So yeah. Wow. I don't quite have all the words for this yet. But I will say it's going to be the best film of the year by a wide margin. That feels safe to say. This is a legit work of art that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Aronofksy's best and even some of Lars Von Trier's best.
Please go in without spoilers! Although I will say even if you are a bit spoiled, like you've seen that trailer, the movie definitely has further delights in store.
spoilers!Also spoilers for Antichrist right now:
I thought it was obvious, but seriously, their forest hideaway is called "Eden," and the characters are credited as "He" and "She." Remember the piles of bodies that appeared in the tree roots scene, and later on the path in the epilogue? I first thought they were dead bodies, i.e. representations of gynocide, but I convinced myself otherwise. There's no blood, wounds, scarring, or anything that would suggest violence. I haven't cracked open a bible yet, but I'm pretty sure God is said to have given life to flesh, or some such thing. These could be women who have not yet been given life. When "He" eats the forbidden fruit at the very end, the women come to life, and converge toward him peacefully, as if he's the creator. This is some kind of reinterpretation of Genesis, or a new creation myth altogether.
Also recall that the Dafoe character is nailed through the leg and forced to drag a weight around. He even goes into a tomb of sorts and "rises" through the ground. Christ, anyone? (Dafoe has played the character before, after all.) We know LVT is not averse to crucifixion analogies (Dancer in the Dark).
[...]
It could be a Noah's ark type of thing. Look at it this way: The history of misogynism, and indeed even gynocide, had obliterated the female gender to the point of existential crisis — total destruction from within and without. So deep, in fact, were the wounds that they could cause the kind of horror we see in this film, which in this worldview I assume is representative of the whole. Everything is so out of balance that a new beginning is required, so the female gender is recreated.
It's like Aronofksy saw the end of Antichrist and was like "hmm that's good, but can we go a bit further?"
That was some seriously thick allegory. Even small things felt like components of a biblical-style narrative, including the quarreling brothers, and J-Law resting for several days (?) until she finally went to sleep. I'm still absorbing everything and putting it together, but obviously the fable/allegorical qualities get more intense from there. Their house is even called "paradise" (like Eden in Antichrist). My first impression is that these are twin deities — "the inspiration" and the creator. Then we see how humanity breaks down and fails as life plays out. Humans are selfish, misguided, destructive, invasive. They are deeply annoying and endlessly problematic. But the creator still has empathy for his creations all the way through the end — "but we have to forgive them!"
Humanity has to be destroyed ("I'll go take care of this... apocalypse") and remade, and the cycle continues.
Like Antichrist, this was an explosive combination of dazzling filmmaking and mythic storytelling. I want to see it again right now!
If you thought the character names in Antichrist were cute ("He" and "She"), holy crap, check out
the credits for this one.
