Ratings
The Daily: 4 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 80%
More on 'Melancholia'
IMDB
Official Website
Without trying very hard at all, director Lars Von Trier has managed to make “Melancholia,” his latest film, more notorious than his last, “Antichrist” — which is really saying something, considering that film ended with an on-screen castration. At a press conference for the movie’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Von Trier “joked” obnoxiously, rambling on about how he sympathized with Hitler; the move got him banned from the festival.
Reports from Cannes speculated about whether this was career suicide, and if “Melancholia” would even get distribution in light of Von Trier’s comments. All the early critical hand-wringing was certainly in vain. Despite the baggage it comes with, “Melancholia” is Von Trier’s most reasonable work to date, with a polished, linear plot involving destruction, a wedding and Kirsten Dunst naked. It’s very nearly palatable to those weaned exclusively on Hollywood fare, and is as good a chance as Von Trier’s ever had to get beyond art-house crowds.
“Melancholia” is, for all intents and purposes, a disaster film. A prologue shows us that things are not going to end well for anyone — setting the audience up to spend the next two hours in tense anticipation of the scenes of havoc it portends. Von Trier uses Wagner’s prelude to “Tristan and Isolde,” one of the great works of uneasy listening, as the exclusive score for the prologue and much of the film. He deploys it liberally, to unsettle us, to cue that A Bad Thing is imminent — much like in a B-grade horror flick. Except in this case, it’s no masked creep with an ice pick behind the door: It’s Kirsten Dunst as an unhinged bride.
The film is divided into two halves; the first focuses on Dunst’s Justine and her interminable, lavish wedding reception. Initially, it appears that Justine’s real problem is the people around her: her selfish parents, her demanding boss and sister. She labors to keep up her happy bride routine, but when her fake smile drops, it is replaced with the expressionless mask of the deeply depressed. Von Trier has called Justine his most autobiographical character. She is passive-aggressive terror, swinging from helpless to volatile; it’s exhausting to watch. (Udo Keir’s performance as the disgruntled wedding planner is welcome comic relief.) As the wedding night comes to end, with everyone in her path exasperated and crushed, she turns to her groom and says, blithely, “What did you expect?”
Justine’s sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is presented as the good sister, but in her half of the film we see that she is merely better at subverting her neurosis. Claire’s anxiety centers around a newly discovered planet that’s slingshotting around the Earth; she’s certain that doom is imminent. She is the closest thing the film has to a protagonist, and in typical Von Trier fashion, she is the sole powerless one, whose suffering we identify with. It’s strange to say that his portrayal of the apocalypse is subtle, but compared with the endings of some of his recent films — Bjork swinging from a noose, a woman unmanning her husband — a uniform end to all life is certainly tidier.
Absent the bizarre conceits of his last half dozen films, Von Trier’s twin obsessions — unexplained phenomena and cruelty — are still very much at the center here. “Melancholia” is Von Trier signaling that he is capable of producing simple, accessible work — and that he is no less an artist for it.
The Daily: 4 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 80%
More on 'Melancholia'
IMDB
Official Website
Without trying very hard at all, director Lars Von Trier has managed to make “Melancholia,” his latest film, more notorious than his last, “Antichrist” — which is really saying something, considering that film ended with an on-screen castration. At a press conference for the movie’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Von Trier “joked” obnoxiously, rambling on about how he sympathized with Hitler; the move got him banned from the festival.
Reports from Cannes speculated about whether this was career suicide, and if “Melancholia” would even get distribution in light of Von Trier’s comments. All the early critical hand-wringing was certainly in vain. Despite the baggage it comes with, “Melancholia” is Von Trier’s most reasonable work to date, with a polished, linear plot involving destruction, a wedding and Kirsten Dunst naked. It’s very nearly palatable to those weaned exclusively on Hollywood fare, and is as good a chance as Von Trier’s ever had to get beyond art-house crowds.
“Melancholia” is, for all intents and purposes, a disaster film. A prologue shows us that things are not going to end well for anyone — setting the audience up to spend the next two hours in tense anticipation of the scenes of havoc it portends. Von Trier uses Wagner’s prelude to “Tristan and Isolde,” one of the great works of uneasy listening, as the exclusive score for the prologue and much of the film. He deploys it liberally, to unsettle us, to cue that A Bad Thing is imminent — much like in a B-grade horror flick. Except in this case, it’s no masked creep with an ice pick behind the door: It’s Kirsten Dunst as an unhinged bride.
The film is divided into two halves; the first focuses on Dunst’s Justine and her interminable, lavish wedding reception. Initially, it appears that Justine’s real problem is the people around her: her selfish parents, her demanding boss and sister. She labors to keep up her happy bride routine, but when her fake smile drops, it is replaced with the expressionless mask of the deeply depressed. Von Trier has called Justine his most autobiographical character. She is passive-aggressive terror, swinging from helpless to volatile; it’s exhausting to watch. (Udo Keir’s performance as the disgruntled wedding planner is welcome comic relief.) As the wedding night comes to end, with everyone in her path exasperated and crushed, she turns to her groom and says, blithely, “What did you expect?”
Justine’s sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is presented as the good sister, but in her half of the film we see that she is merely better at subverting her neurosis. Claire’s anxiety centers around a newly discovered planet that’s slingshotting around the Earth; she’s certain that doom is imminent. She is the closest thing the film has to a protagonist, and in typical Von Trier fashion, she is the sole powerless one, whose suffering we identify with. It’s strange to say that his portrayal of the apocalypse is subtle, but compared with the endings of some of his recent films — Bjork swinging from a noose, a woman unmanning her husband — a uniform end to all life is certainly tidier.
Absent the bizarre conceits of his last half dozen films, Von Trier’s twin obsessions — unexplained phenomena and cruelty — are still very much at the center here. “Melancholia” is Von Trier signaling that he is capable of producing simple, accessible work — and that he is no less an artist for it.
