lars von griefpaindespair

Antichrist… I am not improved by this movie.

…

London. England.

So that’s two Londons in a month.

London, Ontario, which also has a River Thames, and an Oxford Street, and a Covent Garden.

And this one.

Giant. Forever. Endlessly sprawled.

And everywhere is somewhere.

Toronto is big. But lots of it isn’t anywhere. Has no name much, or reference.

But most of London is somewhere. Means something. Has history. People are from there. They say they’re from there. And there’s so many bits it would take you a week to mention them all. And years to bring up every personal and historical and whatever connotation.

Cos, even if you’ve never been to say, Wallingford, or Chingford, or Bromley By Bow, they’re encrusted with details and people and events and buildings and buses and names and faces and songs and bands and books and ...

Cos I’m here with Priscilla, who barely knows it. And we’ve stayed on Kingsland Road and in Stoke Newington and been to the Southbank, Covent Garden, Dalston. Camden Market, Hampstead Heath, Kings Cross, Caledonian Road, Soho, Brick Lane, Bethnall Green, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Angel.

Which is hardly anything, hardly anywhere. Nowhere.

…

But whoops, I was trying to talk about Antichrist, the Lars Von Trier griefpaindespairfest.

Or rather, not trying to talk about it… because… it’s a gruesome bullshit conjob.

Priscilla hated it more than almost any movie ever. And I found it bloody horrible. It ruined our day, our Friday. Everything was coloured with gloom and trauma from then on.

And it didn't help Saturday.

His movie Dogville is one of my ten favourite movies ever. I loved it to bits. It was a great Euro-American novel that never got written.

And maybe he thinks he was mining the rich seam of Dogville. Maybe he thinks it was the bloody horrible side of Dogville that was the best thing. When the best thing was the strength of out-there idea and the resolve to carry that idea through in every visual-character way possible.

Cos I also liked Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves and The Five Obstructions. But this … Blimey I hated it.

So yes, I am not improved by the ejaculating blood, the wallop in the ****ies, the *****, the hobble, the ********ectomy, the any of it. And no amount of great photography is going to make up for it.

It ruined my day.

And I am not improved.