To Bathe in Filmic Waters

Acclaimed European filmmaker Lars von Trier has often been labeled as a misogynist by his detractors. His latest project,  Antichrist, goes much deeper in analysing the female sex – but where did he get his inspiration? To Bathe in Filmic Waters recently conversed with Danish journalist Heidi Laura who spoke to us in detail about her role as “Misogyny Consultant” on this controversial new film.

TBIFW: So how did your role in the production of Antichrist come about? Were you contacted directly by Mr. von Trier, and if so what did he request of you? Were you aware of him and his films beforehand?
HL: I was contacted by Zentropa, who got my name from the newspaper I work for, the Danish weekly Weekendavisen, and then had a meeting with Lars von Trier and the producer Meta Foldager. Lars had already had research done on medieval witches and the work Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer against Witches, that explains the nature of witches and how to convict them. Now he wanted to get a broader view of Western misogyny, and my role would be to find and look into as many sources as possible and to put together an indictment against women, that on the basis of these many sources proved that women are indeed evil by nature – a typical enfant terrible-approach to research from Lars von Trier, I surmise. The female character in his manuscript for the film – which he was still working on – was in the middle of writing a thesis on gynocide, but had gradually been convinced that women are indeed evil, and he was interested in the arguments that may lie behind her shift of opinion.
I have seen most films by Lars von Trier, without being an expert on films in any way, and I liked the fact that he was going to look at women from a very different angle in this film: this film wouldn’t look further into women’s tendency towards self-sacrifice, but instead explore the strong, dangerous, evil side of woman as perceived by men. My research could supply inspiration for all the forms that men’s anxiety about women have taken through the ages.

TBIFW: Were you aware of Mr. von Trier’s reputation as a controversial filmmaker before meeting him? What would you say to those who have labeled him a misogynist in the past? Do you believe that Antichrist is further proof that such criticisms are entirely unfounded?
HL: Lars von Trier’s films are all about being controversial! I am always wondering if he is consciously testing his audience to see how far he can go before they leave the cinema. But there is a great difference between testing very uncommon points of view and subjecting the audience to visions that are shocking, strange or even appalling and then actually making a point about the nature of women. Art is allowed to dive into the underworld of emotions that we normally stay clear of – actually , it should do so! Antichrist shows completely new aspects of woman and adds a lot of nuance to von Trier’s earlier portraits of women, but you can’t really tell from his films what his own actual view on women is, just like you can’t conclude from Fight Club that Palahniuk wants to promote more violence in society. Art doesn’t work that way. The good question is why it is such a provocation for so many to be confronted with the image of woman as powerful, sexual and even brutal?

TBIFW: Were you involved in the creative process at all? Did your role involve a visit to the set of the film or was it entirely research-based? And which of von Trier’s works do you prefer – do you believe any of his films can compare to Antichrist?
HL: The indictment I composed served as an inspiration to Lars von Trier, and I added a lot of misogynist sources that he could pick and choose from – there are a few direct quotes in the film. Apart from that, I didn’t play any active part in the creative process and even though some scenes and atmospheres in the film at least to me seem to draw on the material on misogyny – for example: the flowers in the woman’s room at the hospital are beautiful but decaying; a common image used in misogynist text to describe how woman’s beauty hides the rot on the inside – but everything has been channeled through Lars’ mind and has taken on a life of its own.
When it comes to Lars von Trier’s films, I very much like his dark, comical mood in Riget – there is a little bit of that in Antichrist, too: note the by now infamous talking fox!

TBIFW: Could you mention a few of the direct quotes for us, those from misogynist sources? Also, how strongly do you feel von Trier’s own experience with depression plays a part in the film?
HL: There are quite a lot of good sources for misogyny, I’m sorry to say! They tend to focus on woman’s foolish and deceptive nature, and her lust and weakness that leads her to be evil. So a small tour would be to go from the patriarch Chrysostomus and his claim that “Womankind is rash and fool-hardy; and their covetousness is like the gulf of hell, that is insatiable,” to Schopenhauer who in his essay Of Women claimed that women “are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation” and that as the “weaker sex” they are “dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true” While Malleus Maleficarum explains that “woman is more bitter than death … because bodily death is an open and terrible enemy, but woman is a wheedling and secret enemy.” And finally James Kenneth Stephen, who some suspected to be Jack the Ripper, composed this elegant little piece of poetry:

If all the harm that women have done
Were put in a bundle and rolled into one,
Earth would not hold it,
The sky could not enfold it,
It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun;
Such masses of evil
Would puzzle the devil
And keep him in fuel while Time’s wheels run.

Lars von Trier himself has openly called the film a good therapy for his depression, and the horrible anxiety attacks suffered by the woman in Antichrist could probably only be staged by someone who has experienced such universal, monumental anxiety. The relief from this nightmare obviously doesn’t come from the ‘therapeutic’ approach of the man in the film; he is rather the person who changes the most as he confronts nature and gets in touch with his own dark, and natural, side as a killer – and that only happens when he leaves behind all logic and reason and psychological methods.

TBIFW: Finally, how do you feel the male sex is portrayed in the movie? Where does Willem Dafoe’s character fit in? And are there any people you came across in your research that you believe influenced the creation of this character?
HL: There is a very strong dichotomy between the rational male and the emotional, instinctive female in most of the film. Willem Dafoe’s character is amazingly controlled in his approach to their shared tragedy, and how he finally lets go of that distanced and analytic position strikes me as one of the real highlights of the drama. To regard man as rational and in that sense ‘complete’ and woman as not actually in control of herself and therefore ‘lacking’ is a very old idea; it’s been part of Western culture at least since Aristotle and was expressed very clearly by Otto Weininger as late as the early 20th century in his study of Sex and Character. I think Antichrist actually subverts that idea and in the end reveals how both woman and man are tied up with forces that go far beyond what they can or should rationally control.

Lars von Trier, Women and Me - Article by Heidi Laura for The Independent
Antichrist – Reviewed by To Bathe in Filmic Waters