Thoughts on "Melancholia" (2011)

And here I'm referring to the new film by Lars Von Trier, and not the mental state.  Although the film does indeed spend a lot of time ruminating on that very same mental state.

Justine (Kirsten Dunst) has just gotten married.  She and her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) are on their way to the wedding reception, and they're way late.  The wedding reception is a disaster: every guest has his or her own nefarious reason for being there, and nobody tries very hard to hide it.

Justine's employer is there only to extort ideas from her.  Justine's mother is there to publicly deride the institution of marriage.  Her father just wants to get laid.  Her sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is a well-intentioned control-freak who believes that Justine -- who suffers from clinical depression -- should be able to simply get over her illness with the proper application of will. 

These that I'm listing are called "motives," and every good character's gotta have one.  In this film, everybody does.  Michael, for example, has gone and married Justine only because of his raging hero complex -- he hopes that he might be able to "cure" her depression through love.  When it becomes clear by morning that that hasn't happened, he up and leaves her (there's some infidelity involved, too).

That so does not count as a spoiler. 

You'll understand when you see the film that the draw is not in being surprised: Von Trier reveals the ultimate fate of the Earth in the first ten minutes.

That's the first half of the film.  In the beginning of the second half, we find out that there's a rogue planet, Melancholia, many times the size of the Earth, that has been hiding behind the sun for millenia.  It is now about to pass by the Earth.  Scientists have assured the public that it will miss us, but Justine and her sister are still left to ponder the possibilities in the days leading up to its approach.

Claire is terrified that it will hit, even though she says she wholeheartedly believes the predictions that it will miss the Earth.  Justine, on the other hand, is preternaturally convinced that it is indeed going to obliterate the Earth -- but she maintains that that's just fine by her.

If your interest isn't already perked, then I don't know what else to say, because Melancholia is far and away the most fascinating film of the year (so far) (for me).

In a lot of ways, this is the disaster movie I have been waiting for my whole life.  It has the same basic premise as any great popcorn disaster flick, but the stakes here are not just/really civilization, but the human heart.

The film is really about depression, and learning to cope with unhappiness.

That's "cope" -- as opposed to "cure."

Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998), by contrast, were just about stopping big-ass asteroids on collision-courses with Earth.  They weren't tales of the human heart, but rather tales of engineering.

I am fascinated by clinical depression and the challenge it presents to those afflicted.  By turning Melancholia into an apocalyptic sci-fi with the addition of what I'll call the "planetary-impact sub-plot," Von Trier went and made the issue everyone's problem -- even the blissfully happy folks (he also got to showcase some pretty sweet special effects).

The answers Von Trier provides are not, by necessity, happy, but they are wonderfully honest, and gorram it if there's anything better to shoot for in all of cinema.



--Serge