What follows is a story of trying to overcome grief that ends in ruin instead of redemption. The film begins with an Italian aria being sung over black-and-white, slo-mo footage of a husband and wife having sex as their small child climbs out a window and falls to his death.

Yet the cinematography hasВ a sinister,В achingВ beautyВ that makes it aВ morbid pleasure to watch for fansВ of artsy horrorВ films.В With a cast of just two main actors (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, of all people) in incredibly intense performances, and backed by a research team that includes consultants on subjects from theology, anxiety,В and misogyny to вЂњmythology and evilвЂќ, horror films, and psychotherapy, it is an unexpected,В unforgettable look at the age-old question:В AreВ womenВ evil? Spoilers below. A quick list of adjectives IвЂ™d use to describe the film include: brutal, savage, delirious, perverse. I remember first reading about the film on some internet click-bait page of вЂњthe most shocking horror moviesвЂќ or something like that and it is indeed shocking. ThoughВ Gnosticism never won out as a normativeВ expression of Christianity,В some of itsВ dualistic thinking about gender and sexualityВ continued to inspire later thinkers in church history.В For this post, I want to focus on just one iteration of the idea: the haunting, psychosexualВ nightmare of a film by Danish screenwriter and director Lars von Trier, entitled Antichrist. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.вЂ™вЂќ CanвЂ™t sum it up better than this line from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: вЂњSimon Peter said to Him, вЂLet MaryВ В leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.вЂ™ Jesus said, вЂI myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. Unfortunately for women, they were seen as by nature being more closely tied to the passionate, material world, whereas men were seen as being more closely tied to the rational, spiritual world. The religions under the umbrella of GnosticismВ areВ characterized by aВ dualistic cosmology that pits the physical, material world against the heavenly, spiritual world, the former being seen as profane and corrupt, the latter being seen as good and holy. But letвЂ™s turn to one particular stream of thought: Gnosticism. Happy WomenвЂ™s History Month! I figured what better time to bring up an old, dark current in human history-a question as absurd to our modern sensibilities as it was ubiquitous to earlierВ generations: Are women evil? Now, IвЂ™m not going to attempt to go through an exhaustive historical catalog of theological and philosophical sources that have answered this question (unfortunately, often in the affirmative).

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