Willem Dafoe Says Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ Is Misunderstood: ‘It’s Not About Misogyny at All’
Willem Dafoe is revisiting the “Antichrist” controversy more than 15 years later.
Dafoe co-led Lars von Trier’s 2009 film, which centers on a couple who grapple with the death of their child with Charlotte Gainsbourg. “Antichrist” is infamous for its scene of genital mutilation, and has since become a staple in film schools everywhere.
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Dafoe said during “The Louis Theroux Podcast” that “Antichrist” is still largely misunderstood by audiences.
“I think it gets misidentified because of some of its extremeness,” Dafoe said, “but I think it really speaks to interesting things about women’s power, men’s fear of women, the struggle between the logical and the magical in life. There’s lots of sexual politics in it, and it’s not about misogyny at all.”
Dafoe added of von Trier, “I think he identifies with the women more than the man. I can tell you that because I play the straight, logical one in the movie. But I think he’s genuinely curious and he’s a great filmmaker. So, you know, the opening of that movie and the epilogue of that movie is great cinema.”
Dafoe recalled that the Cannes premiere was well-received: “For cinephiles and for people that I’m interested in and have good dialogues with, they were interested in this movie,” he said. “It’s not set up as a crowd-pleaser.”
He added that the genital mutilation scene does “sounds terrible, but in context it’s pretty satisfying.”
Dafoe shared that von Trier was struggling with depression while making the feature.
“He used to say to me every day, ‘Listen, I may not be there tomorrow, but I can direct you remotely from a trailer I have,'” Dafoe said. “But he showed up every day. But he needed to tell me that every day, me and Charlotte. It kind of breaks your heart. So, he’s a guy that struggles with many things, but he’s got a big heart and he also has given a lot to cinema.”
Dafoe went on to argue that the controversial cultural legacy of “Antichrist” is indicative of a lack of nuanced discussions about modern film.
“Listen, there’s this problem where we reduce these things that are very complex to kind of the warts, you know? And then that’s what goes out,” Dafoe said. “It’s particularly a problem as real film criticism disappears and gives way to short form and TikTok and influencers and all that. There’s not the dialogue that some films of sophistication deserve. And you can say, ‘Ah, shut up be an actor, make a movie,’ but I think it’s a problem because it’s starved cinema a little bit, that the high-minded cinema actually makes way for the popular cinema.”
Dafoe confirmed that he still does “keep in touch with” von Trier. And while he said von Trier has now been effectively “cancelled” after his comments about Hitler at the 2011 Cannes premiere of “Melancholia,” Dafoe believes the auteur has “always been set up as kind of this provocateur.” “Antichrist” star Gainsbourg also appeared in “Melancholia.”
“Everybody at Cannes supports that,” Dafoe said, “and he just crossed the line and then he got cancelled. That’s it. That’s end of story.”
Von Trier later announced in 2022 that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and may not return to filmmaking.
Dafoe himself has been “cancelled” to a degree after starring in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988. Dafoe revealed that due to the “controversy” of the biblical feature, he was dropped from a subsequent film.
“Down the road there was one project in particular that I was cast in and the studio un-cast me because they didn’t like that I was associated with ‘Last Temptation,'” Dafoe said. “I don’t want to do a big crocodile tears about that because it could have been much worse, but I didn’t feel it so much. I think most of the responsibility fell on Martin Scorsese. And I get censored on this, but I think it’s really true that somewhere people think actors are kind of a little whore-ish and they’ll do whatever to get a good role or something. So they don’t hold you responsible somehow. They really look to the director and the studio.”
And speaking of the studio, Dafoe added that he thought it was a “shame” that the film “didn’t get the distribution that deserved.”
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