‘If I were a chef, this would be my version of a classic pork roast’.
Lars von Trier
Antichrist (2009) premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to a smattering of hostility and derision. In the first press conference for the film a British journalist tersely demanded director Lars von Trier ‘explain and justify’ why he made it. In response, von Trier said that he did not have to justify himself, adding ‘you are all my guests and it’s not the other way around’. This admission of being unconcerned about audience opinion provoked animosity from the press, and his comments were subsequently used in many reviews as a sign of his obvious arrogance. Why a popular entertainer such as Ricky Gervais can get away with professing a similar attitude whilst von Trier cannot is beyond me. Perhaps it is another example of how art or art films serve the false outrage that drives newspaper columns and the popular media today.
Despite the overreaction at Cannes, von Trier is back and at his provocative best after two relatively low-key films; the brilliant office comedy The Boss of it all (2006) and the study of power in American culture in Manderlay (2005). Unfortunately he remains one of a minority of contemporary directors who reflect seriously on the manipulative power of film—and on how a director’s persona impacts on its reception. Two other directors who premiered their films at Cannes 2009 are allies in this regard; Michael Haneke who premiered The White Ribbon (2009), and Quentin Tarantino who showed his latest, Inglorious Basterds (2009) (strangely, all three movies being filmed in Germany). The year 2009 was predetermined to be the year of