Film Reviews

Melancholia

• Rating:
• Director: Lars von Trier
• Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg
• Details: Denmark/France/Sweden/Germany / 136mins (15A).

You could see it on Kirsten Dunst's face at that press conference: "I've just given the performance of my career and you've screwed it up." Von Trier was always likely to say something stupid, and while his 'I'm a Nazi' comments at Cannes rendered him persona non grata, it did not affect Dunst's chances as she went on to scoop a deserved Best Actress.
Melancholia opens with an extended, beautifully shot sequence in super slow-mo that shows Dunst and other characters in various poses of isolation and despair, images and themes that will return to dot Melancholia. The story gets down to business with a smiling Dunst in a beautiful wedding dress in the back of a limo with her handsome husband. Knowing Von Trier and his treatment of women, and the fact that the film is called Melancholia, it's obvious this won't last.
It doesn't. The bride is just going through the motions. She finds every smile a travail and prefers to wander about the hotel than engage with the wedding guests. Her cynical mother, Charlotte Rampling, doesn't help matters: "Enjoy it while it lasts," she spits when she interrupts John Hurt's 'father of the bride' speech. As the night progresses, Dunst can't hide her feelings from her husband (Alexander Skarsgard), who is clueless as to how deep his new wife's sadness goes, any longer.
Split into two chapters, Melancholia's second chapter takes up the next day and the story's allegiances switch to Justine's sister, Claire (Gainsbourg), and her fears that the titular planet, which has been hiding behind the sun all this time, will crash into the Earth. Astronomer husband John (Sutherland) tries to allay her fears but as the planet approaches and affects Earth's atmosphere anxieties increase...
More accessible than his last outing, Antichrist, Von Trier for now seems to have hung up his KLF Of Directors tag: he doesn't seem to be having a joke at the audience's expense here. Von Trier admitted he wrote Antichrist during a severe bout of depression and by the looks of things he's still working out those kinks. Depression stalks every moment of Melancholia and Von Trier treats it with the utmost respect. The science, the path the planet takes, is nonsense but the approach of the planet is metaphorical anyway: what the director seems to be saying is that depression won't go away and it will destroy you.
Melancholia is beautiful to look at - it helps when the film takes place on the grounds of a stately home - and Dunst is easily matched by Gainsbourg in the performance department, but Von Trier could have shaved a half hour off the running time without losing anything too essential. It's a shame too that Hurt and Rampling disappear from the film as their back story could have created some fireworks and livened up what is a morose tale.

Review by Gavin Burke