Melancholia (2011) film review - a profound vision of the apocalypse
★★★★☆
‘Melancholia’ is a sci-fi film that follows the lives of two sisters in the days prior to the colliding of the planet melancholia with earth.
Director: Lars Von Trier. Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt. 15 cert, 135 min.
I’d been meaning to watch this film for a long time, and I’m so glad I finally did. ‘Melancholia’ is an apocalyptic science fiction film which manages to subvert most of the conventions of its genre. With very little action, it focuses entirely on the lives of two sisters in the days prior to the colliding of the planet Melancholia with Earth. In part one ‘Melancholia’ explores the character of Justine, an intelligent woman suffering from what appears to be clinical depression on the day of her wedding. This wedding is hosted at Justine’s sister Claire’s house, who is the focus of part two. A moving story about mental illness, ‘Melancholia’ is an intricate character study of two very different women facing the end of the world as they know it.
‘Melancholia’ (2011) film poster artwork
‘I desired to dive headlong into the abyss of German romanticism.’
Directed by Lars Von Trier, ‘Melancholia’ can be viewed as a very personal response to an idea which has been explored by a wide array of film directors. Displayed by the movie’s extraordinary soundtrack taken from the prelude to Wagner’s opera ‘Tristan und Isolde,’ Von Trier said that he had hoped to ‘dive headlong into the abyss of German romanticism.’ With its cinematic portrayal of depression and dramatised depictions of human behaviour, I believe that he succeeded. A beautifully constructed film which is incredibly introspective, ‘Melancholia’ is consistently bleak as it chronicles what is essentially a grander prelude to the decimation of the human race.
Von Trier's film opens with a sequence of haunting images depicting the collision of Melancholia with Earth. We see dead birds raining down from the sky as the planet looms ever closer to our own, accompanied by other borderline surrealist shots of the Earth dying. Claire struggles to carry her young son as the ground beneath her threatens to swallow them both, and Justine floats down a river in her wedding dress in a scene reminiscent of Millais’ harrowing 'Ophelia’ painting. Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’ also features in this sequence, as well as later in the film when we see Justine changing the art on display in Claire’s house. The whole montage reads as a powerful metaphor for depression. The characters in ‘Melancholia,’ particularly Justine, suffer from a heaviness they associate with living. Here, we see them deal with the knowledge that they are going to die.
‘Those bitches have locked themselves in their bathrooms and now they're taking a bath. Is everyone in your family stark raving mad?’
Warning: contains spoilers. Justine is played by Kirsten Dunst, who delivers surprising depth to the film’s central character. Eccentric, eloquent and oddly ethereal, Justine oscillates between a catatonic state of melancholy and fake displays of happiness during her wedding to Michael, who is played by Alexander Skarsgård. Justine’s family is incredibly dysfunctional; her parents are divorced, and her Mother appears to carry a deep resentment for the idea of marriage and most of the people around her. Justine and her Mother both seem disinterested and strangely detached from the events of the evening. When they go missing during the wedding, Claire’s husband John is incredulous at the discovery he makes. ‘Those bitches have locked themselves in their bathrooms and now they're taking a bath. Is everyone in your family stark raving mad?’ he exclaims.
‘The Earth is evil. There’s no need to grieve for it.’
Though ‘Melancholia’ is apocalyptic in nature, Von Trier does an exceptional job in making the impending doom act almost as scenery to the film’s main focus, which is undoubtedly its characters. Rather than ominous news reports and government warnings, the weight of what is about to happen is portrayed through Justine’s depression and Claire’s anxiety. Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is almost the polar opposite to her sister. Where Justine faces Earth’s collision with Melancholia with a peculiar sense of calm, Claire is understandably afraid. She has a young son, Leo, and she wants him to have a future. Though her husband John repeatedly reassures her that Melancholia will simply pass Earth by, Justine appears to know different. ‘The Earth is evil,’ she says prophetically. ‘There’s no need to grieve for it.’
As the realisation that the end of the world is imminent sinks in, Claire finds her husband John dead in the stables after overdosing on the pills she had stashed as an emergency. At this point, it becomes evident that Melancholia is going to collide with the Earth. Von Trier illustrates the natural human reaction to disaster through Claire, and contrasts this with that of clinically depressed Justine to create an incredibly touching finale to his masterpiece. Justine appears to find solace in the idea of her fast-approaching death and uses this strength to comfort her sister and Leo in their last moments of life, just as they had previously provided comfort to her. Gathering sticks from the wood with Leo, Justine builds a ‘magic cave’ which she says will protect him. Sitting cross legged and hand in hand, ‘Melancholia’ ends with a magnificent shot of Justine, Claire and Leo with the lethal planet looming ever larger in the background, eventually colliding and killing them all.
Should you watch this before you die?
Overall, ‘Melancholia’ is an exquisitely human portrayal of the apocalypse which, though limited in its representation, is incredibly effective. I’ve seen people call this film slow, boring, and depressing, which I thoroughly disagree with. Von Trier’s work is long, but its payoff is immense, and its cinematography eerily beautiful. Don't go into this film expecting an action-packed sci-fi thriller, because that’s not what ‘Melancholia’ is. However, it is a profound depiction of mental illness which is unmatched by any other sci-fi movie I’ve seen.