Melancholia

Meloncholia (2011)

Director: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland

One of the most surprising aspects of Meloncholia is the simple moments laden with tragedy. For a movie with a premise resting upon the impending destruction of mankind, the most heart-breaking scenes take place in the private confines of Justine's (Kirsten Dunst) personal interactions. Take the scene early on, during Justine's wedding to doting, benevolent Michael (an Americanized Alexander Skarsgard).  Michael presents her with a photograph of a meadow of red flowers, promising that they will live there together, and whenever she "gets sad" she can look at the flowers and not be sad anymore. The look on Justine's face confirms that they will never make it that far, due to her emotional unavailability and periodic depression. Another scene takes place in the bedroom of Justine's nephew, the son of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsburg) and husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Justine has snuck away from the wedding reception to tuck the little boy in, and later sneaks upstairs again to watch him sleep. John, hiding in the corner, surprises her, saying "I hope you're happy," and "Do you know how much money this has cost me?" Justine has advertently derailed the party through her constant sneaking away. However, when John says this he is not playing the clueless bad guy role; rather, he is mindful of Justine's melancholy and legitimately hopes she is happy. When the reception is moved outside, the attendees decorate hot air balloons with inscriptions of good will to the newlyweds, and Justine watches mesmerized as the balloons float up into the black sky, a beautiful array of personal testimonies that will never be seen again, a lovely metaphor for man's brief span of time on this planet.

Precious moments like these elevate Meloncholia from gimmicky somber-female avant-garde drivel (I found Antichrist  irresponsible and self-consciously subversive for the worst reasons) to a precise timeline building toward a single, finite conclusion. The opening sequence of images, which ends with the planetary collision, leaves the viewer befuddled; when the planet hits, what will the characters be doing, and what will it feel like for them...and us? Therefore, when the intensely disturbing and realistic disaster hits in the final frame, in three seconds nonetheless, we are given exactly what we have been craving since the opening sequence because we were not presented with this image before (tee-pee on a hill?) and because it solidifies our desire to witness the disaster first-hand. 

In other words, Lars Von Trier pulls out every ounce of creativity from his bag of tricks. My favorite moments of Von Trier's films involve the chilling dread of realization he evokes from the use of a single object. In Antichrist,  an X-Ray photo of a child's malformed feet tells a father that his bat-shit crazy wife has been torturing their son. In Meloncholia, a makeshift device consisting of a circular wire on a stick confirms to a terrified Claire that the planet is moving toward earth, and very quickly. The image of Justine's horse falling to his legs is meant to foreshadow her inability to move forward, in life and after death, but it also demonstrates the death of all animals during the planet's impact. 

While alone and distressed in John's study, Justine replaces displayed art-book pages of abstract paintings, like those of Kadinsky, with those of human portraits, like those of Bruegel and Caravaggio. She wishes to surround herself with human nature, not abstract images of the universe, motion, and light.  This metaphor applies to the filmmaking, as Von Trier wants us to relish in his human portraits, not the elusive nature of  the deadly, interstellar planet.

To speak of Dunst's beautiful and empathetic performance of debilitating depression would be redundant. The film features so many fantastic, naturalistic actors (John Hurt as Justine's absentee father, Stellan Skarsgard as Justine's insensitive boss), but one stands out above the rest. Kiefer Sutherland's John is the third most important character, and the naive, reassuring nature of his character is so subtle that it's nearly difficult to detect.  There are so many high-caliber juxtapositions to Meloncholia, all of which were brought together to formulate a film that is both gorgeous and sad, realistic and fantastical, and scientific and poetic, allowing it to surely withstand the test of time.

A+