Brent Bozell
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It isn't easy to shock the jaded audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, but Danish director Lars von Trier achieved that with his new movie, "Antichrist." It wasn't really the title. It wasn't the weird scenes with a talking fox. It was the graphically portrayed sexual mutilation.

Let's dispense with the plot. A couple is mourning the loss of a child. They go to an isolated cabin, the mother loses her mind and goes postal on her husband and herself. Pressed by journalists about his film, von Trier claimed his movies choose him, not the other way around. "I never have a choice," he said. "It's the hand of God, I'm afraid." He added, "I am the best film director in the world."



Says the "art" film director: "I work for myself, and I do this little film that I am now kind of fond of. I haven't done it for you or an audience, so I don't think I owe anybody an explanation."

The audience be damned? That sounds a lot like a snooty European auteur. But it's a sign of the times that he quickly found an American distributor for "Antichrist," IFC Films. It's part of the Rainbow Media empire, which includes cable channels like AMC, IFC, We TV and the Sundance Channel.

IFC chief Jonathan Sehring poured praise all over this nightmare: "It is a towering work of cinema by one its greatest directors. We are incredibly excited to bring this film to America and expect it to have a major impact on audiences not only in America but worldwide."


Not all violent art films at Cannes receive the same enthusiastic embrace. The Los Angeles Times reports that Steve McEveety, one of the producers of "The Passion of the Christ," took a new film to France. "The Stoning of Soraya M." is adapted from the 1994 nonfiction book of the same name by a French-Iranian journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam. He traveled to a small Iranian village in the mid-1980s and found the story of an innocent woman stoned to death over concocted charges of infidelity. Soraya's husband fell in love with another woman, accused his wife of adultery and Soraya was left without support in the town. Her two eldest sons sat on the male tribunal that declared her guilty, and she was stoned by a mob that included her father.

But Times writer John Horn suggested this film could strike the same chords of controversy with Muslims that "The Passion" did with Jewish critics.

Horn relayed that director and co-writer Cyrus Nowrasteh spares little in depicting the execution, in which Soraya is buried to her chest with her arms bound and pelted with heavy rocks from close range until she bleeds to death.



You could call it A Tale of Two Violent Movies. Hollywood's business decisions show where their religious and political sensibilities overrule their business sense -- and any sense of right and wrong.

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Brent Bozell

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