The press conference for Lars von Trier’s Antichrist started with a surprising question from a journalist of The Daily Mail: “Could you justify doing this film?” After some stuttering from the director, the journalist insisted that he had to justify his work, since being selected in a renowned festival implied such a responsibility.

The tone of the question was pretty shocking (it was clear that the journalist had not liked the film at all), but the most interesting point of the attack was the weapon he used: the legitimacy of a work of art. He surely wouldn’t ask the same question of the directors whose films he appreciated. After all, according to a common theory, quality justifies itself.

The question put to von Trier could have been addressed to every filmmaker in the world: Why do people make films? Is an artist responsible for every interpretation based on his work? In order to answer that, the public should not be left out of the discussion. Unless we consider that a film contains quality in itself (which means, strictly, that it doesn’t need an audience to be legitimate), we should think of the quality of the judgement brought to it. In our specific case, the Daily Mail journalist should have attacked the artistic director of the festival rather than von Trier.

Actually, we could say that the director’s opinion about his own film doesn’t have any interest at all. Perhaps the director didn’t achieve his ambitions, expressed a different idea from the one he wanted to or just doesn’t know why he made the film. The latter seems to be von Trier’s case. If we seek to legitimise a work of art, the director should be the last person to do it, as he is too close to what he’s done. We’d better ask the public and the work of art itself.

Bruno Carmelo