A stunningly shot sequence of events launches Melancholia (I use the word ‘launch’ rather than ‘open’ carefully). A huge planet slowly envelops earth, a woman carrying a child screams to the heavens, Kirsten Dunst floats, pre-Raphaelite-like, in a murky pond in full wedding dress. And we watch from above a wedding stretch-limousine attempt to navigate a sinuous dirt track.
It’s a Wagnerian epic in scope and emotion.
Part One: Justine
Melancholia is divided into two parts with Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day forming the first part. Justine and her husband-to-be Michael are in the stretch limousine, desperately late for their own reception.
The car was paid for by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her property developer husband (Kiefer Sutherland) - further stretching an already strained relationship between the two sisters.
A depressive Justine finds little happiness in events around her – she is drowning in a despair no-one else around her can understand. Daily rituals are devoid of meaning and this emptiness leaves her with a desperate longing, even while tensions between family members are slowly revealed. Unable to find understanding in anything around her, Justine disappears into her own head and world.
Thus, the flamboyant wedding heads for the inevitable disaster as the neurotic bride flits around the enormous, rambling property of her brother-in-law’s latest golf resort. Justine is on a destructive collision course, urinating on the 18th green in full bridal dress and having sex with a young colleague on the 1st tee.
Meanwhile, Earth itself is on a collision course with the blue planet Melancholia.
Part Two: Claire
By far the more practical of the two sisters, Claire takes in Justine after her wedding day meltdown. But as amateur astronomer husband John becomes more and more entranced by the approach of Melancholia (which scientists have assured all is merely a “fly-by”), so Claire’s strength and beliefs begin to fail just as Justine’s grow.
The blue planet hurtles towards earth. The impending apocalypse is nigh.
Polarised opinion
It is a commonly held belief that if it were not for the famed (and disastrous) post-premiere press conference in Cannes where director Lars von Trier talked about identifying with Nazism, Melancholia would have won the coveted Palme d’Or.
Critics fell over themselves in singing its praise and the feature has an 81/100 Metascore on metacritic.com, one of the highest of the year.
But Melancholia divided opinion. For every critic who referred to the film as “a movie masterpiece…” (Entertainment Weekly) there was the view that it is a “pile of undiluted drivel” (New York Observer).
The sad thing is that nothing adds up. All the main characters are unlikeable, whilst Kirsten Dunst is just infuriatingly annoying, depressive or not.
Funereal in approach, whilst beautiful to look at, Melancholia is dirge-like and long outstays its welcome (at 135 minutes it feels as if it will never end and becomes something of an endurance test).
Indulgent, self-satisfied and extremely tedious, Melancholia is, as Justine says of her own psyche, “… it’s clinging to my legs, it’s really heavy to drag along”.
Personal rating: 1.5 stars
Melancholia
- Directed by Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark)
- Written by Lars von Trier (Antichrist. Dogville)
- Produced by Meta Louise Foldager (Antichrist, Truth About Men), Louise Vesth (Clown: The Movie, Truth About Men)
- Starring Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man I, II & III, Marie Antoinette), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist, 21 Grams), Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, The Sentinel)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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