Melancholia Review

First off, I’m happy to report that no harm is brought upon either sex’s genitals in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, something I can’t say for his last film, Antichrist, a film which played out as a therapy session for the director/writer to vent his real life agony. Fortunately though, von Trier has moved onto the healing phase in his own life, easily translating his new inner-elation cinematically. Of course, this is a nihilist’s interpretation of healing.

*Full Spoilers Ahead*

The film is structured differently than most; opting for a two-act story structure rather than the normal three acts. The film’s opening scene, which is set to Wagner’s famous “Prelude” from Tristan und Isolde, acts as a hyper-realistic imagining of the end of the world. From there we’re thrown into the two chunks of film, two segments named after the two sisters who’s inner-happenings set the tone for their respective acts.

Starting with Justine (Dunst), and her simple but handsome fiancé (Skarsgard from True Blood) we transition from the profoundly shot and realized opening scene into a more casual envisioning of a groom and bride late for their wedding. The film boldly forecasts that it’s in no hurry to appease the ADD film audiences of the world, deciding rather to ruminate on what’s been put in front of us, real people with sincere issues.

Justine is nowhere near as happy as we would’ve thought, a bride self-destructing on the most important day of her life. Her groom is appealing to all the senses except the more cerebral ones, her parents are divorced and display it well with their alcoholism and cynicism, and her boss is only there to hustle a marketing tagline out of her for his own capitalistic prerogatives. The only characters that seem to be balanced (emotionally & figuratively) are Justine’s sister, Claire (Gainsbourgh) & her scientist husband, John, fully-realized with an intense performance by Kiefer Sutherland.

Now here’s where the film plays up its title. Melancholia, a state of depression, is not just the theme of the film, but a celestial body forecasted to be on a collision course with our friendly blue planet. Has the planet’s enigmatic properties corroded our cast’s actions and mental processes, or is the encroaching planet just an excuse to mask our ever-looming darker sides? I’d say neither.

This film felt like an exercise in the shadowy aspects of human nature, handled responsibly and sincerely, thus becoming a startling vision of human nature through it’s creator’s current life’s realities. Lars von Triers is our antagonist, the planet and the feeling of wallowing misery its name conveys, and our protagonist, Justine. Melancholia, the planet, is symmetrically embodied on earth as Justine, a self-destructive free-radical here to expose our meaningless human practices & indulgences, negating the idea of marriage, family & capitalism all in one fell swoop. With the sanctity of the latter three ideas distinguished, there is only one thing left for von Triers to destroy, our hope.

Claire, Justine’s sister and the name of the second act, revolves around destroying the hope that is left within her, the film and this forlorn world of ours. Claire is the audience, the rational character with the requisite level of optimism having all the walls torn down around her. Having completely sacrificed all life’s amenities & relationships in the first act, Justine finds herself being taken in by her sister in the second, devastated & too weak to even stand; all of which she brought upon herself. There are only a few days remaining & Claire fears for her families safety, all the while being persuaded by her scientist husband that she nothing to fret over; a notion quickly dispelled when her husband takes his own life in the face of the terrible truth.

Unlike most disaster films, which concentrate on special effects, burning forests, tidal waves and metropolis’s being incinerated, Melancholia meditates on personal decimation, questioning whether we as humans bring about our own ends through grave and masochistic self-treatment. Of course, in this film, the world truly is ending, but we’re not treated to a full on depiction of the apocalypse, but a rather moving and subtle approach; watching Gainsbourgh embrace her child, weeping, the outer space anomaly colliding with earth and ushering in the closing credits is as engrossing a way to end the world, and this film, as any I could think of.

In a year where Terrence Malick moved us with his phenomenally cerebral vision of life’s beginnings & Gasper Noe’s morbidly hypnotic journey of drugs, death & reincarnation in Enter the Void, Lars von Triers’ Melancholia fits in quite nicely as the third act to this past years first & second in a cinematic equivalent of life’s three parts. Sure this film is like an exercise in depression, inward angst and hate being turned outward, but it’s so sublimely realized, you’ll feel like you’re healing from von Trier’s depression as well.