Melancholia

There aren't many male authors who write out their feelings and then let women play it out. I consider Melancholia one of the most honest authorial statements of recent years and the opening prologue with slow motion shots and Richard Wagner's impressive music an aesthetic orgasm. What the 19th hole meant is, I don't think, very indicative (I can already see Von Trier laughing under his beard as he reads the various nonsensical explanatory theories). (07/27/2011)

Succession for intellectuals and philosophers with a clearly outlined ending that doesn't give the viewer a chance. The development of the characters over the course of the film, however, does. The dialogue exposition is usually hellishly long and at times annoyingly abstract, but perhaps no one expected anything less from Lars von Trier. (08/11/2024)

A pure pleasure. The opening is flawless, the finale fatal. It is excellent for lovers of Richard Wagner and Kirsten Dunst's bust and dimples. The pleasure is multiplied, of course, in the Justine section, which has everything and lacks nothing. Humor is combined with absurdity and symbolism. Why waste the primitive aspects of Udo Kier when we have Alexander Skarsgård's wonderful newlywed games? He hasn't been this close to orgasm since True Blood, and that's saying something. (07/03/2011)

After comedy, musical and horror, Lars von Trier ruins another genre and I bite it hook, line and sinker. The best film of the first half of 2011 and a purely emotional affair about the end of good things (not necessarily the world), pointless hopes and relationships. What captivated me the most was the evolution of the two main characters. Even though the film can be seen as a poem about the end of the world, there are couple moments that open the door for the most diverse interpretations (the 19th hole, the gangway that can’t be easily crossed, the celestial bodies that behave as if they didn’t know basic school physics). Lars von Trier is number one in the list of my favourite Nazis. That was the review, now a short spoiling interpretation to think about: In the first part of the film they say that John’s golf course has 18 holes, but in the second part we see Claire and her son at the 19th hole. This means that at least one part of the film is not real, or that it is based on reality, but it takes place in a different way than we what we can see. The key is in the conversation in the first part that stresses the fact that the course has 18 holes. That’s nonsense. 18 hole courses are standard, why would the characters explicitly point that out? They would point it out only if John’s course had a non-standard number of holes. We have therefore reason to believe that the events in first part of the film take place in a different way than we what see. We see all of them through the eyes of Justine (after whom the chapter is titled), who, facing the end of the world, transforms the apocalypse into a botched wedding in a world where the planet Melancholia is only a dot in the sky that reminds that whatever happens, things can always get worse (regardless of whether the wedding is a memory or fiction). The world in the first part of the film is a desired world without the 19th hole / without a final and unsolvable problem. So, even though Melancholia left me with a pretty unpleasant feeling right after watching it, after some time what I get is a cynical, though essentially positive message: never mind earthly worries, things will be worse when the universe starts making trouble. But it doesn’t really matter what Lars thought, anyone who willing can find something for themselves, the rest can ignore it. That’s the beauty of post-modernism. PS: Plenty of Visigoths left the cinema, lol. (05/28/2011)

This is one destruction of the planet that I actually want to see as a movie. And it’s just as powerful as I had imagined. The human perspective gives the circumstances a certain authenticity and the limited cast in the second half also makes the atmosphere suitably intimate. At the same time, the first “wedding" part comes across like a sarcastic view of various character faults, but maybe it was simply meant to make us feel better, that nobody is perfect and maybe that everybody gets what he/she deserves. Excellent casting, with a weird, but utterly perfectly unstuck Kirsten Dunst and a perfect Kiefer Sutherland who gives a great performance of the only normal (or at least the only character I could identify with) character and spends his time drawing any attention to himself, but as soon as Melancholia comes along, it sweep them all from the surface of the Earth. Amazing escalation. The earth is evil. (11/12/2011)