This is the chapter that earned the film its notoriety. He tries to flee but finds the path blocked by an impossible accumulation of acorns. He is trapped. She, now fully transformed from grieving mother to a vengeful, primal force, attacks him. First, she smashes his leg with a heavy block of wood. Then comes the scene that has seared itself into cinematic infamy: She drills a hole through his calf, threads it with a heavy grindstone, and pulls it through. The sound design—the wet crunch of bone, the low whir of the drill—is unbearable. This is not gore for spectacle; it is the physical manifestation of her self-loathing turned outward. She then performs clitoral mutilation on herself—a horrific, explicit act that von Trier films with unflinching, clinical precision. In this context, it is not pornography; it is a theological statement. She is sacrificing the very source of her “sinful” nature.
Where the becomes legendary (and infamous) is in its third act. He discovers that She has been performing cruel experiments on their son (twisting his ankle to make him limp, encouraging him to walk in the wrong direction). Worse, He reads her thesis, which reveals that she despises women. She believes that women are inherently evil—that when they grieve, they turn savage. movie antichrist 2009