MELANCHOLIA (Lars Von Trier 2011)

[Chris Knipp]

MELANCHOLIA opens in NY and LA tomorrow, limited US release beginning in theaters November 18, 2011. This review came with the NYFF in September. You'll find the rest of it HERE.

LARS VON TRIER: MELANCHOLIA (2011)


Alexander Skarsgård and Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

The party's over now

The mid-May screening of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia at Cannes a couple of days after Terrence Malick's Tree of Life inspired many comparisons by critics. Mike D'Angelo of Onion AV Club even went so far as to imagine it was as if Von Trier had seen Tree of Life and made a feature film in 48 hours as a "rebuttal" to it. Both films have a cosmic sweep and both focus up close on troubled families. Von Trier's beautiful prologue, with its figures floating in super-slow-motion in a dramatic dark landscape to the sound of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, as well as the much larger planet coming to splinter the earthn the second half, somehow together parallel Malick's images of orbs and galaxies floating through space balanced against his elder son brooding over and remembering his youth. If you play one film against the other the contrast in mood is as stark as the difference between Jessica Chastain's voiceovers about grace and affirmation in Tree of Life and Kirstun Dunst's declarations in Melancholia that the earth is "evil" and if obliterated will not be missed. Obviously Melancholia isn't a happy film. Dunst's Justine "knows things" and is sure there is no companionship or redemption awaiting us out in space (the recent sci-fi indie Another Earth notwithstanding). Tree of Life has doubts and sorrows too. One of its chief playbooks is the Book of Job. But it's also full of a sense of imminence and awe.

Continued HERE.

[Chris Knipp]

David Edelstein of New York Magazine has a nice opening to his Melancholia review:

Only an egomaniac like Lars von Trier could turn the notion of a planet on a collision course with Earth into a metaphor for his own depression, and only a mad genius could make it sing. Melancholia, which is also the name of the party-crashing planet, is a lyrical ode to the end of the world—a world Von Trier plainly loathes, in which family can’t protect you, marriage is a sham, and capitalism poisons all. The vision is as hateful as it is hate-filled, but the fusion of form and content is so perfect that it borders on the sublime.

The film is two large acts and a stunning, slow-motion prologue scored to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, before Von Trier repeats the same bars so often they wear out their welcome. Birds drop, one after another, from the sky. A bride (Kirsten Dunst) emerges from a forest trailing leaves and vines. A mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) runs with a child in her arms across an ominously darkened golf course, never making headway. In a view from outer space, another world (Melancholia) slowly smashes into a smaller one (ours). How can Von Trier follow that?

With a wedding.

This neatly sums up the film, why it's absurd and why it's also wonderful and must be seen. As I've said, Tree of Life, despite its very different material, has a similarly essential absurdity and grandeur. Melancholia and Tree of Life are linked by a shared level of ambition and achievement that makes them unique and memorable among the cinematic offerings of 2011.

[oscar jubis]

I watched it again just to give it another chance to have an effect on me. It was easy since it's having a successful 2-week run in my cinema. This film is simply empty-headed as far as I'm concerned. I still don't get the point of that looooong wedding scene that seems totally insubstantial next to similar scenes in The Celebration and Breaking the Waves. I'm beginning to wonder if I overrated the Trier films I've liked in the past.

[Chris Knipp]

There are two grand eccentric films this year in English, Tree of Life and Melancholia.

[Johann]

Melancholia is Monumental.

I saw it last night at the Bytowne. David Edelstein's right Chris. But to me it doesn't border on sublime. It is.
The whole thing is overwhelming. Some will say infuriating, maddening. But that's why I love Lars von Trier.
He will impose his will on you with his camera.
I was in my element watching this profound work of Art.
I could tell by the uneasy vibe in the theatre that this movie was not making friends.
This one is on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's how large the scope is.

If it isn't nominated for Best Picture then there's no hope for the Academy.
Kirsten Dunst should get a Best Actress Oscar. Give it to her now.
She gave her all (and bared her all!) for this film, and I wanted to stand up and applaud when it was over.
But no one in the theatre BREATHED or MOVED when that ending hit.
After a few seconds of silence over the end credits, some guy at the back yelled "WOOOO!"
Everybody laughed.
What a colossal ending. Definitely not as happy or positive as Tree of Life.
The beginning sequences (leading up to the art scrawl of Trier's titles) were incredible, some of the best cinematic images and ideas I've ever seen. Mysterious, beautiful, haunting, Alain Resnais would be proud.
Udo Kier is a treat to watch. Yes, this movie is gloomy and doomy, but Udo provides some nice laughs. There is quite a bit of humour here, if you're paying attention. Melancholia (the mood and the planet) pervades everything, but human emotions and needs and desires and tics are all explored in the face of total oblivion.

The climax was not the planet hitting earth.
The climax to me was when Justine says having a glass of wine on the patio as a final act is a fucking stupid idea.
That scene zeroes in on Trier's point: we are alone. And no one will care when we're gone. The human race, for all it's positive traits, is actually quite evil and deserves to be incinerated. Many are up in arms over that notion, but I, for one, was overjoyed to see a magnificent work of cinematic art exploring the idea. Even if it is through the eyes of one man, one mad genius egomaniac like Lars von Trier.
Outstanding cast, which includes Kiefer Sitherland and Charlotte Rampling, who almost steals the movie, with her short scenes.
I'd love to have a tea with her and pick her brain...

Overall, this film is Monumental. A Masterpiece. One of the greatest pieces of Art I've ever sat in front of.
But I don't know if I could sit through it one more time.
Trier is almost too intense for me.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for this, Johan. I think it's impressive too. A grand cinematic experience.

There's a movie about Charlotte Rampling now you know, CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE LOOK. I haven't see it. A review by Stephen Holden suggests it doesn't reveal much. It showed in NYC a couple weeks and was gone. I'm not sure I want to see it. Her mystery is what I like about her. I too am blown away by the arty opening sequences. I don't care what they are or what they mean. They're just magical and grand. Fine work by the cast. Dunst already got better than the Oscar, Cannes' Best Actor. I guess the Oscar would be more power points. Udo Kier is at his best, campy, funny, but perfectly in character. Sutherland impressed me. I think it all impresses me more as spectacle and as an epic conception than anything else. Though it is at the opposite pole from Tree of Life, there is also a curious parallelism, in their both coming out the same year at Cannes and both being gradnly ambitious and a little absurd but also moving.

It has an essential quality of epic -- slow moving, grand, sweeping.

[Johann]

Great! I'll keep an eye out for the Rampling.

Yes this year we got IMMENSE motion pictures from two Masters. Parallels with Tree of Life are there, and it's no mystery why.
Some might say Tree of Life edges it out because it's sunnier than Melancholia.
I love them both equally. Both of them impacted me in big ways. Critical rockets can be fired at them, but it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter to me, and it sure as hell doesn't matter to Trier. He will always be who he is and he'll never back down.
I don't know if Terrence Malick cares or not about criticism.

Kirsten Dunst gives a lilting, odd and beautiful performance. I was shocked when she just started fucking that dude on the golf course.
I wished it was me. LOL
It was a little unfair to her hubby, no?
Poor guy...on his wedding night too...Oh Lars.. can you ever push buttons!

I'm in awe of this film.
I'm glad it exists. No one else would dare make a movie like this, in this way.
Kiefer Sutherland could get a supporting actor Oscar nod too.
Everything about this film is on the money.
But can I watch it again?

Yes.
Just to admire Kirsten's nipples in the moonlight...LOL

[Chris Knipp]

I have watched it twice, first there was a screening in San Francisco and then it was part of the NYFF. It held up fine on a repeat viewing. So did Tree of Life. I watched that twice, both times in Paris. Things look better in Paris anyway... And they look pretty good at the NYFF too.

[Johann]

This movie raises a few good questions:

Are we truly alone? as a species? Floating around in space, vulnerable to asteroids, comets and planets slamming into us?

And if so, how should we behave, how should we conduct ourselves in the face of total destruction?
Just accept it and die?
Go out kicking and screaming?
Help your fellow man?
{Pray}?
Stare off into the distance? depressed and confused about how to handle yourself in your final hours?
Everybody's different.
What would you do in these characters' places?

[tabuno]

Lars von Trier, the Danish director, melds both Stanley Kubrick cinematography with Lost in Translation (2003) immersive authenticity and relational dynamics of Margot at the Wedding (2007) along with a darker version of Koyannisqatsi (1983) to create a visually dazzling and acoustically enhanced film experience that in itself provokes intense melancholy. Trier also directs a much more difficult creative endeavor by choosing to use minimal dialogue and depending more on the behavioral performance and metaphysical, non-verbal nuances to communicate the movie’s impressions. It’s difficult not to be enthralled by the haunting and surrealistic visions that appear at the beginning of the movie with its patient immersive soaking up experience that von Trier has tapped into using the rich unique medium of film. Here, von Trier seems to be following in the footsteps of Andrey Tasrkovskiy’s Solaris (1972) with its long non-dialogue sequences and his emphasis on having the visual elements of the movie offer much of the understanding or awareness of the movie. Unfortunately with the complexity of this detailed and artfully stunning movie, a number of weaknesses arise later in the movie to diminish von Trier’s amazing work.

There is a Stanley Kubrick cinematographic approach to this movie suggestive of the influence of Kubrick’s own daring as revealed in his last movie as a director, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) that brought the audience into a mysterious world of a well-to-do couple who discovers an underground world of sexuality and darkness and then the light. In the first part of Melancholia, the audience is again brought into a mysterious world of a well-to-do couple who experience the ordinary but lavish experiences of a wedding and further into a world that appears to be unknowingly approaching an ultimate ending of darkness in some contrast to that of a more emotional rollercoaster Kubrick movie that has its audience tantalized and energized state rather than Trier’s more emotionally draining angst. Trier’s use of glimpses, almost discrete snapshots of details from personalized name places to a delicate simplistic yet elegantly laid food plate creates a sharply focused and carefully sensed sharpness and richness. Von Trier uses hand-held camera shots to emphasize the here and now moment, the immediacy of the experience, the brief zooming shot of Dexter (played by John Hurt) as the father’s speech. The role of reality and fantasy is blurred and blended as the notion of all these dramatized but immediate and easily, almost unscripted presentations are captured by the almost feasible belief (however unlikely, considering the eye behind the camera) that many of these shots emerging off the movie screen could just of been as easily captured by most audiences members themselves with a quality digital video camera. Nevertheless, other movies in a variety of movie genres have lately incorporated this more gritty, raw cinematography to great effect, including: Winter’s Bone (2010); The Wrestler (2008); United 93 (2006), Jarhead (2005), Passion of the Christ (2004), and The Company (2003). Von Trier and the script continues nicely with the non-verbal expressions, those moments of non-action (between sisters) where communication continues and the deeper emotional feelings receive careful attention, a well-balanced, and invitation by the director to become more involved in the totality of human experience, representing human perceptions of caring and tenderness, hurt and pain, that however are easily transformed into selfishness, and the exposure of the human frailties of people, the underbelly of the superficial presentation of societal and familial images, correct behavior colliding with individual desires, wishes, hopes, dreams, such elements often left out of most movies. Additionally, von Trier uses Kubrick lighting as with the outside of the wedding hall…yet the handheld photography reflects more of an independent feel, less polished, more photographic authentically designed set. He also uses a lot of sound of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as with the Justine’s alone, meditative scene before the spouse’s wedding speech. Von Trier with usually great success incorporates a number of densely packed yet patiently photographed collages of scenes with emotional poignancy and intimacy as when Justine and her fiancé become physically aroused away from the wedding guests or when Justine and John share a moment while her nephew is sleeping.

One of the persistent weaknesses of the movie is its lack of adaptive music and nor inclusion of a variety of sonorous melodies that would better enhance or lend themselves to the various different scenes in the movie. The horse scene, as an example, towards the end of Part I like Solaris (1972) artistically visually powerful yet von Trier continues with the same strain of music that does not even come close to reaching the captivating or enhancing effectiveness as the musical delight of The Devil Wears Prada (2006); the music of Francis Lai in A Man and A Woman (1966); or even Mark Isham’s wonderful fusion of period music in The Cooler (2003). Another weakness for me was the inclusion of well-known music and well-known actors with no attempt at disguising their well known public personas as their presence detracted from the cinematographic authenticity of the scenes that von Trier was attempted to create. Additionally, Von Trier’s focus on the fascination of the routine or the mundane throughout the movie, unlike Lost in Translation (2003) seems at times to become monotonous as in real life to the point of boredom because a few of his shots, such as the solo hot tub scene midway through Part I, like Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007) seem to be more about showing off the talent and ability of the director rather than the movie itself, but to a lesser extent than Mr. Penn’s movie.

Von Trier manages to present a deeper and more richly diverse attitude, feelings, beliefs that ripple and change the major characters in the movie (Justine, Claire, and John) throughout the movie. Yet by the end of the movie, each of these characters seem to consist of a variety of personas and conflicting personalities that are not really well tied together as individual identities, particularly John’s character towards the end of the movie, appears conveniently to have a psychotic break without warning or understanding, almost as if this secret is kept deliberately by the director so that he can offer a dramatic twist as part of the climax, nothing more. Justine’s erratic behavior also seems sometimes wide of the mark and her shifts in mood and beliefs sometimes appear somewhat manipulative for dramatic and shock effect rather than derived from the authentic nature of the basic character of Justine herself.

The weakest and perhaps a fatal flaw in this movie is the unresolved cinematic conflict between von Trier’s focus on immersive authenticity, portraying the richness of the moment and on maintaining the authenticity of understanding and comprehension of the motivations and feelings giving rise to the behaviors of Justine, Claire, and John occurring on the screen. At a running time of 2 hours and 15 minutes, for von Trier to be unable to edit and incorporate the human narrative element successfully in this movie is almost a marked failure in itself. And it appears that von Trier was unable to maintain this balance as more and more the audience almost like the wedding guests are being led in a way that doesn’t allow for anyone to really penetrate the veil of secrecy, hidden agendas (such as with Justine and her boss) perspectives that carry the plot of the primary characters. The audience even as von Trier maintains a vibrant sensory of sounds and sights to delight and amaze its theatrical guests, at the same, they are also being led more like sheep as the movie extras without the benefit of really allowing the audience into the actual vital mental workings of Justine, Claire, or John themselves. The audience is left mostly with amazing visions of the planet melancholia and the surrealistic misty outdoor scenes and artistic flaming wedding balloons floating lazily into the air, while the actual plot becomes dramatically and mysteriously ludicrous with sexual outbursts that defy explanation as the marriage itself descends into some black hole, almost swallowed up. Unfortunately, the hidden motivations are so obscure and taxing for the audience where its apparent the characters themselves retain their own inner selves but when the director is presenting such vivid sensory images, sights and sounds, and photographic art that to avoid and make diffuse the internal mental workings of the characters is to pull apart the important symmetry of the entire movie, weakening its bonds and integrity and by which at the end of the movie, the audience seemingly is not any closer to understanding or being able to further penetrate or connect in a truly comprehensive, authentic way to what has been the primary focus its characters.

[Johann]

Thanks tabuno. Glad you liked it.

Melancholia is Monumental Cinema in my opinion. Towering, Monolithic. Brilliant & Profound.
I pray for movies like this.

[oscar jubis]

Unmissable, and yet a film "with serious flaws" as tabuno points out.

[Johann]

Speaking of Eyes Wide Shut, I had a conversation with someone recently who suggested something to me about it that has left me disturbed, because even if there's no proof, it's POSSIBLE:

Kubrick was murdered for making this film.

Remember, there is no proof- this is just something to think about.


Kubrick revealed something with this movie.
And he told us that we are looking right at it, with our eyes SHUT.
Do you know what he revealed?
It was something so serious that revealing it got him killed.
Kubrick probably felt, fuck it, I'm too old for them to do anything to me now.
Who are "THEY"?

Ever since I was told this it's disturbed me.
Because I can believe it.
Again, no proof, but.....

Lt. ZOGG was a character in Dr. Strangelove. That's how I know I can believe that it's possible Kubrick was killed.
He may have had a heart attack as well. Who knows?
I wasn't there.
But this is something that really bothers me.

[Johann]

tabuno: I think the lack of human narrative was intentional- I'm guessing that Trier wanted the viewer to feel as uneasy and hopeless as the characters.

I love that he took that path- no other director would try something like that- leaving viewers with unresolved things.
Yet in Awe.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, tabuno, for the detailed discussion. One of your best, and it shows you truly engaged with the film and appreciated it. It's my personal favorite von Trier, though of course others prefer Dogville, Breaking the Waves, or Dancer in the Dark, he has done very different things that I liked, though others didn't, that provide a lot of insight into his pre-depression mind, namely The Boss of It All and the co-authored The Five Obstructions. I also like Antichrist though they loathed it hear; I think it foreshadows Melancholia (and of course it comes from the same mental state). According to Metacritic Melancholia was better reviewed than even Breaking the Waves, and The Boss of IT All (which nobody seems to have seen?) was quite well received too. I felt that Dogville was very highly regarded by admirers, but it did not do so well in reviews, according to Metacritic (very well in France though, same level as Waves).

Interesting your linking him with Kubrick. There certainly is grandeur and epic ambition in von Trier's Melancholia almost worthy of Kubrick, though the sensibility surely is different. The link with Eyes Wide Shut is suggestive. Might be interesting to follow up on that.

I disagree wiht you on "its lack of adaptive music and nor inclusion of a variety of sonorous melodies that would better enhance or lend themselves to the various different scenes in the movie." The use of Wagner is extremely powerful and haunting and contributes to the grandeur, particularly in the awesome opening sequence. I can do without "sonorous melodies". The silence contributes to the sense of the irredeemable emotions. Nothing to soften them here. The personalities speak for themselves. I am not a fan of composed traditional "movie music" such as dominated in the Firties and Fifties. I was glad when the French New Wave and others European directors began making a lot of use of classical music as motifs.

I don't quite get what your objection is in the last paragraph. I have no problem with mystery and hidden agendas, in general.

The audience even as von Trier maintains a vibrant sensory of sounds and sights to delight and amaze its theatrical guests, at the same, they are also being led more like sheep as the movie extras without the benefit of really allowing the audience into the actual vital mental workings of Justine, Claire, or John themselves.

I don't see this as any more a problem than in any other film. It's not necessary to provide voiceovers or internal monologues all the time. Justine's mind is meant to be tormented. One can't expect to see deeply into a tormented mind, or let's just say it's more suggestive not to. Claire is less complex. She is the dutiful well behaved one. As for John, he doesn't want to see what'd going on in his own mind. He is terrified, but he is in total denial. And this is clear. We don't need a diagram.

Johann's comment is one way of putting it: "tabuno: I think the lack of human narrative was intentional- I'm guessing that Trier wanted the viewer to feel as uneasy and hopeless as the characters." I've said the same thing but taken a whole paragraph to say it.