Defiant Danish Director Lars von Trier Tackles Antichrist

Story by Brad Balfour

However you assess the New York Film Festival, now in its 47th year, it certainly doesn't shy away from controversial films or directors. Topping the list this year is Lars Von Trier and his Cannes Golden Palm nominated film, Antichrist.

Due for release later this month, the film shocks with a scene of deteriorating madwoman Charlotte Gainsbourg (She) performing a clitorectomy on herself -- after bashing, then jacking off, her semi-conscious husband Willem Dafoe (He) who spews semen mixed with blood.

Viewed through the prism of the horror genre, this is a disturbing tale using some of the best horror film tropes. It makes Antichrist more than a plunge into the dark sexually charged region between guilt and insanity. Addressed through von Trier's unique vision, the film truly explores madness as his characters slide into the demonic realm of the possessed.

During his Cannes Film Festival press conference, the ever-provocative Danish director was asked to justify the movie that stirred the ire of a lot of confused journalists. Though he wasn't called on to do so this time, he did conduct an unusual press conference at the NYFF press screening -- broadcast over a huge screen via a Skype connection -- that prompted some journos to some of strange, off-kilter questions.

Now as the festival goes into its final weekend, there are still several fine and equally provocative films yet to see such as Claire Denis' White Material and Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces -- the closing night film.

After you peruse this press conference, it should motivate you to go see the films the next few days, if only to see some of the filmmakers' in-person Q&As. It will give you a taste of the kind of intriguing personalities and films to be discover at the Festival.

For more info go to: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/nyff.html.

Q: You said you were suffering from a serious depression when you made Antichrist. Did it affect your process in writing and shooting the film; how did it affect the end result? Was it different this time from previous films?

LvT: It was different in the way that I am normally excited. Normally I'm extremely happy about my own abilities and talent and what I'm doing. But I felt almost maybe human, so I was not excited.

What it has done for the film... I tried to bring myself out of the depression but it hasn't really worked. But I'm very happy to see all you people in New York; if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere [laughs].

Q: You're often called a provocateur as a director; are you upset if people don't walk out of your films? I didn't notice anyone walk out today.

LvT: If there are not any walk-outs then I have failed [laughs].

Q: Where did you get the idea for the film?

LvT: I don't really know where it came from. The idea was to make a horror film, which I know it was not really. I think I started with that. Normally, I know what to say, but I can't tell you [this time].

Q: This seems to be the most cinematic movie you've made in a long time. Was that intentional? Were you trying to move away from the concept of dogme (a cinematic approach developed by von Trier to exploit the low-budget aspects of digital filmmaking) and away from artificiality of the staging you used in films like Dogville?

LvT: I feel the best when I do something that does not look too much like [something I did before]. I must say, I'm not completely happy with the film. I would have wanted more of a dogme link to the documentary past. I cannot work by way backwards.

Q: You said you wanted parts of the film to be more dogme-like in their aesthetic; if so, what parts were you referring to?

LvT: There was meant to be a bigger difference between normal action scenes and the more stylized stuff. There was to be a big difference between the fixed-camera and the handheld stuff.

Q: The sound design of Antichrist recalled a lot of David Lynch's films, and the scene where she asks him to whip her reminded me of a similar scene in Blue Velvet. Did you take any inspiration from David Lynch?

LvT: I was very very taken by Twin Peaks, I thought that was a fantastic piece of whatever it was. [laughter] His feature films; I was very happy with Mulholland Drive, but the other feature films I haven't seen. I'm a big fan so I think I have similar things. Maybe Lynch and I share a fetish.

Q: Like Twin Peaks, the film is also set in the Pacific Northwest.

LvT: It is a very naïve idea we have when we shoot in Europe that it can only look like the state of Washington. It's only because we seem to have a common interest in replicating that. When we did Dancer in the Dark it was done in a place that had a double gallery.

Q: Could you expand a bit on the biblical connections in the film -- obviously, you refer to Satan, the Antichrist, and Eden.

LvT: If the film has anything to do, it has to do with that there is no God; that is how I see it. You have a conscience toward Eden, I know, and I'm sorry for that. Normally I would have gone through this quicker, taken all that shit, but I didn't this time. I was relatively uncritical of the script, that means that all these things stayed.

I think the idea was that it came from her research [on women and possession]. But I'm sorry about the Eden stuff, it came up and I just let it be.

Then it's very easy since it's [about] a man and a woman and all that. I have not worked in a way where I was thinking [of] Eden; the reason why it's called Eden, it was a place that was supposed to be very romantic.

Q: There is the question of the guilt of the Charlotte Gainsbourg character; did she felt guilty because she was a woman of pleasure, because in that scene where she and he are having sex, it goes back and forth between her seeing her child was falling, and yet she didn't stop to do anything. She didn't do anything because the pleasure prevailed. Is that the way you saw it and her?

LvT: You say that she's not really a mother. Then you should have seen my mother [laughs]. This is nothing compared to what I've been through. I don't know. I think she's struggling with some guilt from the sexual pleasure, but I believe that from society there has always been a lot of guilt from these things.

I don't know if she saw him falling. Somehow I felt very much like her when I wrote it. She's struggling with jealousy but she has a lot of pressure.

Q: Were we supposed to have sympathy for Willem Dafoe's character? As her therapist we are supposed to trust him, but soon as he changes his wife's medication, he deserves anything bad that happens to him after this point.

LvT: One of the ways you can write it is that you take your own personality, or your beliefs about your own personality [and put them] on the people in the film--on the characters. And yes, I understand him.

We had some lines in the film where he acts more sympathetically, and then he became extremely unsympathetic, and we had to cut them out otherwise it would have been a very one-sided film. So he ends up with a lot of violence and a lot of stupidity.

Q: What about casting of Dafoe?

LvT: Dafoe is a very, very good friend. While I was trying to cast this film, he sent an email and asked if I had anything for him. I said, "Yes, thank God, you suddenly showed up." I'd worked with him before, and working with him as a director and a good friend, so that was a miracle.

Q: The film definitely was a horror film -- or at least definitely has lots of horror influences. Did you have that clearly in mind, certain antecedents that influenced you in the process?

LvT: At a certain point in my confusion I started seeing Japanese horror films and liked them very much. But maybe I liked them not so much for the horror, but thought the cultural differences, it's interesting to see images that are definitely not from the West. I like them very much.

And yes, I'm influenced of course by The Shining, also, Rosemary's Baby, absolutely. And for me, Carrie was a very good film when I saw it.

Q: What are the basic elements that turn a horror film into a classic?

LvT: I think that Psycho is a classic not because it was scary, though I thought I was quite scary. But I don't think it's the scary things that I remember, I remember style.

The good things about horror films is they give you room for a lot of things; room for strange pictures or whatever. And I didn't find The Shining very scary. As with all other films, it has to do with the personality that you feel in the film.

Q: You give the audience symbolic clues, but they are also clues as to what's going to happen. When we piece them together, we feel smart about it. Do you do this consciously, when you are in the process of creating a script and/or editing the film? In addition to the role of being creator, do you put yourself in the role of being the audience for your own work.

LvT: I believe that I am the audience, but I am, as myself, a very stupid audience. I went to university to study film and we did a lot of new things, but that is definitely not the way I work. The cinematic impact, it comes from other sources, poetry, or just some strange kind of logic that is maybe only in my head. I do not think of the connections between water drops and acorns when I write it.

Q: Are there specific coping mechanisms that society uses that you would like to see stripped away for your audiences?

LvT: I don't think I have an agenda like that. I do films very much for my own sake, and I don't have any idea to reflect on society.

Q: You had some interesting researchers listed in the credits, including a researcher on misogyny. In the writing or making of this film did you learn something about misogyny in yourself, in your work and how to depicted in the film?

LvT: Well it has mostly to do with the things that the female character in the film was working with. Some of the quotations. She did a very good job; I didn't do very much. I don't know if I learned anything about if I hated women more. I like to be with women. I don't think the film really has so much to do with, it could have been the other way around. I of course believe that women are as bad as men.

Q: Was Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist an influence?

LvT: I don't know enough about Nietzsche. I had this Antichrist book lying on my table for 40 years and I hadn't opened it yet, but the title I liked. I don't want to say anything about Nietzsche.

Q: When did you decide to dedicate the film to the late Russian director Andrei Tarkofsky and why?

LvT: I must say, [that guy] has been very important to me. I discovered him while I was in film school. I have stolen so much from him over the years that in order not to be arrested I dedicated it to him [laughs]. I should have done it a long time ago, and it's sincerely meant; I'm a very big fan.

Q: Will there ever be part three of your USA Trilogy?

LvT: About the American Trilogy [part one is Dogville; part two is Manderlay]; that's the problem about trilogies, there has to be three of them [laughs]. I do not have the exact idea; when it comes I will make the film, if it is possible.

For other articles and editorial work by Brad Balfour go to: filmfestivaltraveler.com

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman Team Up For "The Strangers"

Feature Interview by Brad Balfour

There are interview opportunities and there are interview opportunities.

Consider the circumstances that came up in covering this horror/suspense film, "The Strangers." When a movie is made by an unknown, first-time director with two actors who have been out of the spotlight for awhile, interviewing the stars together is usually a pain. It can dilute the dialogue and allow the two actors to mess around rather than offer insights that interviewers are supposed to look for in asking the questions. Well, this time a quartet of interviewers got a bit of both: a little fooling around and some insightful comments.

Inspired by "a true story" (so the film is tagged), a great trailer suggests a film that ratchets the personal anxiety up through an attack by three insidious strangers who decide to threaten and eventually slash a couple—played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman—late at night in an isolated summer home in some unknown vacation town.

After being a crucial member of the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy and the hot girlfriend/daughter in the sci-fi disaster flick, "Armageddon," Tyler established herself among the genre-geeks. Then a marriage, child-bearing, and pending divorce took her out of the spotlight until the release of this film; that and the success of the tentpole superhero movie, "The Incredible Hulk," proves that Tyler is not just back in form but proving that the break did her good.

Speedman had garnered his fan creds as well, by playing the werewolf/vampire hybrid in the "Underworld" series, as well as playing characters in various genre flicks as "Anamorph," "Weirdsville," and the swanky sequel to "xXx."

LT: Oh my god, talk about fears! [Doing this] is more terrifying than this movie was.

Q: Did you watch a bunch of horror flicks to prepare for this film?

SS: Bryan got us to watch stuff, right? What did he want us to watch?

LT: The things that I watched… "Rosemary's Baby," and we both watched "Halloween."

SS: Yeah. "Halloween." Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween" was a good one to watch.

LT: What was that weird one? It was a really dodgy movie... Two girls get kidnaped? Yeah, they're in the city and they get taken to the country, and it's really disturbing, and they're like naked—

SS: Oh yeah? That sounds really cool!

LT: Never mind! We did watch other movies—

SS: "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"—

LT: Didn't we watch "A Woman Under the Influence?"

SS: We were supposed to… [laughs]

LT: When I was a kid I was pretty obsessed with horror movies. It was my favorite thing to watch, and I remember seeing that for the first time and being like, "Okay! I'm done with the horror movie genre!" It really scared me so much.

SS: They're fun movies...

LT: We both read the script [of this film] and fell in love with it— it's really a drama—and it's a story about a couple going through a not-so-perfect situation, and they just happened to be happened upon by these three people.

SS: Bad people.

LT: Very, very bad people.

Q: How did director Bryan Bertino keep you in the mood so you weren't stressed out during the shooting of the film?

SS: It felt like we were stressed out the entire time. That was what was so tough and exhausting about it, was keeping up that fear and anxiety level every day. The whole thing takes place over five hours. If that to me is our job, he can't really do anything to get us there. I feel like that's our responsibility to get there every day.

LT: He really created an environment that was really specific to what he wanted. He would give us music to listen to and show us photographs, and that house was THE house he dreamt up in his mind. He was really clear about that and talked us through it extensively. Then he just kind of let us go.

There were moments when he was cautious about not interfering, because he would see us so upset and disturbed and he didn't want to get involved. He created everything for us and then just stood back and watched, in a way. He was very clear with us not to be campy in any way, humorous, but very real and bleak and absolutely terrifying.

Q: Were you surprised by his self-assurance considering this was his first time directing?

SS: It was kind of nice to have that. That's what you don't want with a first time director, is somebody who's not cock-sure. It was nice to have somebody so confident.

LT: [Laughs] I mean it depends on who you're working with, but this was different. It was just Scott and I and Brian and a small crew. It was a very intimate and very small experience for all of us, and it was just really emotional for everybody. There wasn't ever a light day. And for the crew it was emotional as well. There were days where I'd shoot certain things and I'd come outside and my poor hair and makeup people would have tears in their eyes or be shocked.

Q: Did you read stories in the paper similar to this one?

LT: Well, there was a story a year ago. But the movie was possibly going to come out a year ago, and I remember a story in the paper right at that time that was quite similar.

SS: Really? What do you remember? Where was it?

LT: I don't remember. I have two stories, but one is too personal to talk about because it is terribly sad—but it's not about me. The other one is about my stepfather, Todd Rundgren [the New York Dolls producer and legendary musician], who used to live in Woodstock. Two people broke into his house in the '70s. They tied him and his girlfriend, Bean, who was pregnant with my brother Rex at the time, to a chair and held them at gunpoint. I think one of them pistol whipped Todd, which is horrible. There was nothing stolen, there was really no reason, it wasn't a crime of passion. But things like this happen a lot and often they're really random.

Q: What's it like being in a movie made for under $10 million?

LT: The lower the budget, the lower your salary! That's how it works. We didn't really care. It's not about that. It's an amazing, wild, wacky collaboration of a bunch of gypsies making a movie, no matter how big or small.

I just did "The Hulk" and it's the same thing, but there was a lot more stuff to blow up and a lot more time to do it. And actually, I wouldn't say the catering was any better, frankly. We were in Toronto… Just kidding! But it's the same experience.

Q: I imagine your experience with this film gave you a lot more input than with "The Incredible Hulk?"

LT: I actually had a lot of input in "The Incredible Hulk" too. I mean, it's a collaboration, but I don't mean to be cocky about it. I mean, it depends on who you're working with, but this was different. It was just Scott and I and Brian and a small crew. It was a very intimate and very small experience for all of us, and it was just really emotional for everybody. There wasn't ever a light day. And for the crew it was emotional as well. There were days where I'd shoot certain things and I'd come outside and my poor hair and makeup people would have tears in their eyes or be shocked.

Q: As for "The Hulk"—did you go back and watch Ang Lee's movie to see what Jennifer Connelly did?

SS: Are you playing the same person?

LT: Yes I am, Miss Betty Ross. I mostly went back and watched the television show, which was one of my favorite things my mom and I used to watch all the time.

Q: What did you want to bring to the Bruce/Betty relationship?

LT: The story's completely different. There's nothing similar about the stories, or even the characters in many ways. I would say the essence of the image of that lone figure of Bruce Banner walking down the street alone with his little backpack, hitchhiking—the misunderstood hero having to move on to another town type of thing—was more of the overall feeling for the film. But the story is completely different. Edward Norton wrote the screenplay. I was really happy, because I was offered the part and had to decide if I was going to be in the movie before I ever read the script. So the script was very well-written, and he wrote a great part for me.

Q: Unfortunately, word has it that there is some acrimony now between Edward Norton and the producers. Was that evident on the set?

LT: No. This was a real collaboration for everyone. Edward wrote the screenplay and they agreed to his story. He was really involved, as were we all, and I think the misunderstandings that happened were reached in the editing. I think that basically, at a certain point Marvel just decided to edit the movie that they wanted to, and possibly Edward disagreed with some of those things. But I can't speak for them. It's not a big deal. It's the same movie. There's nothing crazily different about it.

Q: Did you get to meet the actor who played the original Hulk on television, Lou Ferrigno?

LT: I did not. He came to the set one day, and I believe it was, amazingly , one of the only days in the three or four months where I had a half a day somehow, and I didn't get to stay to meet him. I really wanted to.

Q: Is there anything you haven't done in this business that you'd like to do?

LT: Wow. I would looove to do a musical. That's like the dream of my whole life. I always wanted to be a singer, or get to sing in some kind of capacity. I haven't been able to do that, and I'd love to do that. I like the idea of the Old Hollywood singing and dancing—there's something so fabulous and fantastic about that. Actually, I recorded a song [recently] with my friend—I don't know if it will ever come out. My friend Evan Dando [of The Lemonheads] asked me to sing a Leonard Cohen song called "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye."

I worked all year—I just did three movies in a row, and I finished "The Incredible Hulk" in November and then took a little break because I was a little exhausted. Now I'm excited to see what happens next.

LT: Scott, what is one thing you'd like to do, and what do you have coming up next?

SS: Well, Ms. Tyler, I have no idea. Definitely NOT a musical! That is one thing you will never see me do. You wouldn't be very happy about that! I've got a movie called "Adoration" [directed by Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan] coming out at some point, I don't know when.

Q: Would you revisit doing a horror film again?

LT: Of course.

SS: Yeah, absolutely.

LT: This was a tremendous experience for me, and I would be thrilled to have another experience equally as good, if not better again.

Q: Have you ever been in a situation where you were by yourself and were scared?

LT: Oh yeah, all the time. Absolutely. That's what's so real about this movie. We've all been in bed at night, trying to relax, and all of a sudden you hear a [she hits the table] and you're like, "What was that!" And it's like, are you brave enough to go and check or not? Bryan used to always say that to us, "Imagine if you got up and went and looked and there's nothing ever there and your girlfriend is in bed and suddenly one day you go out and look, and someone is there, with a mask on, standing with a butcher knife in your living room?

SS: Yeah, that would suck. That would be really, really scary.