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.