Friday, November 18, 2011
Review Depression eclipses the wider world in stunning Melancholia
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 1:22 PM
- Nordisk Film
- THE FLOATAWAY BRIDE: Kirsten Dunst in 'Melancholia'
Melancholia’s opening shot could summarize von Trier’s bleak aesthetic. We see Kirsten Dunst in close-up, her beauty masked in a kind of sullen desolation, and in the background, dead birds tumble dreamily from the sky. The film continues with a kind of overture of similar shots, slowed down to almost resemble still paintings and accompanied by the familiar strains of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” Dunst in a wedding dress trudges through black webbing, Charlotte Gainsbourg carries a boy across a golf course, a horse collapses, a Brueghel painting ignites and another planet dwarfs Earth in the heavens.
Where Terence Malick used cosmology in The Tree of Life to provide a context for human moral evolution, von Trier’s rogue planet — which happens to be named “Melancholia” — serves as a simpler metaphor for both debilitating personal depression and any catastrophe that threatens rich Western complacency. While von Trier can still seem befuddled by or indifferent to credible human behavior, Melancholia crafts such intriguing situations and powerful visuals that it’s impossible to dismiss.
After the prologue, von Trier splits the film into two sections, with “Justine” named for Kirsten Dunst’s bride. Justine and her new husband Michael (Alexader Skarsgård) arrive insultingly late at their own lavish wedding reception. Once we meet the guests, we realize why the newlyweds weren’t in a hurry to arrive. Justine’s sister Claire (Gainsbourg) resents her antics while her rich, pompous husband John (Kiefer Sutherland), the wedding’s host, snarls at the bride’s apparent ingratitude. Justine’s father (John Hurt) leers over younger women, her mother (Charlotte Rampling) seethes at the very idea of marriage and the bride’s boss (Stellan Skarsgård) pesters her to come up with a tag line for an ad campaign. I repeat: at her wedding reception.
Justine repeatedly retreats from the toasts and wedding cake rituals to wander John’s private golf course, take sadness baths and gradually indicate that she suffers from depression. Her misbehaviors stem less from malice than a simple inability to meet her family’s petty emotional demands. Dunst won the Best Actress Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and while her performance lacks the raw intensity of previous von Trier leading ladies like Emily Watson and Bjork, her withdrawn, at times icy acting makes the young woman’s anguish unmistakable.
Melancholia includes some wry jokes at the expense of the frivolous rich, including an expensive wedding planner (European cult actor Udo Kier) who takes increasing offense at the bride’s antics. Sutherland makes John a paragon of dickish entitlement, and at one point snips “You don’t touch the instrument!” when a servant attempts to help him with a telescope. Melancholia’s flashes of humor acknowledges that life is more than an unweeded garden that grows to seed.
The film’s second half, “Claire,” narrows the focus to John, Claire, their son (Cameron Spurr) and Justine, whose depression takes a turn for the worst. The quiet family drama on the estate literally takes place against a cosmic backdrop as the planet Melancholia looms into view, although John assures his wife that the Earth’s in no danger. One of the film’s loveliest images also contains its most obvious pun one night as a naked Justine reclines on a hill, illuminated by the new planet. See, she’s bathing in the light of Melancholia — get it?
There's something rotten in most of von Trier's movies, which can include such heavy-handed symbols and bizarre plot contrivances that they feel less thematically substantial than he intends. Melancholia eclipses such quirks with a more complex view of personal relationships, as well as visual imagery to take your breath away. At a time when Hollywood uses the apocalypse for dumb entertainments like 2012, Melancholia can leave your worldview shaken to the core.
Melancholia. 4 stars. Directed by Lars von Trier. Stars Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Rated R. Opens Fri., Nov. 18. At Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.
Comments (1)
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I was really proud of Kirsten Dunst in this movie. Maybe she's always been this great but after seeing her in "All Good Things" and this, it's like she's reached another level. The scene where she tells Eric, er, I mean Alexander Skarsgard, that she's going to cherish the photograph he gave her "forever," and then immediately drops it on the floor and forgets about it, was funny to me but also seemed significant in a way that I'm still trying to work out.
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