Review of Meloncholia From The Wall Street Journal

 

A few days ago a mountain-size asteroid came close to Earth, then zipped safely past it. The threat is more substantial in this hauntingly beautiful drama by the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. On one level the title refers to the planet Melancholia, a vast and mysterious orb that may or may not hit us and put an end to terrestrial life. But "Melancholia," which stars Kirsten Dunst, isn't really concerned with astronomy, or what happens when worlds collide, even though the literal drama of an impending apocalypse is evoked with an extraordinary mixture of gravity and grave playfulness. Its true subject is melancholia as a spiritual state, a destroyer of happiness that emerges from its hiding place behind the sun, just like the menacing planet, then holds the heroine, Justine, in its unyielding grip and gives Ms. Dunst the unlikely occasion for a dazzling performance.


That's an important thing to know about this film. It's about depression, but it isn't depressing at all. In the hands of Mr. von Trier, himself no stranger to emotional distress, bedazzlement is depression's surprising byproduct. Justine uses melancholia as a refuge from a world that gives her no joy, but when she first shows up for her elaborate wedding she's in a manic state, at once alluring and alarmingly funny, that suggests the sort of screwball comedy graced, in an earlier time, by Carole Lombard or Katharine Hepburn.


Another important thing to know is that "Melancholia" stands apart, or should be allowed to stand apart, from the stupid things the filmmaker said about Hitler and the Nazis at the Cannes Film Festival, and from such provocative but offputting films of the recent past as "Dogville" and "Antichrist." This new one is certainly flawed—I'm not sure that Mr. von Trier was sure how to end it—and the tone can be pretentious, even silly. But it's disarmingly earnest at the same time, and rendered in such stunning images as a Marienbad-like expanse of lawn (the exteriors were shot on Sweden's western coast); an overhead shot of Justine and her sister, Claire (a fine performance by Charlotte Gainsbourg), on horseback, galloping along a country road through layers of fog; and Justine lying naked in the woods beneath the planet Melancholia's baleful glow. (Most of the exquisite sound track is excerpted from Richard Wagner's score for the opera "Tristan und Isolde.")


A caveat may be in order for those who dislike nervous hand-held cameras. The nervousness may be justified as an expression of the instability of Justine's world, but this camera does dart, spin and swoop as it tracks the orbits of a singularly anxious group of people. The excellent cast includes Charlotte Rampling as Justine's angry, depressive mother; John Hurt as her childish, mercurial father; Alexander Skarsgård as her immature husband-to-be; Alexander's father, Stellan Skarsgård, as her loathsome boss; and Kiefer Sutherland as Claire's husband, John, a country gentleman who gives rationalism a bad name. Justine's mother, who has no faith in marriage or anything else, tells her sarcastically, "Enjoy it while it lasts." She would if she could. Justine would enjoy all the pleasures that life offers if she could, but she can't. What she can and does do is embrace melancholia, and Melancholia, with a deep serenity that could pass for being happy.


Wall Street Journal