Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

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colinr0380
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#351 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:10 am

david hare wrote:I keep remembering and then forgetting to mention Lars' debt to Tarkovsky. Schreck defined the business of the three (four including the boy) souls seemingly isolated from the rest of humanity waiting for the end of the world. Although Lars dedicates the previous movie AntiChrist to Tark it's Melancholia that really pays this due, in particular to the Sacrifice, another chamber piece at the end of the world. Of course Tark's films seem to embody some form of redemption or spirituality/mystery where Lars' do not at all.
I've watched the film myself now!!! Yes, definitely Tarkovsky-inflected throughout, especially in that opening prologue where Bruegel's Hunters In The Snow smouldering in slow motion feels like it is bringing together the pre-flight bonfire scene (the camera moving out from the picture of Hari to show it being consumed with flames along with Kris's other papers) and the library scene from Solaris together. And then you have the Tarkovskian horse falling to the ground in the prologue (rather than rising as in Andrei Rublev) and being used as a symbol of man's cruelty with Justine whipping it to the ground.
Herr Schreck wrote: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.
I do think Schreck has a valid point - Melancholia is slightly problematic for me in the sense that we get no idea of Justine's life before the wedding. Has Justine been playing a part successfully for a long time and entering into a marriage simply because it is the 'normal thing to do' has been the final straw in her sanity? Or has she been like this for a long time, in which case why is everyone so upset with her? As she says to Michael when he is leaving: "But Michael...what did you expect?"

Did he assume that he would be the one to save her?

This I think leads to the main idea of the wedding scene in Melancholia, the way that everyone seems to trying to push and manipulate Justine around in the thinking that as long as she does certain proper things then everything will be fine. The people surrounding her seem much more upset that Justine is ruining the various moments by not acting properly than with the way she is feeling (Udo Kier is the funniest example as the wedding organiser, especially when he keeps holding up his hand to his face to block out Justine, stating that he is going to refuse to acknowledge her because of the way that she has ruined all of the careful planning, only to keep coming into contact with her a couple of extra times and having to duck out of the scene ostentatiously covering his face!)

Again is this just because they are in a reception after a wedding, where even the most 'sane' person has to keep up appearances; or is Justine pushed around this much outside of this one night (as suggested by her repulsive ad agency boss pestering her to work on a tagline during the evening)? Looking at the dysfunctional parents, the father is trying to self-medicate through sex (which Justine herself tries, first with Michael at the wrong time and then with the new ad agency recruit on the golf course), and the mother seems more like Justine but functional. Rampling is amazing in the short scenes that she appears in. She first seems as if she is the only one who sees that Justine is doing this for appearances, yet when she talks of Claire having been 'seduced' into the lifestyle, it seems as if she is not allowing for her daughters to exist in the world outside of her conception of them - as if because she recognises the rituals and rites as a sham, nobody else is allowed to take comfort in performing them, either for their own or for other people's benefit. She is the melancholic force on Justine in the first part (it is telling that they both end up taking separate baths in their rooms at the same point during the wedding ceremony), telling her to jack it all in when Justine comes to her for sympathy. And when Justine reaches out to her, more earthily grounded, father she finds him gone, even miswriting her name for one of the multiple Bettys that he is fooling around with in the rush to leave (or has he swapped his love for his two daughters into much less demanding sexual attention for a couple of identicallly named floozies?)

Knowing more about the world of those surrounding her would enable the audience to modify our views of Justine a lot, but then that would not present her as this representative of 'antisocial' norms. The film that came to mind the most while watching Melancholia was The Idiots - the characters in that film were pretending to 'spaz' publically in order to transgress social norms. In Melancholia Justine wanders off in private to have these moments, such as peeing on the golf course whilst looking up at the stars, in a similar attempt to release the tension caused by the reception and Claire and John's tight control.

That idea of someone saying to you "Don't embarrass me. Make sure you do not make a scene. Don't ruin this, like you always do. Do you know how much this is costing?", with the addition of the mother unhelpfully saying "Yes, throw it all away. This is not what you are anyway", is actually creating or enabling the circumstances for Justine to 'create a scene', as if that is what is expected of her. Those around her keep insisting that she keeps on doing things (cutting the cake, doing a dance, perfoming her conjugal duties on her wedding night), which makes her crises more public and steadily builds towards a breakdown. I love that moment of Justine leaving the picture of the apple orchard which Michael gives her (and tells her to keep with her for support) behind - another example of someone giving Justine something which they want her to use to stay calm and sane, forcing it on her to make themselves, rather than Justine, feel better. As if then they can write the situation off with a heavy sigh and a "well, I tried" shrug.

It is perhaps egotistical on Justine's part (and I assume that we are seeing most of this first part from Justine's psychological point of view that enables each of these coercions to feel like blows to the psyche) to assume that everyone is working in their own self interests and not for hers. After all they are all here for her! Yet there is that sense of pointlessness that I think she is recognising - that this marriage will not keep her sane, that cutting the cake or throwing the bouquet (another extremely funny scene where Justine slows to a stop and Claire comes up and perfunctorily chucks it down to the crowd below! Claire is practical to the end, doing anything to ensure that they stay on schedule, even if it means performing the action herself without thinking about the way that it is not a particularly significant gesture when she is doing it!) is not going to change her downward trajectory and that instead of running from it and keeping up appearances she should turn and embrace that darkness.

The sisters also feel as if they are running at different speeds. In the wedding Justine is slowing to an almost comatose standstill while Claire is so busy with trivialities that she does not have time to stop and think about the world around her (Very Jeanne Dielman-esque too. It is perhaps telling that the one scene in which Claire truly 'stops' for a moment, seemingly able to drop her guard, is the one where John disappears to commit suicide). Which is best technique for living? Neither seems to be any use in the wider scheme of things!

I like that in the Claire section Justine has come to a halt (apart from an Antichrist monologue about the natural world being evil) and we finally get to see what set of circumstances would drive John and Claire to share Justine's state of mind of utter pointlessness and futility. The practicalities of electricity (I like that moment when the cars fail to start because the computers have been fried - a nice, and frightening, new motif that can be used in disaster films - it also gets dealt with after the EMP strike takes place in that High School of the Dead anime series) and even the people fall away, leaving just the sisters and Claire's son in Bergmanesque isolation (with an Exterminating Angel twist of seemingly being unable to leave the estate - or is that just the pointlessness of doing so raising its head again? Does that mean that we could even think of the apocalypse simply being located in one country house? An apocalypse of the family? The dangers of leaving a couple of troubled characters alone together for too long to feed off of each other's energies, as in Persona?)

I suppose the tragedy is that Justine finally, through the boy, comes to appreciate doing some kind of pointless ritualistic task on behalf of keeping the spirits up of someone else (albeit totally destroying her sister's last remaining socialised notion of having a final glass of wine out on the balcony!) She and the boy ignore the tragedy of impending death that they can do nothing about (as most of us do!), build the stick cave and bring Claire with them, holding each others hands. The amusing part is that in those final moments Claire totally ruins the moment by pulling away and hugging herself (much as in the hailstorm on the golf course earlier she had dropped the boy unprotected in his pyjamas on the ground)! Apparently that image of Claire pulling away from the other two at the last moment wasn't intended by von Trier, but it does work as an amusing final touch! Has she broken the spell and doomed them all? Ironically ruined everything at the last moment?

Oh, and I like the nod to Lav Diaz in the 'Googling Melancholia' scene!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Jul 13, 2012 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#352 Post by karmajuice » Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:54 pm

Wow. So I can't offer nearly as much enthusiasm for this film as I'm seeing here. I'm surprised it was received so well. I'd like to talk about the film briefly, but I must say, the excessive praise for the film in this thread has magnified its flaws for me. I don't dislike the film, but I have a lot of problems with it.

It starts out with a bunch of glossy non-sequiturs, some of which were striking (the first shot with the birds, the bush burning through the window), most of which felt phoney, overwrought, and ponderous. I have never liked von Trier's recent indulgence in ultra-slow motion, which has no more merit than the slow motion in a Zack Synder film. Most of the special effects-laden images seem like remixed shots from Antichrist, and I didn't like them there either. They are bold and direct, but I usually find them ugly and obvious. The imagery feels deliberately excessive, but to what end? There isn't enough in these images to convince me of their beauty: no compositional elegance to speak of, plodding metaphors, poorly drawn allusions. I like that the prologue establishes what will happen at the end of the film, but its operatics largely fell flat for me.

The film improved with Justine's section, which is well shot and competently acted. Yet so much still held it back. The writing is consistently flawed, with characterization so simplistic it feels like parody and a few poorly considered subplots (namely the whole tagline deal with her boss, and the completely unnecessary character she fucks in the sand pit). I buy Justine's depression in the second half, but her behavior in the first half is more problematic. Either she consciously, willfully sabotages her wedding, or she has more mental illnesses than a textbook on the subject. I also found it hard to reconcile her character with the situation she's ended up in, but I managed to push my suspension of belief a bit further so that didn't trouble me too much. The segment managed to sustain my interest, though, and some sequences were gorgeous (not to mention von Trier's excellent sense of humor, which is played very nicely throughout).

The Claire section felt more convincing in almost every respect, and it resolves everything as well as it could. I don't think that justifies much of what precedes this section, but at least it brings it somewhere. Justine finally becomes convincing, and I adore her poise at the end of the film, and her final humane gesture. The malaise that settles over the film can make it drag a little, but the inevitable conclusion helps drive us through. I loved the brief interlude with the snow. I'm not sure how I feel about Sutherland's character, a turn of events which left me skeptical, but that's a minor qualm. The final moments of the film are astounding, and while the last shot is overwhelming, I liked the preceding close-ups even more, with the gradual intensification of the soundtrack and the blue light playing on their faces.

Overall I thought the film decent, the film's last act and impressive final moments compensating for much of what came earlier, but it's too problematic to be enthusiastic about. On some level, it feels like the whole film is von Trier taking a jab at people who don't have mental illnesses. My issues with the film have little to do with Justine (who I mostly liked, and when I did doubt her behavior I gave it the benefit of the doubt, because I'm not especially familiar with clinical depression); my issues have more to do with how every other character is portrayed, which feels very "oh, look at how all these bourgeois folk who seem emotionally stable actually fall apart in the face of pressure". He makes Justine's death feel something like martyrdom, and I'm not sure what the point is. Like I said, I like where her character is at the end, the progression she makes. But von Trier robs virtually every other character of their humanity to make this progression possible. It's like he's saying Dunst is the only character worth caring about, and by extension, that people without crippling mental obstructions aren't worth his time.

So mixed feelings. But a worthwhile experience, certainly.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#353 Post by knives » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:07 pm

To defend the opening, at least, I think that's von Trier's joking way of saying the plot isn't important and people should be concerned about the intimate details. We receive the movie in mi miniature and nothing is left in doubt as to how these events are going to go so we don't have to focus on those details throughout the rest of the movie and instead upon what actually matters. It also gives him an excuse to exercise his worst tendencies so that they don't impede upon the rest of the movie.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#354 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:13 pm

The flag on the golf green that Claire is running on in the opening is #19. That should tell you all you need to know.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#355 Post by knives » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:19 pm

I'm no expert in golf so could you explain that.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#356 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:21 pm

knives wrote:To defend the opening, at least, I think that's von Trier's joking way of saying the plot isn't important and people should be concerned about the intimate details. We receive the movie in mi miniature and nothing is left in doubt as to how these events are going to go so we don't have to focus on those details throughout the rest of the movie and instead upon what actually matters. It also gives him an excuse to exercise his worst tendencies so that they don't impede upon the rest of the movie.
I think it does the exact opposite. The prologue does not show us how things are going to go. It shows us highly aestheticized tableau vivants, some of which seem to have a direct correlation to later scenes, some of which do not. In either case, the viewer is on the lookout for the "real" version of the prologue scenes for the rest of the film. I found myself distracted by this throughout, and was annoyed when some of the vignettes failed to reappear.

However, I was also one of those who thought that the prologue of Antichrist (and the film as a whole) was an elaborately, exquisitely black comedy. Side note: I think almost all of Von Trier's films are comedies, and perhaps for this reason I found Melancholia something of a disappointment; for me it's his least funny film since Elements of Crime, and, consequently, his most pretentious film since Elements of Crime.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#357 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:23 pm

knives wrote:I'm no expert in golf so could you explain that.
A golf course has 18 holes. The former half of your justification for the opening is spot-on.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#358 Post by puxzkkx » Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:04 pm

FerdinandGriffon wrote:However, I was also one of those who thought that the prologue of Antichrist (and the film as a whole) was an elaborately, exquisitely black comedy. Side note: I think almost all of Von Trier's films are comedies, and perhaps for this reason I found Melancholia something of a disappointment; for me it's his least funny film since Elements of Crime, and, consequently, his most pretentious film since Elements of Crime.
Isn't the implicit idea here that comedies can't be pretentious?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#359 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:17 pm

FerdinandGriffon wrote:I think it does the exact opposite. The prologue does not show us how things are going to go. It shows us highly aestheticized tableau vivants, some of which seem to have a direct correlation to later scenes, some of which do not. In either case, the viewer is on the lookout for the "real" version of the prologue scenes for the rest of the film. I found myself distracted by this throughout, and was annoyed when some of the vignettes failed to reappear.
Agreed, they almost play like one of Justine's premonitions of what is to come (throughout the entire film rather than just the catastrophe section with that image of Justine wearing the wedding dress striding across the lawn considering that the wedding occurs weeks, if not months, before Part Two), much more artfully composed tableaus laying out the apocalypse in broad strokes rather than highlighting images that will actually reoccur later on - an invocation if you will (much as the opening of Antichrist can almost play out as an invocation of the child's death).

Though I disagree that all of this isn't funny - this inspired me to also dig out Roland Emmerich's 2012 from my kevyip this week (I had also thought that I had better watch it soon anyway in order to get the extra frisson that will not be there watching it after December this year!). If you discount Woody Harrelson's cameo in the Emmerich film, Melancholia is much funnier in its apocalyptic vision (isn't the 19th hole on the golf course actually the clubhouse where golfers go to get drunk?)

Though 2012 does have the great image of the head Russian billionaire marshalling all of the other privileged people to attack the Ark in order to save themselves, with him at the head of a great triangle of people running away from the camera towards their goal, a very brief image but one which felt very like a class-inverted version of images from Fritz Lang's Metropolis!

I was also vaguely reminded of Poliakoff's epic family get-together drama Perfect Strangers in some of the ensemble wedding scenes of Melancholia, though the big difference is that Poliakoff usually uses a character new to the situation being introduced into the society as an audience surrogate figure. Which means that if Poliakoff made Melancholia the main character would probably have been the young ad-agency apprentice and Justine (as the consumate black sheep figure) would have been played by Timothy Spall, which obviously would have lent a whole new dimension to that golf course sex scene!

If you are looking for entertainment value, I highly recommend the commentary track between Lars von Trier and Peter Schepelern. As well as learning that von Trier has never seen Armageddon (therefore missing Udo Kier's thirty second cameo), here are some choice highlights from the early sections:
LvT: What's strange [about the first image] is that a year ago a lot of birds fell from the sky in Sweden and America which was...

PS:...and you had nothing to do with that?

LvT:...erm, yes! Because it was in the script one year before...

PS: OK

LvT:...which I thought meant that God was pissing on my copyright.

PS: He was imitating you without prior permisson.

LvT: Yes [laughs]
This next one caused me a lot of amusement when later watching 2012:
LvT: [On the shots of the planets in space] Whenever you do something that is unlikely in a film you use a flare...you put in a fault, which wouldn't be there normally in a film like this. Suddenly we go into space and have all these faults in the camera. My great regret is that I didn't do it in Antichrist with the cutting of the clitoris. It was a terrible, terrible mistake.

PS: Couldn't you have done a 'director's cut'?

LvT: That's very funny.
And a final one to hopefully inspire much metaphorical discussion:
LvT: There's a resemblance between the two planets and Justine's tits. Can you see that?

PS: I hadn't thought about that.

LvT:...when they were kind of getting very close. That's a very important point.

PS: Ah! Yes, yes, kind of sensual dirty planets.

LvT: If you consider the human, or female, breast dirty. But then that has more to do with you.

PS: Maybe.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:44 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#360 Post by karmajuice » Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:45 pm

knives wrote:It also gives him an excuse to exercise his worst tendencies so that they don't impede upon the rest of the movie.
This is absurd. They should serve a purpose or they should be cut out. If von Trier's is indulging his whimsies he's doing so at the expense of the film.

I think the prologue is necessary. It anticipates so much of what happens and calibrates us in a way that we couldn't be, jumping straight into Justine's section. I just feel it's poorly done, and that it had the potential to be much more compelling. Also, the association between the tableaus, the art books in the library, and some of the other images in the film are so arbitrary they seem like an afterthought, a superficial attempt to connect the film to an artistic lineage. But it doesn't come off.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#361 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:08 pm

puxzkkx wrote:Isn't the implicit idea here that comedies can't be pretentious?
No, simply that Von Trier has certain bombastic, imitative tendencies that in his more comic films he is able to enter into a fruitful dialogue with, rather than here, where I feel they tend to overwhelm the film. I think Riget is the best example of this: juxtaposed next to the justifiable but outwardly ridiculous mysticism of Mrs. Drusse is the comic fodder of the doctors' "anti-mystical" cabal. Von Trier interrogates his own tendency towards mysticism; he may, in the end, hold on to it, but only after some healthy skepticism. In Melancholia, there's really just Justine and her visions, her "knowing things", and she's right, and that's it. I'm not saying we don't question her, but we're never invited to laugh at her, and the film all but demands that response to all the other characters.

I do think the film has its funny bits, but Justine's character, the slightly tin-eared script, and the silly-serious premise suck most of the energy from these moments for me. Which is a shame, because Rampling, Kier, Hurt and Sutherland all turn in superb comic performances.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#362 Post by domino harvey » Mon Mar 05, 2012 5:58 pm

For those who missed it, the US release of this film replicates most of the special features but loses the commentary track which appears on the UK Blu/DVD for some reason

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#363 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:06 pm

Because Artificial Eye releases are great and Magnolia releases have a history of cutting corners?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#364 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:57 pm

I might opt for the AE in that case. How good is the commentary?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#365 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:58 pm

Haven't listened yet, but if past von Trier commentaries are any indication... oh come on, just get the AE

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#366 Post by knives » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:59 pm

The AE is R0 right?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#367 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:20 pm

Caché is region free.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#368 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:28 pm

It's Region B.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#369 Post by knives » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:28 pm

As is Essential Killing.

Edit: Guess I'm going 'murican then.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#370 Post by knives » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:00 am

I tried playing that game, but they're too unreliable and expensive at this point.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#371 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:14 am

Not the modified LGs on the market. They're fantastic players and impervious to firmware update issues.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#372 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:45 pm

The AE disc also includes 'Filmbyen - the new Mecca of cinema' which is a nice overview of the repurposed army camp headquarters of Zentropa. It is not really relevant to Melancholia (in fact it seems to date more from the period just post Dogville) and deals mostly with the well worn subject of the Dogme films, but it is a nice addition.
Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:I might opt for the AE in that case. How good is the commentary?
The commentary is excellent - may I point to the couple of the more salacious parts that I quoted in a post above? A nice surprise for me was that the commentary with Von Trier is mediated by Peter Schepelern who had previously done the fantastic commentary for The Element of Crime with Stig Bjorkman on the Electric Parc E Trilogy box that was also released in the UK by Tartan. Von Trier does bring up the subject of that press conference a few times, making Schepelern a little nervous as he says that he had promised the producers not to bring the subject up! However they do end up getting into that as well, particularly during the end credits.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#373 Post by HistoryProf » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:29 pm

very late to this party, but as someone who vociferously loathed Antichrist on here I thought I should voice my enjoyment of Melancholia for the record. I can't admit to fully loving it, but it sure is pretty and Kirsten Dunst was a revelation. I just didn't think she had that in her. I would echo the sentiment that there is plenty of comedy here - the "throwing the bouquet" was hilarious - but I did find the two segments a bit jarring.

One aspect alluded to above was how little we know of Justine's struggles and her relationship prior to the wedding - which I think is the root of my confusion re: the abrupt exit of the new husband with his parents. He is presented as the supreme caretaker for the entire first hour, has bought them land to help save her from the greyness, and otherwise exhibits every evidence of being fully aware of her clinical depression and his desire to save her. It thus seemed entirely incongruous to me that he would simply bail when she flaked out on their wedding night - if anything, a true caretaker would spring into action and try to whisk her away to safety. I don't know, but for some reason that abrupt coda to Part I was jarring to me and felt false - precisely because of how pitch perfect Dunst's portrayal of someone struggling with maintaining the mask of happiness for everyone else had been to that point.

Otherwise, I would never pretend to fully understand LVT or whatever it is he is trying to say, but I did find the performances uniformly great, and the general tone of each act superbly in key with dynamic between the two sisters. The build up to the finale was truly exhilarating. I suspect this will be the first LVT film I actually seek out to add to my collection, as I found myself wishing I could revisit it again today, and I was only able to watch on sDVD from a Redbox so I am anxious to see the blu and crank the surround.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#374 Post by cgm13 » Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:43 am

This may be a bad question to ask ... for us in the States that aren't region free yet is there a place that you to get a hold of an audio file of the Von Trier commentary to listen to?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#375 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Apr 16, 2012 10:06 am

Just watched it on Netflix. Kicking myself a little for not having seen it on a bigger screen.

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