Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.
Melancholia is about two sisters, Justine and Claire, who must face each others melancholy and the end of the world. The film is arranged in three parts, or acts. The first act is a beautiful dream-like tableaux set against a powerful score of music. Then a wedding, which sees Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst slide from happiness to melancholy and the third act shows the end of the world.
Brilliant support comes from Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt, who play the divorced parents at the wedding spectacularly. It’s imperfect, and full of moments which make up life – awkward wedding speeches, putting a child to bed, lying in a bath and thinking. Lars von Trier comments on Kirsten Dunst and her performance, “I think she’s one hell of an actress. She is much more nuanced than I thought and she has the advantage of having had a depression of her own. All sensible people have.” and I have to agree. Dunst was captivating as Justine.
In act 3 we see Melancholia, which is a planet speeding towards earth. The characters are under the impression it will just ‘fly by’, but as the tag line for film is “a beautiful movie about the end of the world”, we know this cannot be the case. As Melancholia gets closer Justine seems to find peace (or maybe ambivalence) in her certainty that the world will end and they will all die. She has nothing to lose. It is Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who becomes hysterical, irrational and falls apart. She has everything to lose. Justine and Claire’s son build a kind of fort – they sit together and wait for their impending destruction. The music reaches a crescendo, and the beautiful Melancholia – all purples and blues and swirling cosmos – comes closer and closer and… nothing. Nothing. The credits roll to silence.
Lars von Trier (director and writer) has clearly taken art direction from the Pre-Raphaelites. During the wedding Justine escapes to the Library and rearranges the books. She puts away Modernism and opens up another book, leaving it open on John Millais’s ‘Ophelia’. The film steps away from idealised beauty and shows life in microscopic detail and brilliant colour.
Whilst the film is a beautiful spectacle, at times it does feel as though the three acts are different films. The wedding scene has no obvious role in the story, other than to show Justine’s slide into depression. Having said that, I did enjoy it. There’s a certain voyeuristic pleasure in seeing the most beautiful wedding imaginable collapse in a ruined heap.
The only way to see this is at the cinema or, if you must, on a big TV with surround sound to appreciate Kristian Eidnes Andersen musical arrangements and the cinematography. The DVD is due for release on 23/01/2012.
