I’ve had many strange moments with Lars “Von” Trier.

I sat, soaking wet, in a thunderstorm at an outdoor cinema in Australia and cried like a baby at the end of Dancer in the Dark, I laughed so inappropriately at the orgy scene in  The Idiots that I had to leave the cinema until it was over and I still can’t watch the end of Breaking the Waves with anyone else in the room as it remains, for me, one of the most powerful moments of my cinema life.

It’s interesting to look back at Von Trier’s life before his films because in many ways it is as bizarre, hectic and sad as anything he has put to screen. Raised in Denmark, Von Trier’s (some what) communist, nudist parents believed that rules and discipline were counter productive aspects of growing up and the little “Von” is thought to have had free reign.

(And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).

His debut film The Element of Crime adopted a style much like that of Russian go to man Andrei Tarkovsky’s (of whom Von Trier’s Antichrist is dedicated). After completing his Europa Trilogy he had earned a name for himself as one of the most extremely technical and stylized directors in Europe. Something not seen in Danish cinema at the time.

Steven Spielberg was so blown away by Europa that he invited Von Trier to direct a  film he had optioned in America but Lars’ intense fear of travel and more probably his love hate relationship with Americana pop culture put the kibosh on that. I’m guessing, much to Von Trier’s stubborn Chagrin.

After developing the rules of the mostly hit and miss Dogme95 manifesto with Thomas Vinterberg, Von Trier’s style regressed and with hand held cameras and bizarre jump-cutting exercises he forced deeply flawed characters and ultra melodrama unashamedly on to his, often squirming, audiences. Its a place that he has stayed roughly since.

His brilliant The Five Obstructions, his only documentary thus far, is the only real exception. It deals once again with the idea of how boundaries and rules can enhance creativity as the devious Von Trier sets up poor old Jørgen Leth to remake his own short film The Perfect Human five times over, each with a different set of crippling restrictions.

So the question is does the man with an obsession in restraint have any himself?

I’m sure you already heard it from every uptight, controversy riding, brow-furower that Antichrist is the most shocking film in the history of the world, ever and that even reading this very article could risk the life of you, your children and your children’s children for generations to come. I bet you’ve also heard that it’s got more hardcore sex in it than a thousand Hustler magazines and that it’s misogynistic force reaches so deep that many women in screenings all over the world have already burst in to flames.

So, if we take all of this (99.9% untrue) fire breathing out of the picture, does Antichrist really have anything to say or is it just the cheeky Von Trier once again putting a rabid cat amongst some gullible pigeons?

The story is told with Von Trier’s trademark chaptering blocking out an epilogue and segments called “Grief”, “Pain (Chaos Reigns)”, “Despair (Gynocide)”, “The Three Beggars” and a prologue.

The epilogue plays out in amazing, dream like black and white. We watch on as “He” (Willem Defoe) and “She” (Charlottle Gainsborg) make love in the bathroom as their only child falls to his death from their open bedroom window. It’s a beautiful and fascinating sequence (yes, even with the much talked about “hardcore” shot) photographed by Slumdog Millionaire’s cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.

Now, in foggy blue and green colours, the film takes the grieving couple off to “Eden”, a cabin in the woods where Defoe’s blank, stubborn shrink, attempts, ridiculously, to help his near catatonic wife cope. He tries to do this with a series of patronizing psychology 101 type tasks in which she must face her most obvious fears.

Of course things don’t go as planned and “She” rejects the help as much as “He” rejected his grief…

Only… more savagely… and with cutting implements.

To be honest, as a whole, it’s all a bit of a mess. The ideas about how people grieve, about how nature is all controlling and powerful, about how fear decides how we handle our most intense and important moments seem more than ever to be about Lars Von Trier instead of about the film he has made.

All these ideas seem so pointless and scattered when looked at against the rest of the film. Then on top of that there’s a gruesome stone attaching scene, there is bird killing, there’s a dear with a dead fawn still… ermmmm… “attached”…and yes… there is, female circumcision, a bit of bone drilling, a blood ejaculation shot and a talking fox.

Antichrist’s main influence seems to be (first and foremost) Nick Roeg’s horror classic Don’t Look Now which was also deemed “pornographic” at its time of release. Donald Sutherland and Julie Cristie’s now ultra tame grief-romp in Venice was, then, directly in the critics cross hairs. The atmosphere of dread is perhaps more reminiscent of Von Trier fave Bergman’s beautiful, claustrophobic psychobabble masterpiece Persona. But, on both counts, without any of the depth.

Well known for extracting memorizing performances from his leading women, Von Trier pushes Charlotte Gainsbourg into so many corners with the role and she completely delivers on every front.  It’s an amazing bare bones performance, especially strange, sad and terrifying towards the finale as her sorrow unexpectedly (and thematically unfairly) becomes the most horrible guilt.

But, given The Von’s love for parable and moralist film making (Dogville, Manderlay and Dear Wendy case in point) it’s really very difficult to decide exactly what it was that he was reaching for with this thing. The film’s ending and epilouge offer little explanation or hope. Though, in a film born out of a debilitating bout of depression and set up on the deepest themes of sadness and grief, a happy ending is not what you should go in expecting.

I’ve seen my share of boundary pushing films and I’ve never seen controversy as a negative force around good film making. It is disappointing however when a film’s real impact is defocused and diluted down to a few vicious shots, apparently, only due to some feverishly fast twitterers in a cinema in Cannes…

…or could it be that for the first time his career Von Trier has made a “bad” film?

I had a similar experience with this type of uber-hype when I genuinely had had my brain fried in 2002 at a screening of Gaspar Noe’s Irreversable in London.

Much like Antichrist, two standout scenes threatened to overshadow the film as a whole. The real difference in this case is that Irreversable’s masterful use of camera and narrative, existed to enhance the violent scenes and in turn helped the entire film succeed overall instead of doing nothing but stick out like a sore thumb. In a nutshell, Noe’s movie’s harrowing set pieces are purposeful, intensifying and all destroying because the rest of the film can stand up on its own two legs and have something to say.

To me, that’s when boundary pushing, thought provoking and interesting cinema is at it’s best.

I only wish Antichrist was that.