Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#326 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Feb 07, 2012 6:07 pm

dustybooks wrote:
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think of The Birds at the finale, when Claire and Justine clasp hands and we then move to a shot of Justine gently smiling? I immediately thought of Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy in the similarly chilling last scene of the Hitchcock film... but I tend to read Hitchcock into things where he doesn't belong.

While I'm at it, the one scene I was unsure how to read was that in which Justine says she knows "things," such as the number of beans in the jar at the reception. That seemed slightly off to me, but I wondered if I was just missing a detail someplace. Did she glean the information somewhere or was the movie actually suggesting she "just knew" the count??
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I feel pretty certain that we're supposed to understand that Justine has psychic abilities in addition to being monumentally depressed. In fact, it could very well be her psychic abilities contribute to her depression.

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dad1153
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#327 Post by dad1153 » Tue Feb 07, 2012 6:24 pm

^^^ Mmphh, Justine's behavior at the wedding (especially toward her boss but pretty much everybody) and subsequent behavior can be easily explained by that. Another layer (optional though, maybe Justine's good with numbers or someone told her) with which to appreciate this flick. BD/DVD is already available for pre-order (March 13).

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#328 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Feb 07, 2012 6:34 pm

I don't think Christine is meant to have psychic abilities. She's more like a knower, someone who experiences gnosis, which explains how she also seems to know instinctually the presence of the other planet and the imminent destruction of the earth when she looks knowingly at the sky after the first horse ride. Characters like this routinely pop up in literature.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#329 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Feb 07, 2012 7:50 pm

I'm one of those guys where von Trier has been oil to my water, I just can't assimilate this stuff, but I'm getting the sense that I should perhaps give this a try?

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knives
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#330 Post by knives » Tue Feb 07, 2012 8:10 pm

I'm in the same boat as you, having laughed Antichrist off the stage, but this one almost makes me want to reconsider his previous efforts that I found so much wrong with. It's really different from his usual in a good way.

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swo17
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#331 Post by swo17 » Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:09 pm

Does anyone ever like von Trier right off the bat? I tend to think of him now as a sort of adorable teddy bear, but I remember actively disliking the first four films of his I saw. (It was Riget turned me around, I tellsya.)

Melancholia does seem to be especially well received among both LvT lovers and haters.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#332 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:16 pm

OK, I'll grab a copy tonight.

Dancer in the Dark, though... to quote funkboy above: "Oy Vey!"

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dad1153
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#333 Post by dad1153 » Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:29 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:I'm one of those guys where von Trier has been oil to my water, I just can't assimilate this stuff, but I'm getting the sense that I should perhaps give this a try?
Absolutely you should see it, on a theater if possible (Angelika is the only place in NYC still showing it, this week and next). Before "Melancholia" all the features of von Trier I've seen have felt like poison to my cinephile-loving senses. Now I want to have Lars' babies. :-)

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domino harvey
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#334 Post by domino harvey » Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:39 pm

swo17 wrote:Does anyone ever like von Trier right off the bat?
Yo

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#335 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Feb 07, 2012 10:23 pm

Got it. Will watch tomorrow more than likely-- I pinched myself a copy today of the new CC Gojira 2-discer, (my birthday present to myself, 45 yrs old wretched as I was just telling Sir Zedz in PM) and must of course do some formal writhing in paroxysms of pulpy joy.

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dustybooks
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#336 Post by dustybooks » Tue Feb 07, 2012 10:40 pm

domino harvey wrote:
swo17 wrote:Does anyone ever like von Trier right off the bat?
Yo
Same here. Saw Dogville first, it clicked with me straight away ... But I think swo's generally right, and hearing the conversations at the Melancholia screening drove home just how not-for-all-tastes he is, even in a relatively accessible and aesthetically beautiful movie like this.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#337 Post by Zot! » Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:04 am

dustybooks wrote:
domino harvey wrote:
swo17 wrote:Does anyone ever like von Trier right off the bat?
Yo
Same here. Saw Dogville first, it clicked with me straight away ... But I think swo's generally right, and hearing the conversations at the Melancholia screening drove home just how not-for-all-tastes he is, even in a relatively accessible and aesthetically beautiful movie like this.
I went in blind to Breaking the Waves during its original run, not even reading a review, and came out a convert. People really don't seem to get his sense of humor. I remember a dude who was outraged that the directors name was bigger than the title on the BtW poster, like a Danielle Steele paperback. I really wish he would do more comedy, I love The Kindgdom and Boss of it All.

Regarding the Hitchcock Birds nod, I wouldn't be surprised, as the promotional photos for Antichrist had LvT posing with a dead crow, an homage to the famous Hitchcock promo shot.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#338 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Feb 08, 2012 9:29 am

Of course it's open to interpretation, but my take was that the film's stunning opening sequence shows us Justine's psychic vision of the future - each element of that vision is elaborated upon over the course of the film.

As to von Trier's canon, his earlier "dogma"-enforced work left me cold, but there was something about ANTICHRIST that drew me in instead of repelling me. MELANCHOLIA completely won me over (apart from the incessant hand-held camerawork).

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aox
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#339 Post by aox » Wed Feb 08, 2012 9:48 am

My first film was Dogville, and by the time the credits rolled with the Bowie song, I had a grin ear to ear. I never looked back and I watched Manderlay (which I think might be better than Dogville and is underrated in general) and Dancer in the Dark the same week.

I still haven't been able to track down a copy of Breaking the Waves. I don't understand why his films are so hard to find in the US.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#340 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Feb 08, 2012 11:08 am

I've still never watched Dogville. Much like some other films/TV shows/video games, etc (still haven't sat down and watched Inland Empire, for example) - I've got it in the figurative cellar - I know it'll be a wonderful bottle of wine/champagne/beer when I open it, so I want to wait until the right time to do so.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#341 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:40 pm

Fwiw, I started off with The Element of Crime, then Europa, followed by Dogville.
I liked them all, with increasing intensity.
Later, Breaking the Waves didn't make much impression one way or the other.
But I considered myself a von Trier fan of sorts.

Until Anti-Christ which I thought was silly and nutzoid.
And I really disliked Melancholia.
The camerawork grew tiresome quickly, but also I just didn't like any of these irritating people. I guess in one way it was successful, because if those folks represent the human race, then I too was untroubled by the end of the world, even wishing it happened sooner.
For me, von Trier has veered off into territory which I find annoying and full of pretentious portentousness.

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tavernier
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#342 Post by tavernier » Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:42 pm

Lemmy Caution wrote:von Trier has veered off into territory which I find annoying and full of pretentious portentousness.
he'd love that description!

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#343 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Feb 14, 2012 7:17 pm

Well I watched this film and have been letting it gestate for a few days before commenting so I can be as clear about what it isabout this film that Doesn't Do It For Me.

It was not that the characters and the story gave me the allergic rash--- a cats and dogs thing-- that I usually get when watching LVT. It didn't irritate me in that way and watching the film was in no way a really unpleasant experience, which is a first for me and this director.

Something that's going on here however is something that also irritated me slightly in WINTERS BONE, another recent film that otherwise had a lot going for it with me, and it's the same thing I vented about in the thread for the film BABEL:
Knowing very little about this film (by actively paying very little attention to hype culture) I went to see it.

This is cinematic unfolding by means of a rock crusher. How many breathlessly grieving interludes of "transitional angst" can you amp up via spacious, contemplative music (against a muted, grey palette) to club the Pain Of The World into the very serious white audience?

This jittery hand-held You Are There shit is pure agony for me. I simply can't stand it any longer. We live in such a fucking goofball world with the corniest goddam trends parading around with such incredible self-seriousness, it's just amazing the "thinking world" is truly serious about this stuff. Riding home with my old lady she says to me, stunned, "THAT won the Golden Globe for ....????", whereby I said "Well.... I guess-- what the hell else is there in the mass market?" Depressing.

One truly sublime moment however, I must doff my hat. . . .
Melancholia struck the same nerve with me. That said, let me clarify that it should be fairly obvious by now, at least to those forum members that I've batted subjects around with over the years, that the cinema of depression and gloom is an exquisite delicacy for me. Hence my love for French Impressionism, the Avant Garde, with its treatment of sadnes, isolation, extreme melancholy, autumnal gloom. Declaration of one's personal afflictions--particularly the affliction of depression-- shouldn't perhaps be a precursor to the enjoyment of a film about dislocated souls, but god knows it's a terrain I alas all too well, with many a certain kind of shambles trailing behind me, friendships and opportunities laid waste by vagueries of what I presume to be my own behavior, like a hideous record being repeatedly played whose rhytm section I can't quite wrap my head around.

There's something about--aside from what I considered the most hamhanded metaphor I've seen in a very long while.. (a planet called Melancholia on a collision course with earth? is the well that run dry?)--but this is a minor quibble, because for better or for worse LVS's treatment of the script was well done--there's something about these pale, bloodless twentyfirst century faces, wracked by angst and scarred by the trials of life. . . very popular actors and actresses tearing their beauty to shreds for an ambitious performance displaying their interior pain and anguish, that strikes me as distinctly.. er, childish and uninspiring.

Mind you I'm only talking about my own personal taste here. There are, for me, two basic kinds of cinema: cinema that causes you to respond to the content (and perhaps the beauty) that is resident within its images and narrative (and sounds), and then there is cinema that causes you to respond to both the content (and perhaps beauty) within the film . . . as well as the beauty that rises up within yourself as a result of watching the film. Beauty being a very broad term, horror can be beautiful, sadness can be beautiful, confusion and a certan uncertainty can be beautiful.

A film that (for me) is in the former category, with some beautiful images, is Melancholia (especially the prelude). A film that transits the same territory as Melancholia, but is for me in the far more sublime secondary category--in that it turns the inside of myself into a deeply affecting work of art while I'm sitting and responding to all that onscreen beauty--is for example Mario Piexoto's LIMITE.

Here you have two films dealing with people thrown into the margins of human existence by states of extreme melancholy. The boat that the "adrift" people are in in LIMITE is, in essence, the bathtub for Dunst in Melancholia.

I think what it is that is the dealbreaker for me when touching on the subject of gloom and melancholy-- they've been parts of my life for so long-- is whether or not these are simply crushing states of total nonutility and nonescape, or whether or not there is something at least usable here too.

Some kind of inner awakening, some connection to something, some finding of the sublime even here; or to put it conversely, something other than the flat portrayal of a completely dysfunctional human seemingly unable to do anything but, with a knowing smile of understanding, proceed to her own obliteration. This is simply straight unadulterated hopelessness, and it doesn't really make poetry with me when it attempts to bed down with my mind and heart. Aside from the fact that I believe certain states of mind are better personified symbolicallly and atmospherically rather than directly in-character (to avoid a sense of preening wailing) it's too dissolute a statement for me: it's not that I don't believe melancholia can destroy people, ie the obvious fact of suicide. It's just too humorless, too uninspirational, too poor an instruction vis a vis perseverance despite one's own uncanny ability to fuck up everything one lays one's hands on.

In essence, it's just not my cup of tea. Dunst's character confused just a touch in a clinical sense, has obviously survived functionally for many years out in the world, a consistently successful female, to where she was depended upon by a professional marketing co., seen to be functional or sane enough to be worth the risk of spending tens of thousands on for a wedding ceremony, if her breakdown was so complete that she became that dysfunctional in all of life's aspects, it rings less of melancholia and more like a sudden and unexpected attack of bipolarism, her lack of repercussion-self-awareness, and empathetic communication with her surrounding benefactors seems so complete.

Don't want to subtract from some obviously very deep love for this film-- my experience is no more valid than anybody's. So this is one man's opinion based upon a first viewing. But I wanted to add my thoughts as promised to Brother Hare.

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dad1153
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#344 Post by dad1153 » Tue Feb 14, 2012 8:03 pm

^^^ Are you at least glad you saw the movie HerrSchreck? Sounds like you respect what LVT attempted and understand why some of us love it (it was my #1 favorite movie of 2011, tied with "Another Earth") even though you didn't seem to have liked that the story doesn't offer light interludes to sweeten the path toward the movie's inevitable conclusion. Just the fact you are able to not curse the name of LVT for making "Melancholia" shows the man at least tackled the subject and presented it on-screen in a way that got to you enough to get your tacital passing nod for 'good enough.'

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#345 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:37 pm

Sure I was glad that I watched it, it was far from an unpleasant experience. And it certainly had nothing to do with whether or not provided lighter interludes on the way to the films inevitable conclusion.It was that it lacked any real resonance or power for me. . . I have no problem with the blackest of black melancholy or the most sinister narratives on the face of the earth this provided that it is going somewhere narratively.

and my god this certainly has nothing to do with religion nobody is more atheist than I am, that 1 really came from left field david.

Take a film like taxi driver . . it has always been one of my favorite films of all time. Here you have a tale of a man descending into such depths of depression that he literally explodes in a frenzy of blood and gore, unable to take it any longer. as a narrative element he doesn't just sit there as a lump on a log merely wallowing. he reflects, he converses with his own interior world, reflects on the world outside considers what put him there in his condition and what might get him out if getting out is at all possible. . . which the end suggests is not.

Wallowing doesn't appeal to me, which is what the film seemed an exercise in. have less to do with expressionism versus impressionism versus the avant garde versus poetic realism versus new wave versus japanese classic golden age filmmaking. This is in no way to suggest that the fans of the film enjoy wallowing,etc. Alot of this is me and my gut reactions., and trying to explain them in an understandable fashion. Im posting this from my phone which is a klunky ppain,more tomorrow...

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#346 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:04 am

david hare wrote:What I do get and I guess Schreck doesn't get from the film is the sense of exhilaration. Doubly so, first from the instantaneous recognition of the depressive state, and the wit to marry it to a classic piece of melancholic art like the Tristan Prelude, with all the High Romantic intimations of "liebestod", as though the two planets are engaged on an unstoppable amour fou/sexual fusion that can only lead to their decimation. This is akin to me to marrying up High 19th Century "ecstatic" art movements like Scriabin and the Mysticals/Metaphysicists with post modern Weimar era post Freudian formalists. It's quite an achievement.
I still have not yet gotten to Melancholia yet but a few of these comments interested me a lot - firstly Herr Schreck saying: "Here you have two films dealing with people thrown into the margins of human existence by states of extreme melancholy. The boat that the "adrift" people are in in LIMITE is, in essence, the bathtub for Dunst in Melancholia.", reminded me a lot of those later Bergman films that I most like, Shame and The Passion of Anna (where the main characters are literally adrift or have the outside world dissolve around them as it appears to be reacting to their internal crises).

I'd also love to know what both of your takes would be on Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, which feels as if it mines similar territory.

Then david hare talking above about the "Mysticals/Metaphysicists" reminded me, of all things, of Kevin Smith on an episode of the BBCs arts review programme from a couple of years ago, 2009 I think. He was one of the four guests on the show talking (predictably) about the influx of graphic novels and superhero adaptations and near the end of the discussion he talked of the way that the next century was looking likely to be characterised less by capital-R 'Religion' in art and the wider world but rather by themes of individually defined traditions of Mysticism. The rest of the guests reacted in utter horror at the 'wooliness' of that kind of concept becoming commonplace over religious ideas, but I think he made a very interesting point.

Finally, I seem to remember that david hare does not really like this film, but I'm wondering whether Death In Venice could bear any comparison to Melancholia? That ill-defined unease with your place in the world leading towards an inevitable (as if the plague in Venice was created just for that character to catch it) death in the presence of great beauty.
david hare wrote:I think Lars once again divides people. The interesting thing now is to see if he keeps up what I think was at least here a real formal control over the elements.
We should bear in mind though that doesn't Lars von Trier consider this film a failure, in the sense that it is too commercial/accessible? It wouldn't surprise me if something calculated to alienate this new fan base turns up next!

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zedz
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#347 Post by zedz » Wed Feb 15, 2012 3:13 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
david hare wrote:I think Lars once again divides people. The interesting thing now is to see if he keeps up what I think was at least here a real formal control over the elements.
We should bear in mind though that doesn't Lars von Trier consider this film a failure, in the sense that it is too commercial/accessible? It wouldn't surprise me if something calculated to alienate this new fan base turns up next!
Anything Lars says about any of his films should be taken with a Lot's Wife of salt. My theory is that this film was one of his most personal and (eek!) sincere, and so it's the one he's probably most desperate to distance himself from in order to preserve his bad-boy street cred (sigh). Hence comments like that and, you know, the Hitler nonsense.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#348 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:54 pm

OK, back on a real keyboard--

Dave, no offense taken. . . it'd require lots of hard work on your end for me to take pronounced offense from you, our on and off air convo's have borne too much mutual respect and positive intellectual benefit for me to latch on to a post on a transitory topic reflecting passing frames of mind. . . . Maybe it was my goof about Tex zapping paper clips at "Saint" Paul of Tarsus (he, Paul, is as loathsome a creature in my mind as can be, the biggest villain of the New Testament, the man most responsible for morphing a generally positive message of non-judgmentalism into the poisonous, judgmental mindset of the church today).

Anyhow, to boil it down, it's the essential inaction of the Dunst character, her lack of reflection, expression of cognizance of the repercussions of her behavior that reads more like bipolarism than clinical depression. I know several people who are precisely like that. My last ex came from an entirely bipolar family, had a bipolar, mother, father, and twin brother, she fought the pull of gravity within her own endocrine system and moved to the opposite coast of her family to strain against this heap of biological and emotional circumstance seemingly urging her towards total dysfunction. Through extraordinary self-awareness and self-observation, cultivation of what eventually through practice became an automatic examination of her unthought emotional responses to various situations before acting upon and honoring those unthinking urges, she became an extraordinary individual of incredible sweetness and self-reflection. Her twin is institutionalized (psych, not prison), this after a life filled with substance abuse and all manner of dissolution. But she is a unique individual of impressive interior powers of self-examination and capability for internal plan-making, coming up with her own regimens of self-adjustment vs impulse, sticking to these regimens for years and turning into a pretty remarkable and entirely original human being . . . she and her family and others reveal the great difficulty of dealing with bipolar individuals; these are souls who are truly the most impossible to negotiate with, esp vs the kind of difficulties Dunst cultivated during the wedding.

Colin, if you haven't seen Peixoto's LIMITE, strain to the bursting point to see it! I can't imagine what the holdup is in getting someone like MoC or CC or silent specialists i e Kino-Milestone-Flicker A to get this out into R1. Even a non English friendly edition would be a cinch if we could order it from SA: Peixoto (pron approx Pih SHO to), a great admirer of Murnau (though the film is far more along the lines of what the French and Soviet AGarde's were up to at the time . . . which now that I think about it-- I'm surprised that this didn't pop up on any of the AG sets from either Image/Anthology or Kino's three sets) placed only a couple of intertitles in the film, which one can easily translate in a heartbeat. Which I in fact did when I rec'd a copy of the penultimate restoration that preceded the last one that was presented at Cannes in 2007. That last 2007 resto is about as beautiful as the film will ever look for us, although the version of Satie's (Debussy orch'd) Gymnopedie 3 used in the opening montage is a bit too slow for my taste.

It's as hopeless a narrative as Melancholia-- one man and two women are adrift out at sea, going nowhere, heads hung low, clothes unkempt and ragged, man unshaven, not bothering to row away from their place of dislocation, barely mustering the will to even eat. (an explanation of the film's narrative, conception, and making here. Like LVT's film, LIMITE opens with a montage sequence, a prelude if you will, of hardwrought images of intense beauty that are a haiku of the narrative to come.

The opening montage of LIMITE is as beautiful as anything made anywhere and at any time. I was actually going to post on LIMITE for my next blog post under the heading "VICTIMS". At the conclusion of the opening montage, the film reverts to a more leisurely style of montage, not as densely packed as the opening but no less beautiful as it settles into its rhythm of stunning, languid imagery, as it tells the separate tales of what brought each of the three lost souls to this state of total surrender vs the tribulations of their existences. After the unfolding of the third tale (in which Peixoto plays a small, on-camera part), we return to present time in the drifting, aimless boat.

The rhythm
SpoilerShow
changes-- a rapid montage of hard foamy water--waves--sea foam-- spray--crashing-- and then the sea is calm again . . . and empty. The three have been destroyed by the currents, the tides have obliterated them, and sent them to the bottom of the sea. Final shot of a placid sea under a cloudy sky. Not much different a conclusion than LVT's film, yet they couldn't be more different in execution
I guess nobody wants to pull the trigger and risk releasing something that very few will buy. Peixoto never made another film, and he made this as a very very young man (almost the Rimbaud of cinema). But what really surprises me is that there hasn't even been a Brazilian DVD of this film since the last restoration. My copy of that resto--which was based from the final positive print of the film that remained which was, years ago, desperately rushed into the lab with desperately acquired funding as decomp had already begun on the nitrate-- comes from a broadcast of the film on ARTE France. The Brazilians are quite proud of their obscure native son, and the film is often ranked the greatest their country has produced.

Depression, it's obvious, always makes for fertile cinematic grounds, since to greater and lesser degrees, all humans feel it, and derive great comfort via connecting with others through it, and recognizing that they're not alone feeling it-- and derive a particular refreshment in comprehending a surprising fellowship in experiencing a kind of awful and destructive extremity of life experience within its clutches.

Agreed about the divisive nature of LVT. Colin your statement about his disowning of the film because of its accessibility reminds me of Kurt Cobain, post Nevermind!

And definitely agreed with Dave about the control LVT exhibits over the formal elements-- it's without question in every possible aspect the tightest film I've seen by him. I didn't chance ANTICHRIST however. . . there's so much unseen material out there to yet watch (and to originate) , that, to paraphrase Lube on the RUNAWAY MELODRAMAS Eclipse thread, there's already too few hours in the day/days in the year/years in a lifetime to sit with something that'll probably see me sitting with a fistful of my own hair by the conclusion. . . .

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James Mills
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#349 Post by James Mills » Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:20 pm

dustybooks wrote:
swo17 wrote:Does anyone ever like von Trier right off the bat?
Saw Dogville first, it clicked with me straight away ... But I think swo's generally right, and hearing the conversations at the Melancholia screening drove home just how not-for-all-tastes he is, even in a relatively accessible and aesthetically beautiful movie like this.
I saw Breaking the Waves first and found it surprisingly modest given all the critical talk of pretense and pomposity surrounding Dogme 95. I liked everything Von Trier has done before Melancholia and Antichrist.

edit: I now see that I'm of the same opinion as Lemmy, basically.

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dad1153
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#350 Post by dad1153 » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:54 pm

The final shot of "Melancholia" makes HitFix Kristopher Tapley's TOP TEN SHOTS OF 2011 column (obvious spoiler of how the movie ends if you click the link).

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