Lars von Trier's "Melancholia' (1st review)

What moviegoer hasn't seen major American cities bombarded by asteroids, covered in bubbling lava, swallowed by earthquakes, or swept away by an angry sea? Turn on American Movie Classics to watch a dozen survivors bumble their way across a zombie-infested wasteland in the Walking Dead. Jeff Lemire's comic series "Sweet Tooth" concerns a horrific plague that wipes out most of humanity, while the battle-hardened survivors (and their animal-human hybrid children) cling to what little remains. Last year saw no fewer than three cinematic alien invasions.

So we couldn't be blamed for suffering from a case of pop apocalypse fatigue. Which makes Lars von Trier's Melancholia all the more impressive: This haunting, disturbing film is about the end of the world, but it gives the audience a much more oppressively vivid sense of what that might actually feel like.

Melancholia portrays a world on the brink, as a planet ten times the size of Earth appears from its hiding place "behind the sun" and, after missing Mercury and Venus, seems to be on a collusion course with Earth. Kirsten Dunst, in one of the strongest roles of her career, is Justine, a morbidly depressed young woman who seems to feel a connection with the approaching planet, emerging from her nearly catatonic state even as her older sister, and sometime caretaker, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) grows frantic with fear.

A personal apocalypse

The film's first half takes place at Justine's wedding, an event Justine can't bring herself to sit through, let alone enjoy. Her handsome but dim fiancé (Alexander SkarsgÓ¥rd, admirably playing against his usual dangerously sexy-type) can't reach her. As the night continues, and the guests surge around her, Justine slips farther and farther away while a mysterious new star hangs in the background, casting its baleful red light on the proceedings.

The whole drama is funny at times, painfully awkward at others, as it places us in a familiar context— young love, an emotionally loaded wedding— and uses it to show the deep, mind-shredding alienation of Justine's illness. This woman has everything in the palm of her hand but she can't bring herself to care and so tosses it all away— a personal apocalypse of sorts.

This theme will resonate with anyone who has suffered from depression or experienced the disease in loved ones. Indeed, von Trier has said that the film is his attempt to confront his own depressive bouts. His wife told Gainsbourg that one scene— Claire tries to get Justine to bathe, but cannot induce her to lift her foot over the lip of the tub— mirrored her own experiences during her husband's illness.

Our evil planet

The film's second half begins an indeterminate period of time later. The mysterious red star has been revealed as Melancholia, the previously sun-shrouded world, which Claire's husband (Keifer Sutherland) assures everyone will narrowly miss Earth. By now Justine is so depressed that she can barely move.

But as the dreaded planet draws closer, Justine begins to blossom: Impending doom suits her state of mind just fine. "The Earth is evil," she calmly tells her sister, projecting her illness-ensnared mind onto the world. "No one will grieve for it."

Much of Melancholia is filmed with a deliberately disconcerting hand-held style, which will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Constant Gardener, Once, or The Blair Witch Project. (I've read reports of several audience members vomiting during screenings of Melancholia.) But in von Trier's film the nausea-inducing filmmaking does not detract from the story— wouldn't you feel queasy if a colossal world was hurtling towards us at 60,000 miles an hour?— or from the film's sheer beauty and power.

No way out

It's refreshing to see an apocalypse movie that isn't dominated by violence and explosions. Melancholia isn't a pulse-pounding experience, but the sense of inescapable dread that suffuses its second half is far more unsettling than all the ravening hordes of zombies ever filmed. You can shoot a zombie (at least in movies), but in Melancholia there's no way out: The question isn't whether you'll die, but how.

The acting is wonderful throughout. (John Hurt is particularly good as Justine's kindly but puerile father, cheerfully unaware of his daughter's intense suffering). The interplay between the two sisters, as the planet Melancholia speeds inexorably closer, forces us to ask how we'd respond in similar circumstances. This is von Trier's stunning achievement: He forces us to imagine the unimaginable.♦


To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.