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Review - Melancholia
After completing Melancholia, Lars von Trier said he hoped it was not too polished, and contained enough flaws to make it interesting, before falling out with the Cannes jury by joking that he was a Nazi sympathiser. Some people have no sense of humour. The idea behind the movie came from a bout of depression von Trier suffered. One concept he learned during it was that depressed people remain calm during intense pressure. The director asks a lot of his audience, who are required to make their own interpretation of the movie's intentions, but he has provided the opportunity for some serious post-movie analysis.
The film should come with a health warning, as von Trier opts for a lot of hand held camera shots, which are very unsettling and made a number of people at the screening I was at feel unwell. On the positive side, there is a super soundtrack, chiefly Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and decent performances throughout.
In the movie, Justine (Kirsten Dunst, winner at Cannes for this performance) is a newly wed who suffers from severe bouts of melancholy and depression. Her wedding day goes horribly awry as fear gives way to self loathing.
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Her rapacious family are little consolation. Scolded by her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg, excellent) belittled by her brother in law (Keifer Sutherland, in boring old 24 voice mode), shunned by her jealous mother (Charlotte Rampling), failing to connect with her sauced up dad (John Hurt), and bullied by her selfish boss (Stellan Skarsgard), her disastrous day ends with her being unable to consummate her marriage. As she plunges into an abyss of depression, the planet Melancholia heads towards Earth, having just missed Mercury and Venus. Von Trier showed the effects of the gravitational pull and the collision in the prologue of the movie, because he did not want the audience to be distracted by wondering how the film would finish. As Melancholia appears to initially fly past, it becomes clear this is a 'dance of death', and that the Earth would be dragged back into its path and annihilated.
The entire movie has a single setting, her brother-in-law's stately mansion, and this mirrors Justine's belief that there is no life elsewhere in the Universe. She is convinced life on Earth is about to end, but to make sure she lures the planet by stripping naked under the dual light of Melancholia and the moon, and becomes a siren for Earth's destruction.
The director will no doubt be happy that there are enough flaws in the movie. The wedding scene is too long and the character interaction is too forced. It is too easy to find the central character hateful when the intention was to make her sympathetic, and so to contrast her with the other members of the cast. Like the central character, the movie is enigmatic - but not ambiguous. It provides plenty of talking points, and has a great ending.
7/10 Essay material
Review written by John Franklin : November 2011
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