Ah, the Daily Mail. Prurience and loathing, a very English jouissance:

If I were to see Antichrist…it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

The unwatched Antichrist is, like the unwritten Kubla Khan, undoubtedly an exceptional artistic accomplishment. Somewhere in a parallel reality, the Mail’s film reviewer has had his mind literally flayed by exposure to its ferocious explicitness, its explicit ferocity. Mad, staring, spiritually polluted, he haunts the streets and seedy backrooms of Soho, no longer able to summon the moral energy to make his excuses and leave when the Mars Bars start coming out of their wrappers.

I have very little tolerance myself for wince-making body shock (I’ve wussed out of seeing much less “graphic” movies), so I probably won’t be watching Antichrist either, not least because having sat through Breaking the Waves over a decade ago I’ve little further time for Lars von Triers’s evident schoolboy misogyny. Women are virgins! Or whores! They’re weak, so they suffer, which makes them strong! Er, symbolically! I could look at Emily Watson all day, but the premise of the film was desperately trite. Perhaps the kitschy peal of bells at the end was signalling von Trier’s justifiable contempt for anyone stupid enough to take it seriously, perhaps not. I’d rather have some serious thought, either way.