Following yesterday’s New York Film Festival press screening of Lars Von Trier’s latest provocation, Anti-Christ, the notoriously travel-phobic Dane appeared via Skype (which was sortuv glitch-prone) to answer some thoroughly stupid questions from the capacity crowd at Lincoln Center. (See our own Skyped interview with Von Trier in the upcoming October issue of BlackBook.) Maybe they were just too dumbstruck by what they’d just seen? It’s not altogether unlikely. The film features, among other bits of unpleasantness, an unusual quantity of genital mutilation. To go into specific detail would be unseemly (and heck, might ruin the surprise of seeing it for yourself), but suffice to say it was sufficiently gruesome that, at one moment, a long-time friend and colleague of mine had to avert his eyes only to ask me afterward what had happened. How did Lars justify all of this? Strangely.

When asked what had inspired him to make the film, Von Trier alluded to the sustained (and by now, quite well covered, media-wise) depression he’s been in. “I was trying to struggle out of it, but it didn’t work. I was never very excited making it. I’m still not. I feel, almost, maybe human.” It’s a comfort to know that this depression has not injured his ego. It also hasn’t done much to his sense of humor. When told that there had been no walk-outs during the screening, he quipped “Then I have failed!” Any attempt to suss out a coherent meaning in the film was also discouraged. When asked about the significance of the pic’s numerous biblical references, he was flatly apologetic. “I’m sorry for all that. Normally I go through and take all that shit out. I was very uncritical this time.”

All told, the interview was equal parts galling, hilarious, and absurd. The same could be said of Anti-Christ.