Melancholia Review
Directed by Lars Von Trier
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland
It’s been a considerable amount of time since my last review. I’ve always excused myself of putting up more, rationalizing that I am far too busy to put up movie reviews. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not- and I’m just kidding myself. So I sat my butt down and I’m getting right to it.
I saw Lars Von Trier’s latest film out of a whim. My friend suggested seeing it that night and, without prior pre-conception of the film’s worth, I decided to go. I had hoped to watch a good film. What I saw instead, was a massive experience.
That’s probably the best way I can describe the film. It’s less a bonafide film but more of an experience, designed specifically to wring the audience rapidly into a sense of intense loneliness and melancholia. Which probably makes my first point of the movie- Damn… this is one heavy film.
The movie takes place in two parts and revolves around the stories of two sisters. The first is Justine, a bright woman on the eve of getting married to the man of her dreams. She should be happy, if it weren’t for a case of intense depression that grips her in the most inopportune moments. This makes here the bane of the family, a family compromised of arguably even more flawed characters.
The second sister is Claire, who by all intense and purposes, is living the dream. She has a beautiful son, a rich husband and lives in a castle with it’s own 18-hole golf course. She has a firm resolve to live the perfect life, and to make her sister get over herself and do the same. And it would have worked too, if it weren’t for that damn planet closing in to collide with Earth. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
First of all, the performances. And what amazing performances they are. Kirsten Dunst nails the nuances of her character, who from one scene is the picture-perfect bride of many young girl’s dreams. In the next, she is a barrage of cynicism, self-loathing and an inability to grasp on reality. One could argue she plays less the character, and more the disease, but it shouldn’t be understated that her character arc in the movie requires a lot of subtle acting choices that are extremely hard to execute. And Kirsten Dunst’s performance shatters and pre-conceived notion that her character is anything other than sympathetic.
But it is Charlotte Gainsbourg who steals the show. Acting as a source of emotional and psychological support for Justine; she can’t get over the fact that Justine just can’t be happy for herself. She has the perfect life, and she is sharing it with her less-than-grateful little sister. But when Melancholia, the passing planet, becomes dangerously close to Earth, a reversal of roles occurs which brings out an incredibly powerful performance. The hysteria, the maddening sense of helplessness all begins to set in, and her breaking apart in the seams is an earth-shattering, if also highly depressing, performance.
The rest of the cast rounds up nicely, with commendable performances from veterans such as Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt and Alexander Skarsgard. None of them steal the show, and rightly so.
But now let’s talk about the elephant in the room, or rather the planet in the atmosphere. Yes, a large portion of the film revolves around the impeding doom of an incoming, giant and obviously metaphorical planet named Melancholia. What sounds like a Science Fiction twist at first glance, turns out to be a very overbearing shadow that casts over the entire film. A referendum on all the evils of the world, but at the same time it’s a sense of hopelessness and existentialism that eats away inside all of us. But it’s opposite effect on the sisters create some of the most memorable and remarkable moments in the film.
Lars Von Trier couples all these together using a very unique visual style that both heightens and disturbs the pacing. A lot of the time, the film can feel overbearing, unrelenting in its point and at times unbearably slow. It is unapologetic in this regard, taking the time to barrage you with striking visuals (many of which done with the slowing of time) that bring out a profound sense of being but at the same time striking us with dread of the inevitable. His use of Wagner’s music to go along these moments create a feeling of suspended time, as if taking that final breath of life before drowning in the murky depths of the ocean. It’s very unsettling and beautiful at the same time and harkens back to the classical tragedies yesteryears.
That said, this movie is certainly not for everyone, and you won’t see it apologizing for what it is. And person unafraid of the experience is in for a treat, but this movie’s uneven structure may frustrate film buffs who can’t get over Von Trier’s vision, which compensates for the film’s lack of story ingenuity with a powerful visual flair and a pair of haunting performances. No way in hell will the average film goer survive even the first thirds of the film. But this is certainly an experience, a downward spiral of which the emotional peak is as shattering as the impeding destruction of Earth.
8/10
