The “Antichrist” is represented in the film by the “witch figure”. One of the main lines of the film is the thesis written by the heroine on the subject of the mass murder of witches in European history. This is an anti-female theme, and in the process of writing her thesis, our heroine gradually becomes psychopathic (as opposed to normal) or spiritually sublimated (as opposed to the awakening of her witchy nature in women).
In fact, the heroine is unable to continue writing even before the death of her child, and the study of the slaughtered witches summons up the most evil part of her heart. From time to time, she is in a daze, and her spirit begins to fail her. For example, in the second half of the film, the hero discovers on the photo in the forest hut that the shoes the heroine wore for her child’s death were reversed, with the left foot over the right shoe and the right foot over the left shoe. And the manuscript of his wife’s dissertation, too, the words gradually tend to disintegrate, and finally become completely meaningless symbols. It is then that he realizes that long before the child dies, the heroine is out of place.
The death of the child is the beginning for the film, but it is a motive for the psychological aberration of the heroine, which provides the objective motive for her descent into extreme grief and then into a state of ecstasy. The other subjective motive is given to her by her stupid husband. Confident and sensible, the hero, with his psychoanalysis and psychological healing theories, tries to help his wife (rather, control) out of the pain of losing her son, with the result that under his incessant coaxing and at the call of the forest, she finally awakens – the thing she fears most, herself! It is her own nature.
The heroine had two flashbacks during the awakening of the evil power, one was the third day after arriving in the forest, she suddenly felt relaxed, she could run around excitedly, jump everywhere, nothing was afraid anymore, not in a trance. But the hero at that time, he sensed that this abnormal “recovery” has problems. All the bloody hints in the forest surrounded the hero in fear. The prelude to the heroine’s utter madness is a wild encounter in the forest the night before, which is typical of the witches’ collective ecstasy (also symbolized by the numerous hands sticking out of the branches.) Another return to the light, is the heroine in the shovel plowed out the hero, she suddenly found conscience, belonging to the normal part of back, she cried and apologized, ran back to find the wrench to rescue the hero, but she did not remember where she threw the wrench.
At the end, the hero strangles the heroine (who is already a witch), and the director gives the whole process of strangulation, so that the audience can see the heroine’s face gradually turning blue and her eyes widening, so that the audience can witness the death of the “witch”. The witch’s funeral is also the most classic – tied to a tree and burned. The blazing fire, at that moment the hero’s eyes are very confused, perhaps he regrets his own childish confidence, his wife forced to the death of the road. Perhaps he began to reflect on his so-called rational “science”, for our human reverence, to escape the power of some mysterious nature, is a remedy, or the opposite effect.
Here I can say that the men in the film symbolize the righteous “Christians” who have historically killed witches, while the women are the witch figures whose nature is gradually awakening. This confrontation between the two sexes, either anti-Christian or anti-female, which one wins or loses, we are as confused as the hero. As he walks down the mountain, dragging his leg, which has been maimed by a woman, countless visions of witches, dressed in modern clothes, surround him in a fog.
