. (No, not a film about Eric Clapton and Lory Del Santo!). The pain of the woman is total: fact of guilt and obsessions. Her husband, therapist, decides to personally take care of his wife, disregarding the basic rule of professional ethics that prohibits relatives or friends to care.
the man decided to bring his wife in a physical place that embodies his fear most primordial and authentic: the forest of Eden, around their home area where she moved often with her son to end his anthropological studies.
From here on, the film will be a constant symbol, a sequence of evocative imagery and dense with meaning, a long and dramatic staging concepts. Detesterà wrong and certainly those who will judge the film as "real" and not as "symbolic." I
there I found much of the Gnostic philosophy in this analysis by Lars Von Trier.
For Christians, the man is made in the image and likeness of God, and the creation contains the imprint of the creator. For the Gnostics, however, there is a vast difference between God and the material reality: the spirit is essentially alien to the universe and the relationship with the material world can not contribute in any way to the spiritual elevation of man. The material world is not the work of God, but evil, demiurge Yaldaboath (and the title would seem to confirm my thesis). And in fact all there is for the world to evil and suffering: the love you can (and often does) turn into hatred. Every life ends, inevitably. Everything is beautiful in the world is temporary, everything is destined for death and suffering. And we can not do anything to stop all this pain because it is in our nature to create it. We "need" of death, to keep us alive. As the plants we need the fruit fall and rot, to give the opportunity for new flowers to bloom. At the same time as giving birth to a son, we are already condemning the experience of death and pain. And fear.
According to the Gnostics the laws of nature would be dictated by the demiurge, proud of its dominion over man, is seeking a man to be reproduced by increasing and prolonging the condition of alienation of spirit into matter. And the only possible way to free the spirit and be happy creatures is to leave the material world, the body. In fact, the Gnostics "hope" the extinction of man. And examples of this concept are the scenes where she cuts her genitals. Or blinded by their hatred and fear that her husband abandoned, the plant (in the true sense of the word) a sinker in the leg to prevent his escape. Confusing and dividing the spirit in the body, a condition that inevitably leads to unhappiness on this earthly life.
But we are our bodies, we can not get rid of it. We are our fears. We are our instincts, even sexual. We are our mistakes. And then the movie tells us that there is no escape because our fears really are ourselves, by the mere fact of being alive. We are approximate and intended to be wrong all the time epilogue to the extreme of death (the scene of ejaculation sample of blood). No one has ever managed to reverse this trend and never succeed. For some it happens before and "apparently" no fault (as the couple's son), others happen in a more bloody and the "guilt" established by men (like the many women burned as witches during the Middle Ages), others will cause death independently. But we are all in this world to suffer and die. We are all here to be afraid to fight with our ghosts, to move through our fears. We are here to suffer, whether it is the psychic pain of her, whether it be physical pain to him. We are one of pain. In fact, even the treatment of her husband to try to cure his wife, passes through the body. Emotions are experienced physically.
baggage inherited from our Western culture is marked by "division" between those that are artificial elements of a single reality: the mind and body. Usually we divide our body in un “Io”, capace di pensare, immaginare, simbolizzare e verbalizzare, ed un “esso” (il corpo), che trasmette sensazioni fisiche interne, e che ci consente di entrare in contatto con l’ambiente attraverso i cinque organi di senso e il movimento nello spazio. Tale scissione si esprime mediante il nostro linguaggio e allo stesso tempo ne viene rinforzata. Infatti non abbiamo un'unica parola che ci permetta di dire “Io-corpo”, ma ci riferiamo ad esso dicendo “il mio corpo”, come se fosse un oggetto che possediamo, e non come una parte del sé.Spesso l’uso della parola “mio” non indica un’identità tra esperienza corporea e sé, ma implica possesso nel sense of ownership and emphasizes the distinction between the owner and the object possessed. Can you say "my neck" in the same way we say "my car". But she does not suffer, we will. Because for us (body + mind) loss and the sense of vulnerability are essential components of our experience of human beings, as well as the non-controllability of events.

rating: 5 stars (out of five)