Until very recently the father of a young son, “He” unwisely decides that one-on-one therapy in the depths of a fairy-tale forest is the only way to cure his wife of the grief that threatens to unhinge her sanity. Thus, the anonymous antiheroes of Antichrist are an American psychiatrist (Willem Dafoe) married to an equally nameless woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who is writing her doctoral dissertation on the relationship between witchcraft and misogyny in the Middle Ages.
"Now I think he's talking about something uncomfortable and I think people are going to take what they will from it.Lars von Trier, of course, is Danish, not American, even if many of his features are theoretically set in the Land of the Free (the filmmaker’s famous fear of flying accounting for the theoretical part of this equation). It does exist, and to not talk about it and pretend like it's all one big happy family and there's no fear between the sexes I think is repression. Underneath the sarcasm and irony, he said the Danish director was "a very loving guy, who's interested in the tension between men and women and I am too.
"He was like 'Would you like to do it ?' and I, 'I would love to do it' and him: 'My wife doesn't think you'll do it!' He knows how to provoke." and he had stuff with just actors, with a script, but in a very loose fashion, doing these intimate things." Some shots were very composed and very exact. "I loved how he put very formal things next to very loose things. The actor approached Von Trier to suggest working together, and said he was immediately convinced by the script for "Antichrist." "He struggles, so everything was depending on how Lars was feeling, so there was always a sensitivity, that sometimes extended to Charlotte and I." Von Trier, who won a Palme d'Or in Cannes for "Dancer in the Dark" in 2000, shot the film as a form of therapy after a mental breakdown, and says it is the most important of his career.ĭafoe said he loved Von Trier's company, but that the director's fragile state of mind permeated the atmosphere in which they made the film. "There was very little conversation, because the stuff was very difficult, not just for the intimacy more for its emotionality and physically it was very difficult." In the film, Dafoe plays a psychotherapist who takes his wife to a log cabin retreat to help her overcome her grief at their baby's death, but instead is dragged with her into an crazed escalation of violence.īoth actors have said they were deeply affected by making the film, which was shot without any rehearsals, and whose climax shows Gainsbourg's character slicing off her clitoris.ĭafoe, whose character's ordeals include having his genitals smashed with a plank, and his leg hand-drilled and bolted to a millstone, said there was an "intense physical and emotional atmosphere" on the film set.
"It's clearly one of the most testing roles that I've had," the 53-year-old actor said in an interview. actor Willem Dafoe said yesterday his role in the Danish thriller "Antichrist," which caused a scandal at its Cannes premiere, was one of the most challenging of his career.ĭafoe plays opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars Von Trier's film about love and madness, littered with graphic close-ups of sex and mutilation, which stunned critics and festival-goers on the Riviera. American actor Willem Dafoe, left, and his wife Italian actress Giada Colagrande arrive for the screening of the film 'Antichrist' at the 62nd International film festival in Cannes, southern France on Monday. American actor Willem Dafoe, left, and his wife Italian actress Giada Colagrande arrive for the screening of the film 'Antichrist' at the 62nd Interna.