Disclaimer

The author asserts that he isn't qualified enough to opine on Antichrist in the tradition of modern film writing which means that he's going to try, as much as possible, to stay away from boring and pedantic references to shots, hand held zooms, camera angles, story, characters and the overall disgusting aesthetic, moral or sexual appeal of the film.

Dear Reader,

I am very excited. I watched Antichrist last night and loved it. It's a shock that I got in time.

Wow. Whoa.

Three people came to my mind after I watched the film.

The first was Gandhi. The guilt of a woman who watches her baby fall out of a window as she is in the throes of a vibrant and rocky orgasm reminded me of the father of the nation and his own guilt trip of fornicating with his wife while his ailing father was taking his final breaths in an adjoining room. I wondered why Bapu never contemplated on the quality or degrees of the human orgasm when he was contemplating on truth.

The second person I thought of was David Foster Wallace, a depressed soul (like the director of Antichrist) and a writer brilliant enough to harass his audience to the point of absolute submission. Or disgust. It all depends on who you are and where you stand.

Wallace would be the best person in my opinion who can explain everything that happens in the film scene by scene in a vocabulary that refuses to surprise and forever arouses suspicions that it has been stolen, outright from the shelf, from a one-room office of a struggling middle class New York therapist.

The trouble is David Foster Wallace is no longer alive. He killed himself last year.

The third person I thought of is the director of the film who I will not name because when the thought came to me there was no name to the director. Plus I have never heard of him until recently and have never even accidentally watched any of his films. I had no prior knowledge that the gentleman who directed Antichrist is well known in the arty western cinema world as a provocative imp with the sensationalist gene and some great work behind him.

Perhaps this doesn't explain it well. Let's try an allegory.

Imagine the bitch-eating-dog-eating-bitch art scene of New York or London. Dream up an opening night after-party at a high-ceiling apartment in Manhattan.

The air is warm with artistic incest. Black shines the way it's supposed to in art circles. The gathering, a social collective intent on pleasure while they do business, is about to achieve the sociological equivalent of the human orgasm. Wine flows. Despite global warming, Al Gore, lies, counter-lies and the games that people play but should not be playing, guests are reminded by their drunken selves that art will save us. We shall overcome. Yes we shall. Hum Honge Kamyaab, ek din.

In this crowd the director of Antichrist is like the artist who walks in, goes to the kitchen, urinates in the sink in full attendance and leaves. Just to make a point: sink disposes waste.

Sounds like Damien Hirst?

You're taking the provocative imp with a sensationalist gene bit a tad too seriously. The director of the film isn't like Damien Hirst. He's who he says he is: a depressed man.

I am completely disgusted with what I have just seen. Extreme cruelty. A man's manhood is severed; a rod with a heavy weight is thrust in his leg; he tries to escape but his aggressor follows him to the dark deep woods of the Eden.

Finally, with great effort and pain, the man is able to hide himself suitably in a cave like structure at the base of a giant tree. The man is safe. He is now curious. He lights a match which wakes a bird nestled deeper in the cave. The bird begins howling (or whatever it is that birds do). We don't want her to. The noise alerts the man's aggressor, his wife. The man takes a stone and beats the skull of the bird to a pulp. I am glad. This cruelty doesn't disgust me.

I simply had to watch the film!

Everywhere I go people are talking about it. It's rare for a foreign film to generate such buzz in such a short time with the severe handicap of illegal distribution. Antichrist opened in NewYork only last Friday but it's selling like hot cakes outside the Andheri station.

Those who can't get the pirated DVDs are borrowing. I wanted to watch the film; it reminded me of the video library days. I asked a colleague who had a copy but it turned out he'd given to someone else already. Such is the craze.

Another colleague has tuned his torrent stream and must have completed his illegal download of the Blue Ray DVD print by the time you're reading this.

A Senior Editor has read enough about the film. She doesn't want to go through the ordeal of watching something that has been labeled 'disgusting in parts' unanimously by the far left, the far right and centre of the global film industry political set up.