I'm still thinking a bit about Antichrist. It's really woefully mis-titled, looking at Youtube I can see it ended up drawing an audience of imbeciles looking ravenously around for the new gore-fest demoniac slasher kill-em-all movie where hordes of fleshy manikins are slaughtered by somebody who "got de devuhl in im"... which is a shame because this movie is sooo much higher than that. More elevated... it really has nothing to do with the devil or demons at all; the title does provide a 'deep' religious kind of ambience but that isn't worth attracting the youtube numbskulls, altho i guess the youtube numbskulls will be there no matter what happens.
The review I read of it was negative & talked about its view of "human nature as evil", but it only deals abstractly with evil & human nature only as an afterthought, it's a look at the heart of darkness which is chaos & irrationality... what it suggests is that those things are at the basis of existence itself. Yet nihilistic isn't the appropriate word to describe it because it's about struggle whereas nihilism is blankness.
Nihilism is impassivity to chaos & pain, which is why most people have an instinctive aversion to it... What humanity does is try to impose order on top of chaos, which is why Willem Dafoe's character brings them out to the woods-- he's convinced he can conquer the darkness within life by facing the woman's fears directly; he doesn't entertain the possibility that the fear is more powerful than him, that there are some things the mind can't handle. It's true-- some things are too much... I said that at one point, lol, watching the film-- "this shit is too much." Personally, if things got to a point for me where this kind of bleakness was life, I wouldn't stick around to find out what happens, I'd get out of there-- I'd kill myself. No biggie... some things are worse than death.
But back to the movie, that people had such disgusted, repulsed reactions to it only proves to me how successful von Trier was... the movie ITSELF is repulsed.. it's horrifying but what struck me more was how the movie itself is horrified by what it's showing. I think that came thru strongly. I think people who aren't constitutionally ready to accept what the movie is saying will have a strong, gut-level disgusted reaction to it... & I don't mean that elitist-ly, I mean it literally-- unless you've been mentally & physically to the point grasping the sort of darkness the movie is evoking you will probably hate it. I can imagine INTJs liking it. Maybe INTPs wouldn't like it, INFJs may be repulsed, darker INFPs would like it, a lot of ENFPs, ISTPs would probably find it ridiculous or laughable... etc. Most of my friends would hate this movie, it's definitely just for certain people.
I think von Trier is probably a really dark, troubled ENFP. Functionalogically speaking the effect of the movie is like an Fi monster coming up to crush every last ounce of Ne hope & creation in the human spirit
* dropping TC movie-response into submission box *