Christian Geisnaes
Kirsten Dunst stars as depressed bride Justine in Lars von Trier's "Melancholia."
Danish writer-director Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" is so bleak that it imagines not just the end of the world but the annihilation of all life in the universe.
That's because, according to the film, life exists only on Earth — and the Earth is blasted into nothingness during the movie's stunning opening sequence, a prelude/montage of beautifully composed, digitally enhanced, slow-motion images of drowning brides and collapsing horses and falling birds that ends with the collision of our planet and a second, larger world, named Melancholia. The cataclysm is scored with overwhelming music from Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde," another romanticized tale of doom, and the moment when worlds collide suggests the famous Life magazine freeze-frame photograph of an apple being smashed by a bullet, but on a cosmic scale.
In this beautiful movie about the end of the world, Justine and Michael are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of ...
Rating: R for some graphic nudity, sexual content and language
Length: 130 minutes
Released: November 11, 2011 NY/LA
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt
Director: Lars von Trier
Writer: Lars von Trier
Happy holidays? For serious movie fans, yes, for "Melancholia" is an overpowering large-screen experience, for those willing to enter von Trier's "magic cave," to borrow Justine's (Kirsten Dunst) term for the teepees of sticks she constructs for her young nephew. Superficially, "Melancholia" is a science-fiction story, but because the film takes us to a "magic" place, the illogic of the science is irrelevant; the rules of the real world don't apply.
"Melancholia" — which screened once here in November, during the Indie Memphis Film Festival — was available in October as a video-on-demand television offering, but it demands to be seen in a theater, in the dark, without the distractions of home. The size of the theater screen reinforces the notion that a motion picture should be a doorway for entering alternate worlds, not merely a window for observation, and "Melancholia" is all about being consumed by the presence of other worlds, psychological and physical. The movie's intimate handheld digital photography is beautiful and purposeful, not clumsy or annoying. The sometimes-shaky camerawork offers an illusion of spontaneity, but the staging and shot selection are anything but random.
"Melancholia" apparently was inspired by von Trier's history of dark depression — a history that won't surprise viewers of such past von Trier films as "Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville," which abused their heroines with almost Sadean determination. (The new film's heroine may be named in homage to the Marquis de Sade's 18th century novel, "Justine.") Justine, however, is no victim. With typical von Trier pretension and solipsism, "Melancholia" equates its heroine's crippling depression to the extinction of all mankind, but it also validates Justine's black pessimism. Forecasting the death of the Earth, Justine asserts: "Nobody will miss it."
"Melancholia" is dived into two chapters of almost equal length. The first half chronicles the wedding of Justine and the affable Michael (Alexander Skarsgrd), son of Justine's business-minded boss (Stellan Skarsgrd). Justine's divorced parents are less imposing: Dad (John Hurt) is an agreeable drunk escorted by two young ladies, while Mom (Charlotte Rampling) is a hateful cynic who publicly tells her daughter: "Enjoy it while it lasts. ... I myself hate all marriages." Justine spends almost this entire half of the film in her lavish wedding gown, which is not so cumbersome that it presents her from squatting on the ground to relieve herself or straddling a handsome young wedding guest for some self-hating illicit golf-course sex. In its lacerating portrait of an unhappy family dynamic, the first half of the movie suggests "The Celebration" (1988), by von Trier's fellow Dane and former "Dogme 95" filmmaking compatriot, Thomas Vinterberg.
After the prelude, "Melancholia" introduces a wonderful scene in which the absurd stretch limousine carrying Justine and Michael is unable to negotiate the twisting roadway leading to the site of the wedding, an estate owned by Justine's sympathetic if often exasperated and even accusatory sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is superb), and Claire's impatient, pragmatic husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland). Later, Michael has trouble carrying Justine across the threshold of their bedroom; eventually, horses refuse to cross the bridge that leads away from the estate. The inability to get from point A to point B is not just a bad omen but proof of the futility of enterprise and the impossibility of escape.
The second half of the movie takes place on the estate, as Justine, John, Claire and the couple's young son (Cameron Spurr) await the approach of Melancholia, a roving "fly-by" planet that previously had been hidden behind the sun. An amateur astronomer, John is eager to see Melancholia, but Claire is scared, and takes no comfort from John's assurances that "the scientists" say the planet poses no danger to Earth. (The movie includes references to the Internet, but not to television; one of the conceits of this "magic cave" is that the characters measure the progress of Melancholia with a handheld wire-and-stick device created by the little boy rather than by TV reports).
Orbiting bodies themselves, Justine and Claire essentially reverse places during the final act; Claire panics, while the pessimistic Justine is able to accept and even embrace the idea of her doom. At night, she bathes naked on a river bank in the "moonlight" of the new planet, like one of Wagner's Rhinemaidens. It may be her one moment of true happiness.
"Melancholia" is exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.
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