One of my favorite moviegoing experiences occurred when I lived in San Jose, CA, and decided one weeknight to see Lars von Trier’s Zentropa (1991). The Danish filmmaker and provocateur was pretty much unknown to me, but I was absorbed by the clever gamesmanship and look-at-me stylization of the production. Not everyone was. “This is the worst film I’ve ever seen!” cat-called one viewer, to general laughter. “No it isn’t, it’s brilliant!” countered another, to which I added my two cents. This went back and forth for several amusing, agreeable minutes, and afterwards everyone met in the lobby to talk it over.

Since then I’ve pretty much been on the other side of the fence, finding von Trier trying. I did enjoy the supernatural satire of his two-season Kingdom TV show, which Stephen King did not improve upon for US viewers. But the Oscar-nominated Breaking the Waves (1996) made me seasick, and don’t get me started on his alleged musical Dancer in the Dark, with the ever-glamorous Catherine Deneuve in a kerchief as an oppressed factory worker, and Bjork so terrorized on-set she ate a sweater between takes (Cannes ate it up, and von Trier and Bjotk split an Oscar nom for best song, the aptly titled “I’ve Seen it All”). The Brechtian Dogville (2003) was another exception, marred by closing credits that suddenly underlined everything that had been fascinatingly submerged in its seamy portrait of an America he has never visited (intensely phobic, he doesn’t get out much)—the awful sequel, Manderlay (2005), was essentially that condemnatory coda extended by 135 minutes. So I didn’t know what to think when, after an intense period of depression, von Trier announced his return with a horror movie, Antichrist, which expands its run this Halloween weekend (and is also available on IFC on Demand). (more…)