Melancholia review
I’ve always thought Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier was kind of a one trick pony. The enfant terrible is behind films like “Breaking The Waves” (Emily Watson plays a woman who is abused physically/psychologically), “Dancer In The Dark” (Bjork plays a woman who is abused physically/psychologically) and “Dogville” (Nicole Kidman plays a woman who is abused physically/psychologically). I’ve never really been a fan of his films and yet there’s something to be said for his work because I keep going back for more. I’ve now seen 6 of Von Triers films including his latest “Melancholia” which I was curious enough to check out while in Paris where the film is already in wide release before it makes the festival rounds at TIFF and NYFF.
The film begins with an extended sequence featuring the end of the world. Set to a stirring piece of music by Wagner and featuring beautiful images that look like David LaChapelle filmed Salvador Dali paintings the mood of these striking moments carry through to the rest of the film. After this prelude, we enter Part One where we’re formally introduced to Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) a seemingly happy couple on their wedding day. The camerawork returns to the director’s trademark looseness, going in and out of focus like a documentary crew struggling to keep up with the action as the couple arrive hours late to the reception organized by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). But we quickly see the facade start to unravel as it turns out that Justine is a manic depressive with an alcoholic father (John Hurt) and extremely distant, cold mother (Charlotte Rampling) and a demanding boss (Stellan Skarsgard).
Besides the looming apocalypse the first section film plays out a lot like “Rachel Getting Married” with the wedding bringing out the difficult family dynamics. But Von Trier seems to be just placing his pieces on the board just so he can knock them over. The characters come off more like ciphers than three-dimensional human beings. (Her mother and boss seem particularly exaggerated). The film exists in a heightened reality but as it goes along Von Trier comes off like a kid showing you his ant farm in Part One, only to smash it apart gleefully. You never sense that these are characters that he really cares about, they’re just pawns who are being subjected to whatever form of cruelty he can dream up, which in this case involves a planet that had been hiding behind the sun now on the path to collide into Earth.
Part Two, which picks up after the wedding switches to the POV of Claire as she struggles to keep it together while the planet approaches. Unfortunately most of the ensemble from the first half is absent here and the film begins to drag. Though not everything works and some of it is downright silly, it’s still a marked improvement from last year’s controversy baiting “Antichrist” and stayed with me for a few hours after the theatre. The frustrating thing about Von Trier as a filmmaker is that he assembles top notch casts, achieves gorgeous cinematography, etc. but can’t seem to bring everything together. Why we spend the first half of the film meeting characters who bear no effect on the films apocalyptic finale I have no idea. The two halves seem like separate ideas that were smooshed together and so we’re left with moments of greatness that don’t seem to add up to anything greater.
