**** (out of 4 stars)
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, and Alexander Skarsgård
Written and Directed by Lars Von Trier
Rated R for some graphic nudity, sexual content and language
Running time: 130 minutes
Melancholia is a film that lives up to its title, as Lars Von Trier’s latest film perfectly captures the state of someone with a hopelessly depressive worldview. It would make an interesting double-bill with Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, in that while Malick’s film celebrates the beauty that life itself has to offer, Melancholia‘s tone imbues the audience with a feeling of what it’s like to see life as an ultimately futile experience. It’s like the teenage son who utters “What’s the point?” with disdain when his mother asks him to just get out of bed already by noon. This sort of angst seems obnoxious to those who aren’t depressed, but it doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t somehow genuine.
The film’s opening montage is a dreamlike prophecy of things to come. Various visual motifs seen here repeat throughout the film, even going so far as to reveal the film’s apocalyptic conclusion, as we see a massive planet crash into the Earth and reduce it to dust. We then find a bride-to-be named Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day, set to marry her fiancee (Alexander Skarsgård) at a lavish estate that evokes Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. Justine comes from a fabulously wealthy family, has a high-paying job as an advertising executive, and is about to be married to handsome man who is only interested in loving and caring for her. Yet, Justine has an air of sadness about her that intensifies as the evening wears on, until it threatens to consume the wedding’s festivities entirely. Her pragmatic brother-in-law, John (Kiefer Sutherland), constantly reminds her that he is spending a king’s ransom on the wedding party, insensitively declaring that it had better make her happy, indicating that her depression has an been ongoing nuisance to her family.
Weddings are always rife with dramatic possibility, in that there is always so much boiling beneath the surface. In drama, what isn’t said is always more interesting that what is, and there is a great deal that isn’t said during Melancholia‘s first half. The audience is aware that the world will soon come to end, so this ceremony to new beginnings, filled with people doing their best to hide their misery, is interesting to watch unfold. The apocalypse doesn’t really begin to truly hover over the story until the film’s second half, which focuses more on Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her unshakable fear that the world will soon end. This fear comes about because of a planet called Melancholia that has been hiding behind the sun is set to pass by Earth, and though her scientist husband insists that Melancholia will miss Earth, Claire’s paranoia beings to consume her.
Meanwhile, Justine returns to their Marienbad-like estate, her depression worse than ever, yet the idea of the world ending doesn’t bother her. In a line that recalls the “Nature is Satan’s church” quote from Von Trier’s Antichrist, Justine tells Claire, “Life on Earth is evil…Life is only on Earth. And not for long.” A scene where a naked Justine bathes in the light of Melancholia looming above in the sky suggests that her depression is the very reason the world is ending, the way life seems to stop in a moment of sadness you can’t escape from. When depression grips someone at its worst, tomorrow seems like it simply doesn’t exist. Yet seeing the very different ways that Justine and Claire react to the face of Armageddon is where Von Trier squeezes you. Claire’s feeling of purpose in life instills a panic, while Justine’s mood of depression instills a calm.
In explaining his decision to reveal to the audience that the world will end in Melancholia early on in the film, Von Trier noted how James Bond movies are exciting, even though we know Bond will come out on top in the end. Von Trier stated that what makes a Bond film thrilling is that we know what is going to happen, but not necessarily how it will happen, like a magician who announces what the result of his trick will be before performing it. The excitement for the audience lies in watching it happen. Giving the audience this knowledge early-on gives us the ability to focus on the nuances of how the characters react to the scenario Von Trier has laid out for us, and the film is all the better for it. This makes Melancholia the most personal movie about the end of the world ever made. Never does it cut to a big city to show us mass hysteria, nor does it even bother to turn on the TV to show panic in the streets. We are left only to spend time with the characters in their own little pocket of the world. In making the apocalypse so personal, Von Trier has bottled up the state of depression, and put it on display in the cinema for all to see and experience, should one desire to do so.
