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Bookmark this pageMelancholia (2011)
Director: Lars von Trier
Movie review
From Time Out London
This is a lethargic, pretty and empty study in ways of living and dying from Lars von Trier. The Dane borrows some of the trappings of the sci-fi genre – in the same way he set the Dogme rules for ‘The Idiots’ or adopted a Brechtian austerity for ‘Dogville’ – to follow his peculiar nose for human behaviour. It’s a calmer work than his last, ‘Antichrist’, but it impresses only on a technical level, rather than on an intellectual or emotional one.For all the time we spend with two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whose reactions to the world’s end define the film’s two chapters – it feels like von Trier is in it just for a few images set to music from Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’. We see the best of them in an opening montage: a moon and a planet cast shadows across a garden at night; Dunst’s character floats in water in a nod to Millais’s ‘Ophelia’ and a planet swallows up Earth.
Apathy or engagement, looking inwards or outwards, the expression of depression… these are some of the film’s themes. The first chapter, ‘Justine’, plays out at her wedding in a country house. These scenes are recognisably by the von Trier of old, shot in a handheld style, with jump cuts and flippant talk. The dialogue, though, feels jarring and bogus. For the second chapter, ‘Claire’, the wedding is over, and we’re left at the house. This is where the film feels without a proper script, and Dunst and Gainsbourg flap through scenes of false emotion as Claire is terrified in contrast to Justine’s ultra-passive attitude to the coming apocalypse.
Strip away the Wagner, the opening and a few arresting images, and we’re left with too much filler that feels under-developed, uninteresting and underwhelming. The best of ‘Melancholia’ would make a great photography exhibition. The rest is best forgotten.
Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 2145: 29 Sept - 5 Oct, 2011
User reviews of this film
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- SCIFIFANAGAIN said...
- Posted on May 27 2012 02:50 Recommended for those who enjoy watching sickly flowers wilt in slo-mo over 90 minutes! Depressed self-involved females may resonate with this film. Schizoid rich males with mid-life crisis should NOT watch this film - Lars portrays the only reasonable character as a coward who would prefers to queitly commit suicide WITHOUT amidst the heavenly scent of horse poo. Because that's what Lars would do - hate and dump his family if the world is ending! What a great mind!
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- SCIFIFAN said...
- Posted on May 27 2012 02:38 Pretty cinematography. Ugly everything else: unnecessary nauseating shakycam, pathetic characters, phony meaningless monologues as the empty characters pretend to have a dialogue. Lars obviously have serious issue with the entire human race, animals, plants, and mother earth. There is only one clear point he made for this still portrait pretending to be motion picture: Lars is an empty, miserable, SADISTIC man with excessive interest in breasts attached to a boring pale self-destructive cynical woman with little redeeming quality. Waste of time.
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- bob said...
- Posted on May 22 2012 21:18 Once again those that don't like a film are accused of not 'getting it'. What there is to get is not spelled out. Visual beauty? Yes, but only to underline the corresponding vacuity of content. Badly scripted to the extent of seeming at times like a b-movie. Peoples exchanges didn't sound like natural speech nor were they poetic. A film that signally fails to live up to its organising conceit.
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- Barbara said...
- Posted on May 10 2012 15:49 I don't think you "got" this movie This is one of the most beautiful works of art in film I have ever seen-You can understand Justines reasoning for her apathy towards life by the abysmal treatment from her dysfunctional family-other than her nephew- The film is so beautiful scene after scene of landscapes - the acting flawless-I have worked psychiatry and Kirsten Dunst had a depressive episode acted it perfectly-it deserved far more awards and attention-but it is already a classic.
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- Martin Seeley said...
- Posted on Apr 28 2012 00:57 A turd of titanic proportion.
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- ru said...
- Posted on Mar 12 2012 18:32 i loved this film, such a nice break from the hollywood fodder. people called Dunst's character over self-indulgent, to me the reviewer seemed more self-indulgent. her character is supposed to grate us. as one commenter wrote, that i am still thinking of this film 5 days on. i am too. it leaves this eery itch in your sub conscious.
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- ru said...
- Posted on Mar 12 2012 18:32 i loved this film, such a nice break from the hollywood fodder. people called Dunst's character over self-indulgent, to me the reviewer seemed more self-indulgent. her character is supposed to grate us. as one commenter wrote, that i am still thinking of this film 5 days on. i am too. it leaves this eery itch in your sub conscious.
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- Pedro Faria said...
- Posted on Feb 06 2012 05:01 i guess i just didn't get it ..
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- Si said...
- Posted on Feb 01 2012 22:12 Sadly, I can never get the 2 hours back! Appallingly bad.
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- Ria said...
- Posted on Feb 01 2012 22:07 Jesus! This film was just a huge dog's egg! If I want to look at something pretty for 2 hours I'll go to a gallery.AVOID!
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- Jane B said...
- Posted on Jan 30 2012 16:37 Of course, we all thought of that! Let's face it though, a planet crashing spectaculrly into ours is far more interesting!
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- Lars Rules said...
- Posted on Jan 30 2012 11:47 Has anyone of you thought that the end of the world could mean the end of inner world? A planet called "melancholia" definitively crushing your inner world forever? The sci-fi angle to it is a pure metaphor. The blackness that the film leaves (everything gone forever) is absolute and it's not about losing our blue planet but ourselves.
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- Jane B said...
- Posted on Jan 28 2012 19:02 Good film, watchful, brooding and atmospheric. Great choice to have Tristan and Isolde, the most beautiful music man has created Qin his time on Earth. All that beauty, creativity, the whole of history obliterated in seconds, Rome may have not been built in a day but it was wiped out in an instant. The characters were well drawn, Justine selfish and egocentric, Claire overwhe,lmed by her need to protect her son. The house of sticks was brilliant, and why would they look at the planet, they were helping the boy achieve a magical and imaginary place of safety, so that he didn't feel absolute terror.
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- Andrew said...
- Posted on Jan 28 2012 10:50 the most dreary film I have ever seen. i'm only thinking of it this morning because I'm so annoyed at having wasted my money.
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- Emily said...
- Posted on Jan 28 2012 08:39 Totally agree with this review.
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Cast & crew
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Alexander Scourby, Stellan Skarsgard, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier full cast
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Rated: 12A
Duration: 136 mins
UK Release: Jul 1 2011
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