Melancholia (2011)

Hard work. Jack said watching this was like being punched in the face every seven minutes. Some have called it a masterpiece. We call it depressing and heavy handed, although Kirsten Dunst's performance is amazing, and the movie has staying power--I'm still thinking about the images and the story combining a depressed bride Justine (Dunst), her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and other family with an apocalyptic planetary event. Danish director/writer Lars von Trier was born Lars Trier, but adopted the Germanic "von" because some of his friends called him that during his time at Danish Film School. He was also banned from this year's Cannes festival for joking that he was a Nazi sympathizer. He said later that he's not sorry he said it, though he should have said he was joking, and that the French just don't get the Danish sense of humor. Von Trier has been on my radar screen for a while but I never made it to any of his movies. When Antichrist came out in 2009 it sounded so hateful we didn't want to see it, and then I read this article (caution, it's got spoilers--read it only if you have seen or don't plan to see Antichrist) which validated my decision.

When I read that Dunst (I wrote about her in All Good Things, including that she has had in-patient care for depression) won Best Actress at said Cannes festival earlier this year we decided to see it. The movie is divided into three parts, 1. a prologue, with slo-mo images of the rogue planet Melancholia in space, eventually crashing into earth (I reveal this only because von Trier has said he wants there to be no doubt from the get-go), 2. an act called Justine, which takes place at the wedding reception, and 3. an act called Claire, where the family is at their estate, looking at the sky through a telescope, and discussing whether or not they will be hit. Gainsbourg didn't win anything for this, but won plenty for Antichrist (including Best Actress at Cannes), however she has usually annoyed me a bit in some otherwise good movies, e.g. My Wife Is an Actress (Ma femme est une actrice - 2001), 21 Grams (2003), I'm Not There (2007). And yes, this time I did not take to her character, trying very hard to care for her sister and cope with impending doom. There are moments of comic relief, some involving the wedding planner (Udo Kier, who was in but not mentioned in my post on Soul Kitchen), some with Claire's husband John (Kiefer Sutherland, best known as Jack Bauer in the series 24, he also won MTV's best villain for A Time to Kill (1996) and Phone Booth (2002)), and some with Claire and Justine's bitter mother (Charlotte Rampling, last covered in Never Let me Go). Is it nitpicking to be bothered by the fact that Rampling and John Hurt, the parents, and Gainsbourg have British accents, but Dunst's is American? Or that the setting is supposed to be America at a vast estate (near a "village") with a stable full of horses and a golf course, but Tjolöholm Castle in Sweden, the shooting location for exteriors, is grander than any McMansions I've seen here. I really thought it was a hotel for the longest time. This might be a good place to mention that von Trier has many phobias, including airplanes, and travels around Europe only by car--he has never set foot on American soil. The interiors were shot at a studio in Sweden as well.

Also featured are Stellan Skarsgård (after I wrote about him in Angels & Demons he was in Thor) as Justine's boss, his son Alexander (plays Eric in True Blood, but you couldn't prove it by me) as the groom, Jesper Christensen (The Debt) as the housekeeper, inexplicably called Little Father.

The music is, other than some ditties at the wedding, excerpts from Tristan & Isolde by Richard Wagner, performed by Orchestra the city of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Richard Hein.

This movie literally made me sick with Motion Picture Motion Sickness (I've made a list for those similarly afflicted). I didn't move to the back soon enough and was extremely nauseated by the end. All this having been said, the reviews have not been bad: rottentomatoes' score is 78% critics, 75% audiences, and metacritic gives it 81 and 66. Now you know what we think. The rest is up to you.