Review: MELANCHOLIA
“Life is only on earth…and not for long” Lars Von Trier’s latest anxiety riddled, women torturing saga Melancholia is a strange beast to put it mildly. Its perplexing nature is somewhat explained by its equal quantity of emotional and cerebral trauma. If you look on Von Trier’s back catalogue and see only pointless suffering and European art house indulgences then there is nothing in Melancholia that will radically alter your opinion of him. Even though it is his most mainstream film to date it still has more than enough ammunition to scare off the casual moviegoer. It’s a sci-fi film with no aliens or battle cruisers and a love story with no happy ending. You will probably leave the cinema feeling baffled, slightly shaken and hopefully thrilled as well because Melancholia is nothing if not engaging and intoxicating, in the way a seven hour Mozart operetta is.
The film is built around a pair of extraordinary performances by its two female leads: Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, now becoming a Von Trier regular. Playing the young bride Justine going through a particularly dark bout of depression on her wedding day Dunst is a revelation. Whether she is calmly picking berries and flowers in the garden or squealing in terror as she attempts to take a bath she expresses so much inner turmoil and suffering in her delicate, youthful body. It’s mystifying to think that this is the same actress who twirled on top a pyramid and doled out spirit fingers in Bring it On. Gainsbourg plays Justine’s Sister Claire who is also unravelling at the seams due to the unwelcomed arrival of the mysterious planet Melancholia threatening all life on earth. She is a mixture of waspish charm and sisterly affection.
Melancholia has one of the more original opening sequences in contemporary cinema. It’s a barrage of ultra slow, pin point realist shots of Dunst producing kinetic waves from her fingertips and walking through forests and golf courses. All this will not fail to entice some kind of reaction. The imagery is stunning and is mixed in with extreme long shots of planets and gaseous clouds of red and blue that brings immediately to mind Terrence Malick’s recent film The Tree of Life. As the classical music slowly builds to a satisfying end it is hard not to be moved by this wondrous cinematic moment.
Von Trier borrows some of the old tricks from the Dogme film movement throughout. This includes plenty of hand held camera work and large family gatherings as a setting where everything goes horribly wrong. You thought the wedding anniversary in Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen was bad? That film ain’t got nothing on Melancholia’s nuptials from hell. Particularly delightful is Charlotte Rampling as Justine’s mother, who is full of distain for her daughter and doesn’t mind letting everyone know it.
Melancholia often plays out like some maudlin European fairytale what with all of the forest imagery and characters fitting comfortably into fairy tale archetypes: you have the fairy princess (Dunst) marrying the handsome prince (Alexander Skarsgard), the wicked stepmother (Rampling) and the old haggard king (John Hurt). Albeit with a dark, sexual twist. Brought to life in a palette of silvers, greens and coffee shades Melancholia is ravishing to look at but it can’t quite escape how ridiculous and far removed from reality it really is. The last half an hour or so is particularly bewildering in that everybody becomes hysterical, even Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) loses his mind. What’s interesting about it though is that Justine only seems to pull herself out of her depression once she realises that the world is going to end. Only then can she finally find some kind of peace. The characters are hard to relate to which doesn’t help things, but I don’t think Von Trier really cares about alienating his audience.
For Melancholia it’s a case of come for Dunst and the apocalyptic imagery but don’t expect to have your faith in humanity restored.
