Melancholia Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Melancholia

Year: 2011

Director: Lars Von Trier

Country: Denmark
Language: English

Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier is known for making incredibly depressing yet well made films like Antichrist and Dancer in the Dark, so when I heard that he was making an apocalyptic film known as Melancholia I just had to watch it. Von Trier seemed to be born to make this film, his career built on female characters who go through great trials and tribulations.  Indeed, because he focuses more on the female characters in his films, he often inspires great  award winning performances out of them. He is truly a feminist filmmaker, whether he intentionally attempts to be or not. To Von Trier women are filled with great emotion, great passion and great suffering, they can evoke more feelings on the screen than their male counterparts. Such emotion is needed when making a film about the end of the world.

This “end of the world” film does not feature many apocalyptic signs of destruction. There are no tsunamis, no earthquakes , no buildings being destroyed. There aren’t massive amounts of people fleeing in a giant panic, there aren’t animals behaving in an unusual way. .  He avoids every typical thing a  sci fi apocalypse film should have such as blaring radio broadcasts and constant news coverage. Melancholia is a rather slow paced film compared to every other  apocalypse related films. It takes its time and delivers a slow impending doom. We know what’s going to happen, the characters know what’s going to happen, there is some sense of hope but all we can do is watch out of curiosity. Von Trier shows a brilliant shot of the lead characters staring at the planet that is about to collide with the earth, portraying the sense of doom that is washing over them.

A prologue to the tune of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” opens the film. It gives us a sense of dread, fear and uneasiness. The world is not right, and everything that is will come to an end.  We are sucked into the mood of the film right away, we understand that this is not for the faint of hearts.  Hovering in the sky is another planet, Melancholia. We know that this is the way humanity as we know it will end.  Every moment in this film is soaked with the knowledge that the world is going to end.  The wedding scenes between Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) doesn’t seem to matter, though it seems to exist to show the detachments of every character and the depressions that already plague them. There is some bickering, but we realize that none of this matters compared to the “big picture”. Justine is the first person who sees the planet hovering in the sky, which will grow larger and larger over the next few days until it fills the sky. Nobody seems to care about it or talk about it much.

Perhaps this film is about death in general. Everybody seems to avoid talking about it, they either don’t care about Melancholia or assume that somebody else can deal with it. I find it curious that there is a lack of violence and gore in this film. Lars Von Trier was constantly criticized because his last film, Antichrist. had too much violence and therefore was proclaimed “torture porn”. Melancholia is a film where everybody on Earth will die, yet the death within this film isn’t violent. Von Trier might be saying that there is great beauty in death, if you accept it and not struggle against it. Justine sees her fate coming, instead of panicking or becoming furious, she learns to accept it and face it head on. The planet known as melancholia will ultimately not bring her down.  Every person who has ever existed has died, thus this is her time to die.

In conclusion, I feel there is a lot to be understood from the film. I intend to watch this many times as I fully do not understand it myself, Melancholia is one of those films that demand multiple viewings. It’s quite abstract and very different from any apocalyptic film you will see in your life.  This is the performance of Kirsten Dunst’s career, I doubt that she can act in anything else that will top this. This film can have many interpretations, many ways of understanding it. Melancholia is truly art at its most apocalyptic. Praise it! 4/5

Next 5 Reviews:
1. The Help- 2011
2. Hugo- 2011
3. Moneyball- 2011
4. Ides of March- 2011
5. Midnight in Paris- 2011