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Chris Cabin Beloved by Ebert. full bio of Chris Cabin Melancholia, the latest provocation from the not-so-socially-gifted Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, is an immense motion picture. Or, perhaps, a picture of immensity would be just an appropriate descriptor, as the film is as much a work of staggering emotional lacerations, coming one after the other, as it is a document of tremendous directorial agenda. What begins as a volcanic wedding reception on an estate that seems to span the length of a small continent ends with nothing less than the final great collision of Earth and the titular alien planet, and the end of life as we know it.
Postcards from this demise preface the film with slow-motion, nightmarish visions of soil pulling down a bride and a golf course swallowing up a mother and her child. The bride in question is Justine (Kirsten Dunst), who is stuck at the entrance to her brother-in-law's (Kiefer Sutherland) incalculably vast estate, the site of her wedding reception. Her husband, Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), is cute, happy and in love with his bride, and Justine, at least for the first few moments, is in the same boat, but her stability is only as sure as that little speck of a planet in the sky. By the time her boss (Stellan Skarsgard) begins pestering her about a job and her mother (Charlotte Rampling) has delivered the most barbed toast in the history of time, Justine's face has lost a sizable portion of its glow and her once illuminative smile has turned downward.The reception is an exquisitely choreographed setpiece, bouncing from Dunst's slow deterioration to a variety of party guests, ranging from Justine's father (John Hurt) to, most prominently, her sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); Udo Kier makes an appearance as the bitchiest wedding planner you've ever seen. Claire has gone to considerable lengths to give her sister a great wedding reception but Justine manages to quit her cherry job, fuck a young understudy (Brady Corbet), and dissolve her marriage within one night. Justine leaves but returns some time later, gripped tightly by severe depression. Dunst's performance is uncomfortably accurate, brilliant often in her physical choices and always sharp in her delivery.
It is the commitment to her character that makes Justine's elusive transformation from near-crippled depression patient to saturnine portent of doom, as new calculations confirm that Melancholia will not merely pass by Earth and offer a science freak-out but will rather collide directly with our planet. Claire wants to go out ceremoniously but Justine will have no such thing. It's the sort of sibling battle one might find in Ibsen or Chekhov, and the vicious drama that is being played out feels amplified tenfold by the looming harbinger of the end times. It is at once a literally free-floating metaphor and the ultimate punchline for von Trier, who knows how to match that dread and sorrow with large, seemingly empty spaces outside, tight and closed-in spaces inside.
Set to a Wagnerian tempo, Melancholia is by many measures von Trier's best work since Dogville, a masterpiece that has, thankfully, survived its many detractors. If it is, as some have speculated, the mere celebration of von Trier's own inflated depression, I can't imagine a more effective and realistic portrait of the malady, at once empathetic and unflinching in its ugliness. But more to the point, von Trier has orchestrated these scenes of colossal emotional impact with a riveting sense of pacing and a continuously enrapturing sense of constant motion. An argument, I suppose, could be made that he offers no truly likeable characters, but the characters feel natural and nuanced to me, thanks largely to a great ensemble. Even in its speaker-busting glimpse into apocalypse, one can feel that von Trier is seeking out something about hope and humanity, admittedly in the grimmest of places and the most cynical of situations. Pessimistic maybe, but writing off Melancholia as one director's attempt at rolling around in his own feces for over two hours is something I can't quite wrap my head around. Also check out... Web Stalker - Lars von Trier Unleashes His Antichrist Tweet Comments: Newest Oldest Most Replies Most Liked
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