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Sunday, January 24, 2010

BD impressions: Antichrist

8:42 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

The thing about a film like Antichrist is that, unless you were in the fortunate position of having viewed it at its premiere, every man and his dog will have expressed an opinion on it by the time you get around to seeing it, whether or not they actually saw it themselves. As such, I wonder to what extent my lukewarm reaction to it stemmed from having unrealistic expectations. Like just about everyone else, I knew all about "that scene" before going in (if, by some remarkable twist of fate, you don't know what "that scene" refers to, I'm not going to ruin it for you here), so its shock factor was dulled to a certain degree (it's still a squirmer, though). What I did realise was that "that scene", and the fifteen or so minutes surrounding it, were atypically arresting. The rest of the film is plodding and dreary, with powerful (or should that be unrestrained?) performances and some striking cinematography failing to liven it up. At times, von Trier seriously overestimates his viewers' (or at least this particular viewer's) suspension of disbelief, with a scene in which a fox talks to Willem Dafoe eliciting gales of derisive laughter.

In his Kermode Uncut blog, Mark Kermode cites Andrzej Zulawski's Possession as the spiritual forerunner of Antichrist, which I'm inclined to agree with, with the caveat that Possession is the better movie. It's far more gung-ho in its balls-to-the-wall weirdness, and while its performances are similarly hysterical, nothing Charlotte Gainsbourg does in Antichrist can hold a candle to Isabelle Adjani's subway station meltdown.

Antichrist, or rather the ideas behind it, are interesting enough, and the aforementioned fifteen minutes, which combine cringe-inducing gore with nail-biting tension, make it worth viewing, but on the whole I was a little let down. Kermode claims that no-one reacts to this film with indifference. Well, I respectfully disagree. There's always one, I suppose.

Image quality: A real mixed bag. Antichrist is an at times striking-looking film. At other times, it's a rather cheap-looking one, owing to the varying shutter speeds employed by von Trier and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, which results in the look alternating between that of film and that of someone's home video. A major issue with the image is the crushed greyscale, with severe banding and blocking visible in most scenes that take place in low light (see Example 1 and Example 4). I don't know whether the problem lies with the encode or the source material, but either way it looks like ass. Further problems are evident in the form of what looks like a dodgy scaling algorithm, which creates pronounced aliasing on any diagonal edge (look at Dafoe's cheek in Example 3 and the child's sleeve in Example 8). By far the worst problem, though, is the encoding, which is dismal. The film occupies a mere 14.8 GB on the disc, and it shows in the form of the worst compression artefacts I've ever seen on a BD. Look at Example 5 and Example 14 and try to hold on to your lunch.

It's a shame, because there is plenty of detail in the image, and without these severe flaws I'm sure it would look great. 5/10

Antichrist
studio: Chealsea Films; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 14.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 20.43 Mbit/sec

5 Comments

 
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