Entertainment

‘Antichrist’ sure to shock, but it also awes

Lars von Trier might not be, as he famously boasted in Cannes, “the best director in the world.” But, as witnessed by his “Antichrist,” he certainly is one of them.

For those who don’t recall, “Antichrist” scandalized Cannes, which isn’t easily scandalized, with its explicit sexual violence.

I finally got to see the film this week, and I went expecting to be shocked — and so I wasn’t.

Not bothered by the shocking elements — bloody masturbation, a self-inflicted clitoridectomy — I was free to concentrate on the strong points of von Trier’s film.

First and foremost has to be the surreal, fairy-tale-like cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, who also lensed “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Then there are the brave performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (she won Cannes’ best-actress laurel).

Very few actors would have the courage to allow von Trier to put them through what Dafoe and Gainsbourg experienced in the name of art.

They play a Seattle couple — identified only as He and She — whose young son, Nic, tumbles to his death from an apartment window as his parents make love.

(The tragedy brilliantly unfolds in slow-motion black and white to the sounds of a Handel aria.)

Switching into color, “Antichrist” tracks the grieving couple’s trip to Eden, an isolated cabin deep in the woods where He, a psychoanalyst, hopes to treat his wife’s deep depression.

Psychoanalysis quickly turns to S&M sex play. She bolts a millstone through his leg. He escapes, but she finds him and attempts to bury him alive.

The next morning, she unearths him and they return to the cabin, where the film’s most infamous scene transpires. (I heard gasps coming from the back of the screening room at that point.)

Von Trier loves to provoke, as we’ve seen from such previous films as “Breaking the Waves””The Idiots” and the musical “Dancer in the Dark,” with Bjork and Catherine Deneuve.

In fact, von Trier would sink into a depression as deep as She’s were his films to be embraced by mainstream audiences, a segment of the population for which he has nothing but disdain.

Please don’t take anything I’ve said to indicate that “Antichrist” isn’t difficult to watch.

It most certainly is, but as somebody (the Marquis de Sade, perhaps) once said: No pain, no gain.