Melancholia debuted at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival to much critical acclaim. It is a beautifully shot but poorly written film. Almost none of the characters have any dynamicism and the story goes nowhere. The opening shot shows Earth getting destroyed by the planet Melancholia, instantly nullifying any suspense from the movie. The juxtaposition of the Wagner’s magnificent “Tristan and Isolde” with a series of beautiful and surreal slow-motion shots of Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourgs’s characters in the opening eight minutes are possibly the best part of the film. My recommendation to anyone planning on seeing this film would be to sneak into a showing at your local theatre, watch the first eight minutes, and then leave, because from that point on the film only goes down hill.
Lars von Trier’s writing of Kirsten Dunst’s character, Justine, is static, melodramatic, and frustrating. Justine is a debilitatingly depressed young woman who is selfish and mean. She only cares about herself and pushes everyone around her away. The whole first half of the movie is dedicated to her wedding reception and is titled ‘Part One: Justine.’ Throughout the entirety of Part One, she acts like a spoiled child who gives no one the time of day and makes everyone wait on her. She shows up over two hours late to her wedding reception and upon her arrival pouts and acts like an ungrateful child. Her sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, tries relentlessly to make her happy and serve her during the wedding reception. But instead of Justine putting any effort in at even attempting to be happy during the wedding reception in reciprocations for all of the time and sacrifices people have put into the reception she dips out to take a bath, wanders the golf course alone, and cries on the dance floor. Keifer Sutherland’s character John, Claire’s husband, has spent tons of money on the reception but Justine gives him zero gratification for his efforts. Claire tries time after time to make sure Justine is happy during the reception, but again she gives nothing in return. Justine’s husband, Michael, tries everything he can to make her happy, as well, even blaming himself for her unhappiness and she instead makes him feel like he is nothing to her. She is a fake and self-absorbed asshole through and through.
I kept wondering why such nice guy as Michael would ever even consider spending the rest of his life with such an unhappy person. In one attempt to cheer her up during the frustrating and painstakingly long wedding reception scenes, he presents Justine with a picture of a beautiful plot of land he has purchased for them to live on. He explains that he purchased the land because he thought the fields of flowery trees would be a great place for her to go and possibly cheer-up when she is having one of her depressed days. She fakes a smile and tells him that she will always keep the picture with her. This seems like one of the first genuine and nice acts from Justine, but of course she isn’t. When she gets up to leave her husband in the private room and go back to the reception she lets the picture fall from her lap and onto the floor right in-front him. Later that night the newly wedded couple retires to their bedroom to spend their first night as a married couple together. The husband begins to take his clothes off and embrace Justine with gentle kisses of love. Justine rejects him and tells him to zip her dress back up. She then goes out onto the golf course and forcefully has sex with a young man she has only met earlier that night. She throws the young man onto the sands of a golf hazard, covers his mouth, and mounts him. When she’s done she gets up and leaves him there. At this point of the movie, Justine completely solidified my hatred for her character.
During the second half of the movie titled ‘Part Two: Claire,’ Justine has to be treated like a child by Claire even more so than during the wedding reception. Claire has to coax Justine into bathing by drawing the bath and trying to lift her into the bathtub. Claire even tells Justine that she’ll wash her for her. When in the bathroom Justine wines like a child and doesn’t even try to lift her legs to get into the bathtub, instead collapsing to the tiled floor. Claire then goes on to try to coax Justine into eating food by cooking Justine’s favorite meal, meatloaf. When Justine gets to the table Claire speaks to Justine as a patient mother would speak to a child that she loves. The viewer is forced to watch Claire give so much love and support to her sister throughout the entire movie and we never get a glimpse of appreciation or reciprocation from Justine’s character. When Claire comes to Justine expressing her angst and worries about the planet Melancholia’s inevitable destruction of Earth, Justine mocks her by basically calling her dumb. She goes on to tell Claire that she can’t wait for Earth to be destroyed because humans are evil. Frankly, the only humans who are evil throughout the movie are Justine and her boss whom she hates so much.
Before the festival began, Melancholia was on the top of my list of films to see. I was more than excited to see Lars von Trier’s new film that I thought had the potential to be one of the best films of the festival. But to my chagrin Melancholia was a horrible disappointment. If I wasn’t so focused on writing five pages of notes about how bad the character and story development, or lack there of, of Melancholia was, I would have most definitely fallen asleep like so many people did during the screening I attended. It was a lengthy, boring, unsatisfying, and frustrating film to watch. The only gratification I got out of watching this film were the aesthetics of some of the beautiful cinematography employed. Other than those few cinematographically beautiful shots, I thought this film was a complete waste of my time, as it only frustrated and bored me. There was no suspense, the plot and characters went nowhere, and all metaphoric symbolism was obvious and uncreative (e.g. the parallelism between Justine’s melancholic and destructive behavior and the planet Melancholia). I will not debate the fact that Lars von Trier is a great director but this film puts an inkling of doubt of his writing in my mind. He could have done much more with the two and a half hours of running time he chose to use for this film and, frankly, I think I could have as well.
A Magnolia Pictures (in North America) release of a Zentropa Entertainments27, Film i Vast presentation of a Memfis Film Intl./Zentropa Intl. Sweden/Slot Machine/Liberator Prods./Zentropa Intl. Koln co-production, in co-production with Film I Vast, DR, Arte France Cinema, with the participation of SVT, Canal Plus, CNC, CineCinema, Edition Video, Nordisk Film Cinema Distribution, with support from Danish Film Institute, Eurimages, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Swedish Film Institute, Filmstiftung NRW. (International sales: Trustnordisk, Hvidovre, Denmark.)
Produced by Meta Louise Foldager, Louise Vesth. Executive producers, Peter Aalbaek Jensen, Peter Garde. Co-producers, Lars Jonsson, Madeleine Ekman, Marianne Slot, Bettina Brokemper, Tomas Eskilsson, Katarina Krave, Jerome Klement, Michel Reilhac, Remi Burah.
Directed & written by Lars Von Trier.
With: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Brady Corbet, Cameron Spurr, Charlotte Rampling, Jesper Christensen, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgard, Udo Kier, and Kiefer Sutherland.
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