Like John’s antichrists Trier’s antichrists were not necessarily tyrannical globalists, but people who had not been perfected in God’s love and did not keep his commandments.  Unlike John’s antichrists there was no indication in the film that they had ever known God and then departed from that knowledge.  Trier’s antichrists are not named.  We are introduced to them “he-in’-and-a-she-in'” as Otis (played by William Fichtner in the movie “The Amateurs”) described fucking.  But I want to try to reconstruct the story of “Antichrist” in temporal order.

This will definitely be a spoiler for those who haven’t seen the film.  My take is not Lars Von Trier’s understanding, nor that of the actors.   I assume that anyone remotely interested in my understanding would be offended by the pornographic nature of this movie and not watch it all the way through anyway.  And I use pornographic in a technical, not an eye-of-the-beholder, sense here.

Conan O’Brien asked his guest Amanda Seyfried about her role in a biopic about Linda Lovelace of “Deep Throat” fame: “How do you portray a porn star without being incredibly explicit?  Do you know what I mean?”  Ms. Seyfried answered, “Well, you don’t actually have sex on film.”^[1]  In other words people who get paid to pretend to have sex on film are actors, ὑποκριταί in Greek.  People who get paid to actually have sex on film are prostitutes; πορνοσ (pornos) is the Greek for a male prostitute.  Our word pornography (writing about prostitutes) comes from the Greek compound of πορνοσ (pornos) and γραφή (graphē).  The body doubles for Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in “Antichrist” were porn actors, and a few shots in the film do qualify under this technical definition.

Before the film began she (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their toddler son Nic went to Eden, a secluded cabin in the woods, to finish her thesis on Gynocide.  It was a study of man’s inhumanity to woman, witch-hunts and the like.  She couldn’t finish when she realized it was not a simple story of evil men persecuting virtuous women, but that the women were evil, too.  As she absentmindedly, or vindictively, (it was never quite clear to me) forced the left shoe on her son’s right foot, and vice versa (causing a deformity that became apparent in an autopsy report) she became cognizant of her own evil as well.

The film actually begins with beautiful slow motion black and white footage of he (Willem Dafoe) and she fucking.  Just because I believe that fucking does not, or the feelings associated with fucking do not, fulfill the law, does not mean that I have anything against fucking or those feelings.  Fucking my wives or the feelings I had while fucking them or wanting to fuck them are beyond compare, except perhaps for the feeling I had when they wanted to fuck me.  I miss it.  And the opening scene of “Antichrist” spawned many a wonderful memory (as well as some that were not so wonderful).

Nic, their toddler son, awoke from his nap, climbed out of his crib, watched his mother and father a moment, turned quietly away, investigated an open window, and fell to his death.  Granted, in real life the likelihood that a toddler would not demand some parental attention might be extremely low.  But “Antichrist” is a horror movie, only the worst possibilities can happen.  During the funeral procession she collapsed and was hospitalized.  Her doctor thought she had an abnormal reaction to grief.  Her husband, a psychologist, disagreed.

“I could have stopped him,” she told her husband, apparently coming into the light.  “You didn’t know that he had started waking up lately.  I was aware that he would sometimes wake up and crawl out of bed and walk about.”  She started to sob, “He woke up and was confused and alone.”

He assumed, and we in the audience assume at this point, that she was suffering from psychological guilt.  What we learn later, but he never knew, is that she saw Nic watching them and chose not to interrupt her husband to attend to her son.  We also see that fucking is her narcotic and anesthetic of choice.  The perfect wife?

What I realized the second time through the film was that her doctor’s “abnormal reaction to grief” and her husband’s diagnosis of psychological guilt both missed the point.  She suffered from the actual guilt of maternal negligence and needed actual forgiveness.  But there was no forgiveness to be found.  This is “Antichrist,” not “Breaking the Waves.”  Her doctor gave her mood drugs and her husband gave her psycho-babble, as she “bled out” from actual guilt.  But “actual guilt” was not a category her doctor or her husband would recognize as legitimate, apart from a criminal indictment and conviction.

Why didn’t she come fully into the light? with her husband at least?  Why didn’t she tell him she saw Nic, knew he was awake, and knew he was walking about unsupervised?  Jesus (or John) said, everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.^[5]  He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would, or could, forgive her for a judgment mistake that claimed his son’s life.  And she feared that he would leave her.  In other words, theirs was not a love (ἀγάπη) affair by definition, no matter how good their fucking was.

He didn’t know (because he hadn’t experienced), In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.^[7]  Receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus said.  If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.^[8]  For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.^[9]  And she was not perfected in love either because, There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love.  We love because he loved us first.^[10]

He arranged to get her out of the hospital, brought her home and became her therapist.  “You’ve always been distant from me and Nic,” she said in one of their sessions, “now that I come to think of it, very, very distant.”

“Okay,” he said, ever the patient therapist.  “Can you give me some example of this?”

“Like last summer, for instance, [when she went with Nic to Eden] you were terribly distant last summer, as a father and as a husband.”

“Well, actually it was to honor your wish.  You wanted peace to write.”

“Perhaps I didn’t mean it,” she said.

That sounds just like a woman, I thought.  But as I imagined the scene that preceded her writing retreat at Eden, I learned something about me as a husband and father.  I, too, have tried to play the patient therapist with my wife and children.  If she asked me for my blessing to take Nic and go to Eden without me for the summer, I would have thought, “No way!  I’ll miss you, and Nic.  I’ll miss talking with you, eating with you, being with you and, yes, fucking you.  Why can’t you write here!?”  But then I would have thought how selfish that seemed, and I would have said, “Okay.”

In other words, I wouldn’t have come into the light with my wife.  I probably haven’t done so at various times in the past.  And I see now that the truth—that I would miss her terribly, that I was angry that she would ask such a thing, that I felt that my initial reaction was selfish, so, yes, I would respect her desire to go to write her thesis and agree to it as much as it was in me to do—would be a much better basis for a love (ἀγάπη) affair.  But I thought that “controlling” my emotions (rather than sharing them with her) was the “right” thing to do.

She didn’t finish her thesis that summer.  He hadn’t even asked about it.  When she told him he wondered why she had given up.  “The whole project just seemed less important up there,” she said.  It had become “glib” to her, “or even worse, some kind of lie.”  He learned nothing about his obvious distance from her.  He kept his focus on her.  He decided that she had a phobia.

“What scares you about the woods?” he asked.

“Everything.”

So he took her back to Eden.