Film Review: Melancholia

There is no escape for Kirsten Dunst’s Justine, a cloying wedding and the impending catastrophe in the form of the colossal planet Melancholia, drifting toward Earth. There is no exodus of shuttles awaiting our planet’s terrified denizens, just the slow hours of introspective terror that punctuate your last moments in this universe before the impending obliteration of all human civilisation.

And if you thought that was bleak, just wait until your mother shows up to the wedding.

Melancholia is, for once in Lars Von Trier’s catalogue, a film with the power to genuinely unsettle and affect its viewer. Before now, Trier’s films have been ideologically powered but narrativley and aesthetically flimsy, only relying on their genre trappings as cynical window dressing. This film’s predecessor, Antichrist was presumably a horror movie on one level and a dissection on gynocide on another. Ultimately Von Trier caved into the latter premise, the film was an atmospheric essay but delivered nothing beyond that. Sure the film showcased some gruesome visuals but never unsettled, it’s ideas were esoteric and therefore lacked impact on a gut level (a fundamental need in scaring your audience). As described earlier, it’s here that Von Trier gets it right. Doom, inevitable inescapable doom is the order of the day. Funnily enough, the Danish firestarter is probably unaware of this.

Melancholia still comes will all the standard Von Trier trimmings, maintaining several thematic threads from Antichrist (nature as an uncontrollable, malevolent force) but most of all, proposing the much obliged antithetical argument in the face of Terrance Malick’s sanctimonious, staggeringly naïve opus: Tree of Life. Malick’s and Von Trier’s pictures both feature dysfunctional family life played out against cataclysmic galactic events, obviously they are separate in the fact that Malick’s uses the these as analogous images, Trier obviously implicates these events directly to his protagonists. Von Trier’s doomsday is not simply an event of cataclysmic happenstance, the implications linking the disaster to Justine’s crumbling mental state become more evident as events progress. As a result spirituality and emotional consequence take morbid turns. Tonally Tree of Life and Melancholia are worlds apart, although does that fact, by its lonesome mean that Trier is smarter? No, darkness is no indication of depth but there is no doubt that Schadenfreude is dramatic gold dust for cynics, popular opinion tells us that unconventional thinking is what we want in our entertainment: Good guys die, evil wins and nature is Satan’s playground etc. Von Trier knows this and to his credit, uses it to its maximum effect in Melancholia, more so than ten Christopher Nolans or David Finchers. True darkness indeed.

It’s a shame then that the film ironically matches its depressive themes with a bloated and saggy first half, although it’s doubtful that the latter half would have been anywhere near as frightening without having endured the slow burn before everything goes apocalyptic. The final shot will have you trembling as the credits roll, for a film that openly disregards cosmic physics (the titular planet’s absurd trajectory) it still conjures such a powerful emotional punch that utterly convinces you of such events taking place in reality. The greatest success of the film in this regard is doom itself, there is no cellar or bunker to run to, no escape or solace. Von Trier has got you by the balls.