The movie is divided into six sections, an Epilogue and Prologue which are beautifully shot in black and white and underscored with a Handel aria, and then four chapters, Grief, Pain, Despair, and the Three Beggars. What these segments all mean is pretty obvious, by the end anyways, and make the film more or less ambiguous, depending on who you are.
But let me rewind and tell you what the movie is about. Simply, it opens with He (Willem Dafoe) and She having graphic sex while their son decides it is pertinent to jump out a second-or-third story window, which leads to his death. She goes nuts, unable to cope with the guilt that she could have prevented this death and did nothing. He is a therapist of some kind, and decides that her fears lie in Eden, a place in woods where they go.
The film's prologue and first two chapters are actually pretty good, I guess. The film rarely dips into a lot of graphic nature in the first half, save a wolf and deer, and sex, but is an interesting avant-garde therapist movie. Her feet burn in the forest, He makes Her walk between stones, and good ol' therapy sessions abound. This stuff isn't very riveting either, though.
The second half is more riveting, and a lot worse then the first half. She goes nuts, attacks Him, and everything spirals out of control. Chaos Reigns, as the cute fox says at the conclusion of Chapter 2, and indeed it does here. The movie is needlessly graphic, and while I was cringing during certain genital mutilation scenes, it never effected my in the way I think it wanted to. Hearing all the critic's reactions from its Cannes and subsequent screenings, I was expecting something that would rock me to my core, leave me traumatized, and effect me in some way.
The movie gets kudos, overall, for its cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle) and the courageous lead performances by Dafoe and Gainsbourg. This movie gets worse in my mind as time goes on, but I cannot deny that they gave great performances. Sadly, it was in a movie that is much more boring then it would like you to think. It wants you to think it is brave, bold, daring, and exploring deep themes, when really it can be summed up as one of the ultimate anti-feminist films of all time.
It's amazing that I have to sum this movie up as overall being very...boring. All the problems in the film come from von Trier himself, and while I commend him for going out and trying something different, I reprimand him for not having any clear ideas about what he was trying to achieve. The significance of Eden is so painfully obvious, and the way She parallels the great vixens of mythology, Eve and Pandora, is ridiculous.
The reason I saw this movie in the first place was because it divided the general opinion of it. It ended up on a film critic poll as one of the Best and Worst movies at Cannes. How do you not see that movie? I won't discourage the truly curious to not go see it; you should seek it to at least experience it for yourself and decide where you stand. But to everyone else, who has no idea what this movie is, and how no idea what they would be in for, I say, stay as far away as possible.
Not Rated, but it contains several graphic sex scenes, genital mutilation, and animal abuse. Not real animals, animatronics. But still.
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