Copyright © 2012 by James Clark
In the stream of dead ends that is Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), one moment stands out as most violently sustaining a rich man’s dagger tossed toward his wife, “Is everybody in your family mad?” That outspoken fellow having been found by her to have committed suicide with a bottle full of sleeping pills she had bought to administer to herself in the event that an astronomical singularity coming their way might not be as tame as predicted, she turns to her sister, Justine—whom she had installed as a permanent house guest due to the latter’s having become squashed to the point of virtual immobility on losing all will to live, but who had begun something of a recovery—and quietly proposes that they face the squashing of planet earth, by a larger planet gone far astray, by mustering affective graces whose true roots had never been functional. “I want us to be together when it happens… Help me. Justine. I want it to be nice… We could have a glass of wine…” Justine, who had regarded the cosmic developments with gentle awe and depth of body language far outpacing that of her more or less desperately insistent hosts, regards her sister, Claire, with hate in her eyes and a combatively rigid jaw. “Do you want to hear what I think of your plan? I think it’s a piece of shit! You want it to be nice? Why don’t we do it in the fuckin’ toilet?”
Now during the lengthy and painful migration to that spot, Justine had been far from a generous avatar of the precept, “the show must go on”—she had, in fact, produced a de facto divorce during her wedding reception—but none of her lurid “scenes” hitherto (as Claire, convening and directing her wedding show, had warned her against, on that of all days) ever reached such witless and vicious self-promotion. Though the heavenly body bearing down on a planet of remarkably hemorrhaging bathos had been given the name “Melancholia,” it is the melancholy of all of world historical motion that suffuses this film, and Justine’s crowning, self-defeating cruelty toward Claire could be seen as a frenzy of self-hate in face of a shocking instance of finitude. That may, however, be a misleading tangent, insofar as all the production energies here point away from making much of such personal status reports. (At the dying moments of the celebrity wedding in its fulsome debacle, the butler reminds Claire of the unfinished business of announcing a winner in the contest to guess the number of beans in a bottle. “That’s completely trivial,” is her coverage of the anti-climax as she sidles by.)
A bit before the scatological outburst, Justine delivered a more measured (though somewhat overreaching) blast, one that carries a more rounded alarm. “There’s only life on Earth, and not for long. Nobody will miss it. Life on earth is evil… When I say we’re alone, we’re alone…” There is a world of difference between the glib and dubious premium on punching out her sister, and the painful survey of an absence of that magic which alone provides sufficient cogency. Her punctuating that latter dirge with the phrase, “I know things” (although it includes the daffy claim to have correctly guessed the number of beans), may be, in the last analysis, just what we need to come to a solid vantage point from which to strike the right note in appreciating from its beginning the play of hugely corruptible phenomenal energies informing this harrowing and strangely beautiful film. In fact there were historically telegraphic clues long before this climactic finale, giving us an almost-too-good-to-be-true thrill. But, in their circumstantial bearing they would be less apt for launching an exposition such as this. Having begun to put into play the sensual bedrock of this narrative, we had best hold it in abeyance until making available the work’s vast infrastructure of dramatic circuitry offering a rich and varied array of dilemmas strongly and comprehensibly pertaining to the disclosures of Melancholia.
Through a series of fits and starts, Justine circumvents imprisonment in marriage to a suitor wrong for her. Though she has gone through the motions of actually marrying him, it is the action of ditching him that we are put in touch with (the wedding never being shown). As noted, Claire was prominently involved in facilitating her problematic relative’s becoming a normal member of society. After the dissolution of the insufferable bond, it was Claire’s woodsy haven (a veritable chateau) to which Justine raced in despair about her world’s collapsing into unspeakable ugliness. This edgy interplay approximates an ancient story compelling to a long-ago, Surrealist film about cosmic rightness, never significantly distributed outside of France, namely, Jacques Demy’s Peau d’Ane (Donkey Skin) (1970).
One of the circumstantial aspects of Melancholia and von Trier’s wider output is the dredging up of surviving players having once worked with Demy. In Dancer in the Dark, we have the doyenne of Demy stars, Catherine Deneuve, gracing a musical scenario bubbling over with initiatives from The Young Girls of Rochefort. In Melancholia we have John Hurt, in the role of Justine’s father. Long ago (in 1972, to be exact) he played the part of a chillingly venomous groom within the Plague-ridden precincts of The Pied Piper. Though for von Trier he emanates a benign, aged cosmopolitan and buffoon (his character in Pied Piper being a sickly pretender to military glory who goes off to war in England and has to be ransomed from captivity by his wealthy father), with shocks of hippie hair (Donovan was a co-star, and his chastity-belt confined bride was a spacey teen, a touch followed up by von Trier, in having Justine’s long-divorced mother in tie-dye top and love beads, and proclaiming to all the guests, “I wasn’t at the church. I myself hate marriages, especially pertaining to my family. I don’t believe in it”) and the certainty he was charming to young girls (at the reception he carries on a non-stop flirtation with two Fraulein, both named Betty), he’s a person of urgent interest to Justine (“Please, Dad, I really have to talk to you”). With various other kingly figures on hand—her gentleman-farmer groom; her self-styled tower of power and bully boss at the ad agency where she worked until informing him during the reception (where he thought to make a splash by, in his Best Man’s toast to the bride, publicly promoting her from copy writer to art director) that he was “a cheap, small, power-hungry little man;” Claire’s husband, who paid the piper for this wedding through his nose, frequently reminding Justine (and causing her eyes to freeze over) that he’s a billionaire and has blown on that night more than most people could dream of spending (“Who else do you know of with an eighteen-hole golf course on his property?”); and (tiny) Tim, tasked by the boss to get a “tag line” from her for a magazine shot of three semi-nude women arranged in a circle on the floor, whom she pushes over and fucks in a sand trap on one of her bailouts from the party—he’s the one she urges to stay overnight in one of the many guest rooms and have breakfast with her next morning. Justine, thereby, demonstrates the dividedness of Donkey Skin’s Princess, whose widowed and (by her) beloved father wants her for his new bride and whom she puts off with various lavish wedding dress ideas (including a moonlight dress and, finally, a dress made from the skin of the donkey whose bowel movements of jewels and gold coins constitute the gross national product of the kingdom) posed to her by her fairy godmother, the Lilac Fairy. On the night of the reception, Claire is dressed in a lilac gown. As her dread about the rogue planet begins to shatter her poise, she uses a device her young son has crafted, a wire circle on a stick, to size up whether the predicted fly-by is still on. The Lilac Fairy whips up with her magic wand dresses for herself to suit her mood, and goes on to present a wand to the Princess to cushion her exile in that donkey skin. The actress playing the blithe and witty advisor, Delphine Seyrig (a star from Last Year at Marienbad, the grand, hyper-sculpted and dazzlingly lit garden of which links to the posh links of Claire’s husband), delicately handsome but rather gaunt, is reprised by delicately handsome and rather gaunt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing Claire. Delphine Syrig’s co-star in Marienbad, Sacha Pitoeff, plays the King’s right-hand man in Donkey Skin, assuring him from a window overlooking the Princess in the courtyard (singing an elegy to love—“Amour, amour, je t’aime pas”) that the incestuous wedding is the right stuff. Just before he leaves the party and his wife-for-an-evening (without a night time and consummation), the groom (Alexander Skarsgard, gaunt and darkly tense, like Sacha Pitoeff) looks down at Justine, bathed in creamy light and looking like a sombre whipped cream desert, drifting outward from the courtyard to a vantage point from which to observe the celestial intruder becoming more fascinating as the dreadful night lurches to a close. As she plunges across the velvet fairway we see her from behind, from the high perspective of the groom—wouldn’t you know he’d be called Michael!—and her haute couture, snow-white, billowing wedding gown—a bit the worse for wear on her having caught it on the works of the golf cart she used for one escape move, and on her having torn it off to have a hopefully soothing bath and stare into space on another escape mission—reminds us of the bulky donkey pelt the Princess wears (often moving along in it in slow motion, the speed we behold in Justine, for a few seconds at the film’s enigmatic first scene, her white gown tracing behind her, as she treads with difficulty, having many virulent plant roots [that might also be film roots] entwined around her ankles) and her cantering in dishabille through the forest she counts on as a refuge.
During the departure with his mother, Michael, as numb as someone coming out of major surgery, kisses Justine’s forehead and says, “This could have been a lot different.” She, looking barely less comatose, replies, “Yes, Michael, it could have been different.” And with the saga of the Beast/King (played by Cocteau’s Bête, Jean Marais) and the beautiful, yet beastly, Princess who eventually accepts the proposal of a Tim-like Prince (Tim, in fact, does propose during the Gettysburg-range of manoeuvres here, citing “good sex” and business smarts; but she demurs [“I don’t think that’s a good idea…]), we have at hand an alternative to Justine’s administration of justice as far as she can see it. Demy’s film settles for a version of the Cocteau denouement of absurd comfort, which Justine would be sure to cover with, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” (She couldn’t get excited about Michael’s news that he’d bought an apple orchard where they could raise a family, because the banality of his every move offered not a shred of the truly “different.” The apple-pie guy only exacerbates her troubled movement toward a compass-star that couldn’t be more unusual.) Like Cocteau and Justine, Demy was beset with the elusiveness of true love, the Surrealist “more” (than normality). The Princess never comes close again to the radiance generated during her baking (in the glow of her memory of her mother), for an ailing (as yet unseen) Prince, a “Cake d’Amour” (“Love-Cake”). The two presences, mother and daughter, sing, as they work, a spritely ode to a vein of joy tangible amidst appalling odds. It seems to me that von Trier cherishes Demy’s discernment as he takes up a very tough stretch of reflection rendered cinematically.
But that is not the end of his vigorous consultation with respect to the history of cinema, the history of art and the history of thought. The sizzle of Melancholia gives access to another very distinguished precedent on behalf of doing justice to the murderous ways of primal dynamics. This factor is omnipresent in the magisterial instalment of a life-sentence to hard labor strangely weighing upon a cast of characters situated in a palace, and with memorable mobility. Its specific source first comes to us by way of the opening sequence, revealing the countless glittering stars in the night sky, a vision that sidles up to the opening shot of countless shimmering grains of sand, in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964). Although restricted range of motion is the cardinal crisis of the earlier film, and Justine operates a veritable revolving door in and out of her entrapment at the wedding reception with those she can’t stand for any protracted time-frame, her meandering amidst the dunes of the bunkers, with the sea glistening just beyond, traces a kind of fruitless bid for liberty and thereby it is hard-wired for progress-checks vis-a-vis the simplistic scrambling of the geek whose bottled bugs return to us twice—in the “trivial” bottle of beans and in the bugs seething out of the earth as the biology-disrupting mass moves in for the kill. In addition to that, the zone from which the death-star emerged was the constellation Scorpio, and scorpions were very much a part of the unbeknown death march amidst the dunes. (Claire’s amateur astronomer (going for stars rather than insects) and scientistic jet set bore of a husband [John] also evokes the Man fromTokyo.) On coming to Claire’s for convalescence, Justine is led to the bathtub by her concerned hostess, and in the striving to make the warm water work for her we brush against the washing, wiping, rubbing and caressing of the precedent. While the woman not precisely doing calendar art at her dunes comes to vibrant physical animation in being caressed by and caressing the visitor, Justine emits listless and fearful responses when led by Claire, our fairy godmother, to a nice Italian-design bathtub. Her face and body look positively ancient, even her formerly impressive muscle tone is captured by the camera to look invalid-dumpy. She slumps on the floor and screams in fear. Claire, sounding ever-so-much the optimist Lilac Fairy, soothes her with, “This was a good practice for tomorrow’s bath.” Urged to eat, Justine is treated to meatloaf, her favorite dish, and she finds it “tastes like ashes,” recalling the sand-compromised meals at the pseudo-brickworks. Finally, perhaps not simply just for fun, but definitely as much comic relief as this stringent scenario affords, we have the testy celebrity event artiste-overseer, who hisses to Claire as Justine and her vaguely beloved arrive two hours late to the function—“I’m at the end of my rope!” (a situation that has the bug-guy hopping mad, much to the amusement of his collector-captors).
More tenuous but no less thematically pregnant facsimiles hover about the in fact arrestingly visceral collisions occasioned by Justine’s nose for smelling rats where others notice only sweet comforts. In a provocative unity with the dithering Princess bride-to-be in Donkey Skin, Justine’s ruthlessly fault-finding juggernaut fails her when it comes to her father. After deflatedly seeing off Michael and distantly (shot from quite a distance across the fairway) lubricating Tim, she’s back at the party dancing with dear old Dad, to “Strangers in the Night.” He would, in his note finking out on her plea to stay the night (“…got a ride offer I couldn’t refuse” [perhaps from the team of Betties he’d spent much of the night fondling]), refer to her as Betty. John Hurt’s previous wedding reception could be termed unforgettable by virtue of its moment of cutting the cake, only to be beaten to the punch by its collapsing due to having been invaded by greedy and poisonous rats. Justine certainly requires several bouts of air by way of—among more cosmic matters—cumulatively felt to be malodorous emanations from the crowd; but her snuggling up to a figure with nothing more in evidence than a sugary voice and an alcoholic grin (there are also lumps on his cheek resembling Plague symptoms), has to temper our take on her as daring to be different. In the orbit of Hurt’s, Franz of Hamelin, there is the bride’s club-footed boyfriend, steamrollered by Franz along with his loving mentor, an alchemist, who, in the course of being railroaded to the stake, takes us over to a figure from the work of Demy’s friend, Robert Bresson, namely, Balthazar at Risk (1966), and its donkey whose grace and sense and touching death put him at risk from rats. Despite being insultingly late to the party, Justine insists on checking in with “Abraham,” the horse at Claire’s stables of which she has become the de facto owner and who, she claims (though disputed by the actual owner and pervasive man in charge), “only lets me ride him.” She softly coos to Abraham, “Michael is my husband now…” implying some kind of rare and wonderful love for the beast. In this she coincides with Bresson’s Marie, who as a young girl loved and cared for Balthazar and was loved by him in return, but later neglected him. Justine beats him fiercely on two subsequent occasions, for refusing to cross a tiny bridge in his sensing her lack of love as coinciding with the horrific malignancy. Her boss, Jack (the ass), at the public relations firm, brings to us a form of Marie’s thuggish boyfriend, Gerard, who abuses Balthazar for balking at cooperating with his plans, displaying a bleak cruelty all the more staggering for his fronting a smuggling concern with a stint (showing PR smarts) as a stalwart in the church choir. On Balthazar’s refusing to proceed with a load, he ties to his tail and lights a string of firecrackers, a “tag line” of sorts. (The tag line of his short and sadistic rule over Tim is to fire him, “send him back to wherever he came from.”) Whereas Jack is sent packing by Justine—not before he smashes some dishes and emits some Alpha menace—Gerard is left to run his course, killing Balthazar. Thus the emissions of that precedent add to the complex assessment of Justine’s play upon the sense, “… life on Earth is evil… we’re alone…” (An adjunct to the recourse to Bresson’s hard, apocalyptic and melancholy love comes to us from the snippets of slow motion horror and ecstasy that lead off this wild ride. For a moment we see Justine in that wedding dress she has continually unfastened and fastened like carriage trade stripper. Now she’s lying on her back in a body of water, ever-so-slowly drifting our way, with a peaceful look on her usually tightened face. In Bresson’s Mouchette (1967), a young adolescent girl drowns herself by rolling down a river bank covered in fabric for a wedding dress that didn’t materialize, given to her by a quietly sympathetic Good Samaritan whose encroachment on the shambles of her family life she repulses with, “You bitch!”
The close framing of that ghostly cruise is taken up in the launch of the mundane flashback, Justine and Michael in a very long, white stretch limo, negotiating with utmost difficulty the narrow and winding country lane leading to Claire’s chateau. This is an incongruous moment of giddiness for the (sort of) star-crossed lovers, seen (by a twisting-about hand-held camera) pressed close to the ceiling at the back of the vehicle as they crane their necks and twist about to get a bead on the non-progress the novice driver is making. (There is also a moment of her peering from a back window, shot from below, where she seems to have dwarfed the monster car. Then she’s behind the wheel, laughing her head off, but somehow squashed into that plush cockpit. With this follow-up to the supernal visuals of the opening moment of the major death throes—every bit a match for the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the frisson of which comprises an overtone for [desultory] discovery of loving transparency as closely implicated with death—we have on our hands Alice getting pointed toward a Wonderland chock-a-block with perplexity [“You’re not even looking”/ “I can see it’s not very good”], tumbles and almost too good to be true wonderment. (Mouchette’s very short-lived, inflected taste of the delights life has to offer involves operating a bumper car, lurching, twisting, laughing for once, and never again.) That would raise the stakes of the world of the Lilac Fairy to center upon full-fledged justness, as quite distinct from domestic happiness. (I don’t have to tell you where the Mad Hatter pops up, when we have a figure at a sumptuous table, pocketing spoons and befuddling hapless serving staff and hoping to be getting somewhere with the giggling Betties—drinking a lot of wine, but no tea, despite his plummy accent; and actually sort of charming Justine, the X-rated Alice. Claire’s little boy, Leo (part of a cast of woodland creatures on steroids), refers to Justine as Aunt Steelbreaker (or is that, Aunt Stillbreaker?), and he often pesters her about the “magic cave” they’re going to explore together. (Perhaps the primary function of this Wonderland motif is to moot the possibly dream-driven, edifying, rescindable, futural implication of the apparently game-ending meltdown. Or, on the other hand, to underline the real-time saga as posing creative follow-through upon a less unlucky and less unloving planet. One place to start that follow-through, would relate to an excursion from the party to trash Claire’s Suprematist graphics display in favor of Brueghel prints with their claustrophobic preoccupation with death. [An instance of that visual rendition of pious gloom briefly flashes our way at the doomsday prologue, and thereby fortifies the possibility that that whole movement is the prelude to a dream.] Justine’s scorched earth comportment toward modern world history does call out for some form of circumspective amelioration.)
Nothing like a death star to get a lot of critters buzzing about. But Melancholia is not simply a sharply arranged encyclopedia. As already on tap to some extent, suffusing this embrace of great daring from years gone by, there is film drama of riveting immediacy. The constellation of Justine and Claire (masterfully and unsparingly achieved by actresses Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) is preponderantly shot in extreme close-up, delivering to us sensibilities activating a rarely noticed showdown of equilibrium with its stunning galaxies of courage. During one of her countless excursions away from the hub of consummate nightlife, Justine catches up with her mother, asleep in a guest room and wakes her, to say, “Mom, I’m scared.” Getting past her Mom’s hobby horse that marriage is form of suicide, she adds, “… it’s something else… I’m freezing… I have trouble walking… I’m scared!” Her Mom, after a rare pause, says, “We all are, Sweetie. Just forget it…” That Justine will not forget it is the motor of this movie, and the conjurer of the Princess, the woman in the dunes, the child bride, Marie, Belle, Mouchette and Alice. (It also conjures the raw scribble-through-spilled-milk title frame, the spitting image of the lithographic touch David Lynch has retreated to.) There is a cut, from this mother-daughter interview, to Justine, seen from across the dance floor, a wallflower at her own party, her face ashen and toneless, her eyes deadened. Then she’s whisked away by Claire, to the bar, and made to chug down a lot of cognac, leading her to give one of her vaguely terrifying smiles. Michael comes over, ever the good sport, and gulps down a bit of that four-digit booze. Claire, by this time fighting as big a wave of nausea as that consuming her sister (on whom she often confers the despairing touch, “Sometimes I hate you so much!”), rallies the troops—a Delphine Seyrig over-the-cliff rigid joviality covering her face, so well according with that Angst-star’s speciality of effete doom—to hit those Marienbad gardens and join in champagne and the launching of dainty little hot-air balloons carrying inscriptions of wishes for marital happiness. In the semi-darkness, we catch glimpses of the sisters having recaptured, for a few seconds anyway, some real smiles. In their bedroom, Justine and Michael show nothing but exhaustion. Then she unfastens her dress, he takes off his jacket and pants, they do some French kissing (half-hearted, particularly in light of a similar interlude earlier, where they were truly cooking, only to have her suddenly slipping away [“Bye”], on the unspoken pretext that there is so much left to do). Her face and body are numbed and she shows a quietly irritable embarrassment in being so unsuited for love. “Give me a moment… Just give me a moment… Can I have a moment, please?” Her anguished wedding day (with its nocturnal gesture of reciprocating to the loving gift of pulsating starry beauties) comes to us as a physical confirmation that what is stake for her is a cosmic visitation of love that takes cosmic means to live up to. (Prominently in aid of setting the pace for this overture in vast human nature, as something other than non-vast human personality, is the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, rhapsodically washing over many of Justine’s moments of truth, most hauntingly at von Trier’s Prelude where singular gravity is expressed by hauntingly fluid slow motion.) By the time she has slipped away again and is seeing him off, with, “What did you expect?” she’s kissed goodbye to smiling at anyone. Her face that, shot from below and from a best-side (accentuating high cheekbones) at the beginning of the reception, carried tinctures of youthful promise, now ploughs into us head-on, giving her an androgynous and biologically depleted death mask.
It is the film’s second passage, where Justine returns to the palace for repairs rather than forced rejoicing, that provides the most pointed glimpse of the binary star nature of the two sisters. Claire had, the morning after the unforgettable party, gently supported Justine’s maintaining that she had “tried.” During the reception, Claire had become increasingly apparent as instrumental in setting her up with someone wholesome and unreflective, a man she would never have taken seriously on her own (they both being hirelings of Jack) but coming into play at a time when the perils of solitude were becoming insupportable. But now Claire redirects her caring to an attempt to rouse Justine out of her pronounced doldrums. However, at the moment when she needs some Lilac Fairy spark, her confidence and competence dwindle in the shadow of the death star which conventional wisdom declares to be harmless. While Claire plunges into trembling fear regarding this horror (her face ravaged, her mouth freezing and struggling to maintain adult articulation), Justine finds in its monumentality and ravishing intensity a source of poise. She does not, however, find it to be a source of sustained love by which she could reciprocate for her sister’s generosity. While Claire shudders at the sight of the looming lavender monstrosity, Justine’s eyes fill with awe and the beginning of a smile crosses her face. In the middle of the night, Claire is out on the patio, close to suffocating with terror. She is unseen by Justine, who walks out across that Marienbad darkness, comes to a vantage point by the sea and gazes lovingly at that arresting body, while Claire, who had followed her, watches desolately. Then Justine, now nude, reclines on the rock, strokes a hand across her breasts and smiles. She is beyond the Princess, in having embraced her (double) moonlight-texture wedding dress, beyond Belle in having eschewed smallish suitors, and beyondAlicein having come to one hell of an inflection upon world history. But, in face of Claire’s “I’m afraid,” she goes on to pull that cheap critique of bourgeoise sensibility: “A glass of wine together, maybe? How about a song? Maybe we could light some candles…” (During her regaining her appetite, she contracted a sudden craving for chocolates and sweet jam. The Princess, graduating from her donkey skin disguise to marrying a wimp, joins the latter in singing, “What will we do with so much love? We’ll do what’s forbidden!” and tying into a feast of desserts.) Claire struggles against trembling, looks downwards and whispers, “That would make me happy.”
From this dismal hatefulness—reminiscent of the superficial Princess to true royalty once, when preparing a “Cake d’Amour” (“Love Cake”) for an ailing prince she hadn’t met, with her dead mother’s presence helping her along while they sang a song, a lovely duet to simple and powerful joys—Justine moves on to give us a marvellously inflected denouement. The birds have begun to drop; the electrical charges have started to stream out of power lines, and fingers; and Leo feels afraid. His father had committed suicide in the stables with Claire’s overdose and the fly-by seems to have been an illusion. Justine tells him that that gloomy take forgets about the “magic cave,” its doorway to brightness that works. She and he cut branches to make a little house of sticks, she brings Claire to their spot overlooking the sea and the sky-filling juggernaut. She tells Leo to close his eyes; she takes Claire’s hand and his hand. Claire’s face is full of terror and she cries; then she quietens, frozen with fear, but struggling to keep her eyes on the star. Justine looks at them quietly, braces herself and they disappear in a gigantic sheet of electrodynamics, a crescendo of nature at war with itself. Leo had asked, “Can anybody make that cave? Justine (whom he always, rather puzzlingly, referred to as Aunt Steelbreaker [long ago, on his Grandpa’s side, there was an issue of alchemy]), unsmilingly, tells him, “I’m not anybody.” It is remarkable that a scenario about the end of human life could still compellingly maintain the urgency of being not just anybody.
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What a fantastic essay of a truly complex, emotional experience. This was easily the most perplexing, astonishing, demanding, and ultimately satisfying film I saw this year.
One interpretation I wanted to suggest of Leo’s reference to Justine… I came away thinking that he was referring to her as “Auntie Deal Breaker”. That she has promised to do things with him, such as build the “magic cave”, but because of her emotional state has never followed through. I also thought that Leo probably has a crush on his Aunt, and perhaps thought, as some young boys will, that he would grow up to marry her some day. Perhaps he’s even shared that notion with her, and then her wedding becomes the ultimate in deal breaking. Just a thought.
Thanks, John. Before getting to your enthusiatic and attentive responses, I have to try to make a little passage near the end more clear, as my wretched keying left out phrasing that could give you, as a reader, a smoother ride. The beginning of the last paragraph needs the phrase, “…reminiscent of the crude Princess who only rose to royalty once…”
Melancholia is indeed “truly complex” in its ushering the viewer into a nightmarish self-dissolution touching upon those depths everyone knows to an extent, though usually barred from close inspection. That you’ve found it “ultimately satisfying” perhaps speaks to the care and wit of its construction, providing an experience of remarkable delicacy and expansiveness amidst a misadventure of raw destruction.
Your suggestion, “Deal Breaker,” certainly makes sense as a candidate for a set of terms characterizing Justine’s dance of death.
Melancholy is an affliction not a passport to enlightenment. To posture otherwise is a conceit of cosmic proportions. Nikos Kazantzakis in the source novel for Zorba the Greek has the ineffectual intellectual – “two words that go together well my Michell” – ruminate that living like you will die tomorrow is the same as living like you will live forever. A eureka moment if ever there was one. Melancholy is remembering as a thing past what is happening now and not living in the eternal present.
Death doesn’t exist nor time. Let the big blue planet collide and see the sparks fly. The thoroughly decent Count in Lubitsch’s Ninotchka tells her as much when trying to get her to smile. He finally succeeds by the unwitting and utterly banal act of falling off his chair.
Tony, thanks for the stimulating critique. Your point about preoccupation with death being a form of escape is well put, in its recognition that such a fixation facilitates the (classical) causal regime holding out the prospect of immortality. I think Melancholia shows Justine attempting to break away from that perspective and skirting upon the dangerous resentment toward a classically primed planet.
Great comparison with Ninotchka, who also struggles to wean herself away from another aspect of conventional securement.
I think it may be useful, for the sake of clarifying the give and take of film commentary, to include here the intro to a draft of something I’m doing as to Days of Being Wild and Wages of Fear.
A close look at contemporary film can provide some big surprises. While every saga would have to show some kind of conflict, there is, surprisingly, quite a numerous body of work the exertions of which are far from evident in their essential contours. There are two valid reasons for this obscurity. First of all, the stcking point is very complicated and, as such, almost prohibits full transparency. Its complication is not merely a matter of cognitive architecture, but one of devastating emotional volatility. And, secondly, it engages dispositions that have fortified most of the population throughout world historical civilization, and therefore are cherished with often violent intensity. Film artists boarding that problematic crest of discernment rampant in all of the arts and sciences over the past hundred and fifty years are quite unique in addressing not simply fellow professional and connoisseurs but an audience largely consisting of those with no strong commitment (in fact, rather strong aversion) to those exertions, and in a venue having evolved in the form of a casual playground.
Those attracted to the unique expressive means in cinema for forwarding that field of discovery, therefore, come to their metier having assimilated a socio-economic context necessitating for them a life of extreme instability and irony, a life, that is, which largely dovetails with their audience. Those temperamentally suited for such wild intercourse have brought to us, particularly over the past sixty or so years, marvels of well-concealed reflective depth. They have had to, from out of a work space evoking levels of wit unimagined by those researching in the more homogeneous and sedate veins of creativity, produce popular, often sensational, entertainments whose real sense virtually no one will notice. As such, they press through their brief days and nights with a view to that vast futurity they will never see.
In view of this dramatic productive situation, many of those intrepid auteurs activate their narratives from out of an inkling of a historical vortex serving to scuttle longings for sufficient verve and poise.
Jim, with respect, you are like the allegedly deep cinematic thinkers you champion, a bit verbose and more than turgid. I will attempt a summary of your rather condescending response: I am clueless.
Fair enough. But let me say that your pursuit of all these degrees of separation is not cinematic. A work of art must stand alone – a Gioconda or a David. A film can only be validly be judged as a cinematic work where the critic is engaged solely with that what is in within the frame. The rest is posturing and for academics.
Von Trier is too conceited and his imagery so self-conscious he has never made and never will make a great film. There is no truth nor grace – the kind of grace Mallick is concerned with – in his films. Only facetiousness and contempt prettied-up in ravishingly empty images.
“Von Trier is too conceited and his imagery so self-conscious he has never made and never will make a great film. There is no truth nor grace – the kind of grace Mallick is concerned with – in his films. Only facetiousness and contempt prettied-up in ravishingly empty images.”
Part of my problem with Von Trier as well and why I don’t respond to his work. I said something similar during the Melancholia post Allan wrote up a while back. But I think it is worth noting that Jim offers a heartfelt and sincere explanation of why the film moved him.
Or—
it could be that images mean many things to every individual person. One man’s ’empty meaningless image’ is another man’s image full of meaning and emotion. I mean, since Mallick [sic] is being the perfect example asserted here over von Trier, I’d say that his Tree of Life is chock full of cliche, trite meaningless imagery. Unless people in white on a beach, or a man walking in a desert through a freestanding door frame strike you as highly original and interesting.
!
That and I don’t see how an image can be both ‘self-conscious’ and ‘meaningless’. If an image is being presented by von Trier as meaning something to him, it’s therefore not meaningless. But you guys don’t like him, which is fine, just don’t assert things about him that are subjective as objective truth.
“If an image is being presented by von Trier as meaning something to him, it’s therefore not meaningless.”
Yes but my central point with Von Trier has always been that what he presents does not give the impression of sincerity or meaning anything other than an artificial pose. Thus it rings false for me in every way. Subjective sure, but what isn’t in these conversations when we get right down to the heart of it. I can’t speak for Tony but I was clearly never trying to state some objective truth. I made it clear that I can respect Jim’s differing opinion and opposite reaction.
Jamie, I made no comparisons with The Tree of Life. Rather I was referencing the conception of grace expounded in that film – nothing more.
Like Maurizio I make no claim to objectivity. You sound like the dickhead judge in The Good Wife who insists lawyers before him open every remark with “in my opinion”.
“A work of art must stand alone – a Gioconda or a David. A film can only be validly be judged as a cinematic work where the critic is engaged solely with that what is in within the frame. The rest is posturing and for academics.”
Seems a pretty objective framework to me, “Art needs to be this to be great” nothing else. To this dickhead at least. If you don’t want to have to say “an my opinion” after each statement, perhaps offer a framework that, though consistent, includes art that moves in many ways and states many things. I mean, jesus two days ago you said (an otherwise poor film like) MARGIN CALL is interesting at least culturally, the implications or stances it takes in the political discussion that (should be) existing ‘outside the (films) frame’. Here, that film would fail as without those political implications (outside the frame) it fails as just art for arts sake.
I don’t understand the ‘no comparison comparison’ to TREE OF LIFE, so I’ll just ask that perhaps someone else can sift through the malarkey and help me out.
Maurizio: It is a taste issue (obviously), but I don’t see how one can watch something like DOGVILLE where the whole Brechtian setup and execution is intended to remove superfluous baggage and irony (cultural and personal to an extent) thus rendering it incredibly sincere.
If you’ve never seen his film THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, perhaps see it. I’ve always thought it shows his intellectual agility and seriousness to which he questions and plays. I think often his ‘playing’ or experimentation rubs many to see him as not sincere or a winking auteur filled with irony. When in fact he’s playing with the form to try to distill his highly personal, highly sincere message to it’s truest and most articulate sense.
Just a thought.
@Tony, I do agree that a film should be judged by what’s in the frame and not rely on connecting the dots for something to be solely great. Again, as I’ve stated below, I’m not the biggest supporter of this film, but I disagree with you that he’s never made nor will ever make a great film. In Von Trier’s best work, there is an incredible portrayal of grace under persecution. I personally feel that Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville are his best films and I will stand by any one of those. True, Melancholia is not on par with those, but there are countless numbers of people that find his films essential and important works.
I feel that what happens in ones life (be it life experience or accumulation of knowledge) always clouds ones judgement on art (hopefully for the better). Acting like we can view art purely by what is being present is impossible (or naive or untruthful) and generally robs the art of what is also want to do (when it’s great at least): become an active participator in the world as well.
@ Jamie, I agree with you in principle. I’m usually rather lenient with regards to art. However, with something like film, I still judge a film by what I believe is “in” the film. If I don’t believe something is there, I can’t judge it on that point. Same reason I can’t dismiss an entire director, or genre (for example fantasy – wink wink) without analyzing each film. Otherwise it’s just complete dismissal for laziness sake. However, I think Tony was sort of questioning the fact that Jim was referencing so many other films in his analysis and was disparaging the fact that this alone does not make it art. What I think was missed, was that it was not just the references that Jim was making. He had other thoughts of his own to add that alluded to the art in question.
I prefer baloney.
Jamie is never wrong and always fair. And pigs fly. Never content to try and understand an argument, but always ready to mislead, confound and demean, and when his hubris is challenged he plays the wounded innocent.
To reiterate. In the opening scenes of TTOL the mother in voice-over talks about grace and nature. That is the full extent of my reference. You say ‘malarkey’. I say ‘typical’.
Margin Call is mediocre yes, but it goes somewhere towards an examination of the zeitgeist. The failings are major and can be discussed totally within the frame – the toxic nature of the products is not clearly explained, the ‘naivety’ of mgmt and traders is not credible etc.
Tony, I’m sorry I’m not playing a wounded innocent, I’m looking to discuss this film here and elsewhere in this thread, and debate your points as well.
Funny, reading a film as it challenges a zeitgeist is both understanding said zeitgeist and why said zeitgeist needs to be challenged or not. Then in the challenging one must make ‘outside the frame’ moral or ethic proclamations or decisions. In other words, basically the definition of ‘looking outside the frame’ of said object/art. If you have such a problem with me disagreeing with you don’t bring such a weak, purely argumentative argument at (in this case) Jim’s piece here.
Bonus points for using ‘hubris’ for the 2,500 time here though. Your check is in the mail.
Again Jamie you have the wrong end of the stick. What I have said repeatedly is that a thesis should be supported by what is found inside the frame not that which is extraneous. As Jeff said in Out of the Past: “All I can see is the frame … I’m going inside to look at the picture”. I suggest you do likewise and give us all a break.
But the parameters of the thesis, its mood, and its ethical/moral stance with which it takes comes all come from the ‘extraneous’ surroundings of the piece of art and the viewer (and creator too).
This is also ironically your stance up to today usually, as for as much as we bicker we both view and judge art from a highly ethical and moral position (aesthetically and content wise). I think that’s correct to do so, and you generally do too. Why you haven’t today, in my opinion here, is because you desired a little tussle this evening. And hell, who am I to turn that down (especially since Jim apparently didn’t care to)?
Some guy lifted me out of the gutter last night. Not a good Samaritan, but a film critic. ‘Hey man’ he says, ‘you look like a guy who was dressed as a mule in a movie I saw in Paris last year. I say, ‘You don’t say! And you look like nobody I know.’ He pushed me back into the gutter.
Fine essay here, Dear JIM, and I’m really excited that you covered this film so thoroughly as I only just saw it on Sunday past…
Very few films of recent memory have left a feeling of awe over me (P.T. Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD was the last time I felt it) and few films ever really try to be so much more than their meager plots…
However, MELANCHOLIA is neither meager in plot or scope. This film is an intimate epic of emotional devastation and eternal humanity. Frankly, I cannot remember a film in the past five or six years that has left me in such a state as much as this film has. I was whalloped by MELANCHOLIA.
To say this is a great film is a understatement so gargantuan that those who make the mistake of using only those words look foolish. I was floored by every frame and cut and I’m more tuned to call it a “masterpiece” or a cinematic “experience” than just labeling it as a film or a movie. We’ve seen our share of End Of The World scenarios on screen, regularly, for about two decades now and all have suffered from the grandiose idea of bargaining the nightmare aspects of the scenario with feats of heroicism that reverse the inevitablity of the plot. In short, those films have a light at the end of the tunnel with a single hero or group of heros jumping in at the finale moments to keep this planet from ceasing to exist. We’ve had boorish alien invasions thwarted by the likes of Will Smith and Shia LeBouf. Natural and Biblical catastophes have been hurled at us only to be bested by the likes of drillers played by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck or Astronauts played by Robert Duvall (even the best actors slum it from time-to-time). Most of these films only see the catastrophe as a device to bolster the resourcefulness of humanity and few have ever pointed to humanity for bringing the catastrophe or, better, the discovery of the impending catastophe to fools that cannot do anything about it or are even willing to admit that nothing can be done. There is always that one speck of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation that will miraculously save us from evil and total extinction. MELANCHOLIA, while not a film I’d like to repeat or revisit often because of it’s honesty, is a breath of fresh air in a sea of “same ole, same ole.” Gone are the ridiculously inane machinations of hacks like Micheal Bay and Roland Emmerich and we are afforded to an “adios” to cardboard figures standing in as real characters in the drama as played by Willis and Goldblum and Pullman and Smith. MELANCHOLIA is an end of the world scenario that plays the scenario out as it probably would really happen.
Much has been spoken and written about on the first twenty minutes of this film. The New York Times recently (this past Sunday) analyzed every shot of the opening in a in-depth study that defined the meanings of it, revealed the metaphors behind them. I’m not about to recant or even give my own rendition of what the opener offered up to me. Suffice it to say, I have nothing but admiration and respect for it and I bow to Von Trier for creating one of the most memorable montages in recent cinema history…
But MELANCHOLIA goes far beyond that 20 minute opening. To be honest, I saw the first few moments of this film as just a warm up to the real fire that was burning. This film is so much more than really beautiful shots and Wagnerian music and slow motion effects. At it’s heart is a brutally truthful look at the hysterical ends one will go to to not have to face the facts of a situation and the reality that some come to when faced with a no win situation. It’s a film about trying to change the things we can and accepting the things we cannot. The character of Justine is left almost completely, physically disabled in her fear of not being able to control the day to day aspects of her life, so we find it soothing that she finds her sure footing in the acceptance of the end of her (and everyone elses) world.
Simplicity is also another stunning element of this tremendous treatise on self-found beauty and the aknowledgement of it. I think of the wooden rod and the curled loop of wire at the end of it as one of the great details of this films beauty. Something as simple as a toy made in the hands of a child bring the protagonists closer to the truth than all the scientific jargon and emotional arguments that dot the film. The lithe, naked figure of Justine, on the banks of the creek as she masturbates to the heavenly symphony that is playing out in front of her is a simple moment of acceptance, a release from the hypocracies of “important” social values that plaque us and turn us into the vile, evil race that is killing this place we inhabit, that we say we really “love”.
The performances, every one of them, cannot not be faulted an iota. From the quick supporting turns of Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt as Justine and Claire’s diverse mother and father, Stellan Skarsgaard as the focal point of Justine’s hatred for her race to a very suprising turn by Keifer Sutherland as the tragic voice of societal hope, they all rate and recieve perfection with their work. They represent everything that is truly wrong with life, from greed and opportunistic back-stabbing to self righteous empowerment that sours every room they walk into. Even more straining and jarring are those that turn a blind eye to truth and wallow in a kind of moronic shadow dance of false hope and opportuinies that even they know will never come.
No. This is the real end of the world and Von Trier is justified in magnifying his ideas by punctuating the situation with two diametrical apposed forces of real life. In Justine, the acceptor of the inevitable, Kirsten Dunst gives the performance of her life. Bare, both physically and emotionally, Dunst’s gradual ascent into clarity is a sight to behold and the transformation from shaking, dirty and intellectually ravaged outsider to bastion of truth and acceptance is tour-de-force never before seen in an actress most well known for her eternal child in INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and the twitty Mary Jane of SPIDER-MAN. Justine is a force of nature waiting for the right moment to reveal herself and, when it does, she slowly slides into the skin of a moment-to-moment prophet whose acceptance of logic has calmed her beyond everyone else.
As Claire, the witness to the prophet, Charlotte Gainsbourg gives one of this years truly miraculous turns. Every move, inflection and hurried moment shows us a real person reacting to the event in the same way you and I would. Every second she is on screen I felt the hysteria of helplessness rape me. It’s a visceral performance and one that rings loud with the viewer because of it’s rawness and honesty. The moment on the terrace with Keifer Sutherland, as she begins to lose her breath because the knowledge of hers and everyones demise hits her, is one of such power I felt my own breathing begin to strain and my heartbeat begin to race. If it were up to me, I’d have her name engraved to base of the Oscar for BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS right now. It’s my favorite performance by an actor in any category this year.
but…
I’m saying alot yet still feel that I haven’t hit the tip of the iceberg. MELANCHOLIA disturbed me in a way that no film has ever disturbed me. Yet, I am inexplicably drawn to it by its masteery of the cinematic language. Every shot, flourish of music and sound, performance and effect had an air of honesty so brutal that I found myself drawn to it the same way we always have to look out the window to see the details of a road accident as we pass by. It’s a hard, relentless film that seduces you with its undeniable beauty and its brave quest to cast a real mirror on emotions we are afraid to reveal to others. It’s our deepest fears that run through out heads as we lay down before sleep and stare at the ceiling and are faced with the uncontrollable onslaught of our deepest thinking. What would it be like if??????
Along with Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE, MELANCHOLIA is the closest I think any filmmaker has come to matching the profound and truthful in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
I’m only a few films away from naming MELANCHOLIA my favorite film of 2011.
Once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it…
dennis, “…emotional devastation and eternal humanity” are very close to the way I see Melancholia, and I’m really pleased you’ve demonstrated so eloquently and affectingly here how arresting that artistry can be. It is indeed a film that disturbs us from normal perceptions. And, like you, I find the performances to be at a rare elevation.
I do differ from you in not having any problem seeing it over and over. (I’m not usually anticipating a DVD release, but this one is different, inasmuch as it goes a long way toward capturing the far reaches of beauty.)
When Justine’s flaky Mom tells her, “Just forget it…,” she may as well be waving a checkered flag because her daughter is stubborn in a special way, keeping her foot on the floor when everyone else has parked.
Dennis,
I voiced my opinions below, but wanted to ask you more about Dunst. You really felt she was that good? I am not with you on that. Gainsbourg gave the far more compelling performance here and showed her up. Dunst did not grab me at all the way Watson, Bjork, or Kidman did in Von Trier’s best films. She was just rather blank and uneffectively morose for me here. If that was the point, then fine. But it doesn’t make it a great performance by my estimation.
JON-Actually it’s right above us in Black and White. I had no problems with Dunst’s performance in this film and found it the best work of her career so far. But, then again, considering the films she’s been in prior to this film she would just have to show up on the set of MELANCHOLIA to best any of them. Seriously, I found her performance quiety informative and she nailed the depressed attitude. It’s a good solid piece of acting.
I also said above that the really remarkable piece of acting came from Charlotte Gainesbourg. Her turn as Claire was the glue that held the entire film together. If this were a real situation then I think Gainesbourg hit all the points and then some in her hysterical reaction. Gainsboug gave my favorite performance so far in 2011.
Yes I read what you said and know you liked Gainsbourg more. Still didn’t see Dunst’s performance the way you did it seems. Showing up to work and looking depressed is probably par for the course in my opinion.
Yeah Dennis, they must have cut the scene with Justine on the toilet – now that would have completed a profound tryptic with the scenes of her pissing on the green and fucking a stranger later (on the same spot). Sublime. A real “piece of shit”.
Tony—
Here is what our friend Roderick Heath, a fellow Australian, is saying as of yesterday about Von Trier at FERDY ON FILMS:
“I haven’t seen Melancholia, and in spite of many promising it’s something like Von Trier’s first real film in a long time, I probably never will: I just don’t like his work. I find him more a walking collection of carefully prepared critic-bait rather than a film artist.”
Existential dread has rarely if ever resulted in such a ravishing and transportive experience as in MELANCHOLIA, a film that showcases ethereal beauty and the sensibilities of Bergman, Strindberg and the Scandinavian world view. Your consideration, Jim of the vital behavioral essence of the film greatly expands on it’s themes and wholly establishes the film as a psycodrama played out in a metaphorical scenario that most compellingly recalls PERSONA and THE PASSION OF ANNA. Your brilliant reference to that stark image in Bresson’s MOUCHETTE and to the thespian kinship of Von Trier and Jacques Demy shed further light on what was going on in Von Trier’s head as well, and the inmdescribably beautiful use of the rapturous Prelude to Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ is given anything but short shrift here. Von Trier’s use of this spectacularly beautiful composition may be the most profound employment of classical music in a movie of all-time, and it fully supports the indellible images that bring it to visual maturation. But as you wisely note, it goes both ways. Yes both Dunst and Gainsbourg are transformative and the film bears more than a striking comparison to Tomas Vinterberg’s THE CELEBRATION at least by way of brooding anger and melancholic sensibilities.
Yes, the film has divided critics and audiences. (Tony d’Ambra voices the dissent here with his own remarkably blunt and brilliant insights) and I definitely see why Von Trier (excuse the pun) can be so trying, yet if you surrender to the film you the results are emotionally cathartic.
The film will definitely appear on my own Top Ten list for 2011 as well.
You’re so right, Sam, in stressing the “ravishing” dimension of the dread ripping through this film. Its navigation definitely has in view a region of joy which beckons at every moment, and which you so well link to the cascade of the Tristan und Isolde motif. “Transportive” is a great word for how this apparition sweeps us away. The astonishingly deft marshalling of elemental and dramatic features gives notice throughout that we have come upon an extraordinarily resolved disclosure, and we can thank our lucky stars that such incongruous energies can still be circulated.
I also saw Bergman’s ‘Persona’ in these proceedings, but it was always clear that the Swede was a kind of role-model for Von Trier. I’ve read comparisons to ‘Antichrist’ but there isn’t a trace of that kind of hopelessness in this film, as there is so much beauty serving as a counter display to the depression. The ladies are superb, Wagner is sublime. Jim Clark’s essay is an amazing study of character.
Thanks, Peter. The love-hate pulsation of the principals in Persona does resonate here. Both Justine and Claire have much to gain from each other, but the rigors of the task they’ve joined splinter their purchase upon love. Bergman was so formatively acute about wasted chances and the intense pain pouring from them.
I only watched this recently, having received a perfect screener from a mysterious benefactor at this site. I like the film, maybe lesser than the big champions. I think the opening sequence couldn’t be rivaled by the angst-ridden narrative that follows. I agree of course with the state-of-mind interpretations here and elsewhere. I was much too distubed by Antichrist, though I responded favorably to Dogville and Breaking the Waves. Your illuminations, again, are incredible.
Yeah the opening 8 or 9 minutes was never equalled for me as well.
Hmm I received a certain something from a certain someone along these lines too. Haha! Thanks to that mysterious benefactor!
Thanks, Frank.
That opening sequence, horrific and sublime at the same time, impacts, I think, as a jolt from another world, a Surreal world, its dynamics for once readily sustainable due to the frazzled physics. The wedding reception plunges us into the world we know, without the souped-up inertia, and its gallows humor serves as a preamble to a form of death that can rise above brutality.
I’ll leave my personal feelings about Melancholia to myself (how rare is that) and just complement you on this very well written piece Jim. Like a finely honed clock by Hugo Cabret, you just keep dishing these essays out steadily and promptly. Nice final screenshot by the way lol….
Thanks, Maurizio.
I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed writing as much as I do now. And that has to do with the great film work I’ve been so late catching up with, and being part of the process (writers and responders) at Wonders, which is such a delightful talent pool.
Jim,
Great fascinating essay and of course your attention to detail is peerless. I applaud you. I, in fact, watched this last night for the first time. I’m both in love with certain aspects of the film, and rather indifferent to other aspects. It contains both greatness and some underlying deficiences. My main points are that I thought the second half was extremely riveting and compelling filmmaking beyond compare. I might even go so far to say it’s the best hour of film in 2011. My disappointment is with the first half. I just was not compelled enough by the first half to really engage with it. If that was von Trier’s aim, he certainly succeeded, but I felt it was cinematically unfocused, choppily edited. This not to include the slow-mo sequence of course. I also was let down by Dunst. She was good, but was shown up by Gainsbourg’s natural intensity. Dunst was too often blank and morose with no real effect on me. So, when all is said and done, I do really like the film. It’s probably still one of my top 10 of 2011, but it’s shy of masterpiece status, and far shy of Von Trier’s best works for me: Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville. These three films build both upon the first half and contain a second half that is nothing less than stunning. They are more consistent works in fact. Melancholia suffers a bit from inconsistency.
As far as references, two things stand out. Yes there is Bergman, but it’s not Persona. In fact, it’s The Silence. Not only are the two sisters both suffering from mental or other illnesses, but the one has a young son as well. I found parallels additionally in the fact that one sister relies more on carnal knowledge while the other tends to “think” more. I’m not sure whether this comparison really plays out, but it’s the film that came to mind. Additionally, God’s silence in both films is quite apparent.
Another is Rod Serling’s great Twilight Zone series. In fact, I might argue that Melancholia’s second half plays out in a glorified way that many of those tv episodes did, with a claustrophic dread, and feeling for the supernatural/sci-fi elements, whilst maintaining a focus on individuals rather than masses. Just a thought really. I don’t think it cheapens the film, I just think it helps me describe it better.
Thanks, Jon, for the kind words and for the well-considered criticisms of the film. You are, I think, on to the kind of structural dilemmas Surrealist narratives tend to invoke. Even a film like Cocteau’s Belle et Bete seems to stumble over the problem of maintaining a coherent tone as between uncanny windfalls and canny downfalls. Following the delicious mystery of the Prologue, the wedding party does seem a bit out of place, the sensibilities there somehow lacking normal adult resources. Perhaps Justine, as an antagonistic and very unstable storm center, acts as a lightning rod for a collection of jerks she has never had the grip to obviate. It is here, perhaps, that her affinities with the ditzy Princess in Donkey Skin come into play, unleashing that flood of precursors that she is on the spot to transcend or do justice to. The second part would concentrate upon her tackling that strange challenge along with Claire, the only figure in her range with whom a loving association could be contemplated.
There is, as you say, nothing wrong with casting that second part in view of the struggles for understanding and affection presented by The Twilight Zone.
Jon and Jim, the reference to THE TWILIGHT ZONE is dead-on, whether one ultimately likes or dislikes the film. There is definitely an other-worldly strain here. IAs I seek to continue showing both sides of the critical coin on the film, despite the fact that I am a major admirer, here is the review at MOVIES OVER MATTER from our good friend Jason Marshall, who dismisses MELANCHOLIA as pretentious:
http://moviesovermatter.com/2011/12/03/the-earth-is-evil-we-dont-need-to-grieve-for-it-lars-von-triers-melancholia/
And going a step further here we have a remarkable coincidence today as in addition to Jim’s stupendous thesis-like examination of the film we have a fantastic capsule for our close friend and confidant Shubhajit Laheri from CINEMASCOPE who states “MELANCHOLIA is a superb meditation on mental illness and apocalypse” that was posted today as well.
http://cliched-monologues.blogspot.com/2012/01/melancholia-2011.html
Yeah Jim now that you mention it, there are very few “adults” in the film at all. In fact, most of the characters have a near pathological aversion toward maturity be it for different reasons. I can think of several characters who seem rather childlike. As for the Twilight Zone, I was especially thinking of that episode where the Sun is getting very close to Earth.
Fine analysis, Jim, but on a pragmatic note ‘Melancholia’ had me wondering from the outset: why does Justine’s family allow her to go through with this marriage so obviously doomed to fail? This girl is NOT, and never will be, marriage material, and her rejection of Skarsgaard is gratuitously cruel (as is her indifference to the fate of the earth).
Or is an abstract frame of mind needed to approach ‘Melancholia’?
Thanks, mark.
Justine’s being a bride in the first place certainly boggles the mind. But like her shadow, the Princess in the Donkey Skin, she could be induced to do foolish things. Her treatment of Michael and Claire and Tim is vicious, but it’s all she can do to work with some success toward the big picture, leaving a messy but still compelling trail.
I think the frame of mind needed to approach Melancholia and all such daring work is constancy to the depths of love. Von Trier treads here, it seems to me, into a domain where physics and love show their partnership.
The wedding thing didn’t bother me at all. In fact, the way Von Trier presented it, like clips from a hand held personal movie camera that is privvied to both the big picture and behind the scenes moments worked perfectly to examine the kind of merry-go-round life that Justine has been living. I summized that Justine had been and still was deeply disturbed but, hoping that a break from her “melancholia” would show as she entered into the relationship with Micheal and, ultimately into the wedding dress. It’s seen as a way of striving toward normalcy. Taking steps toward the big goal. The key moments in the wedding sequence, that signify Justines failure, are her mothers speach and her fathers drunken forgetfulness. Combined, this cracks Justine’s pulled together demeanor and the real deal starts to spill out like a tidal wave.
And, just to refresh everyone’s memory. Both Justines Mom and her brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) make it abundantly clear in the sequence that they don’t think the marriage was a good idea. Remember, these are people that already know of the womens severe depression.
This was an abstract piece in my estimation. Some questions won’t be answered. I’m still working my way through this marvelous essay.
But I think even an abstract film has to make some dramatic or narrative sense.
Ullmann’s mysterious silence in ‘Persona’ is explained to her (and to us) by the doctor, whose diagnosis appears de facto correct since Ullmann’s face bears the look of impassive acceptance throughout the doctor’s psychoanalysis.
Von Trier’s refusal to explain Justine’s odd, shockingly vicious behavior leads to questions of the pragmatic kind that are left unanswered.
When someone is a depressive, to quote ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats, “what reason do you need?” (and I admit Bob Geldof is sort of a tool).
Like above, you say she isn’t ‘marriage material’ which is an incredibly strange thing to say. It all may be excessively cruel, but I don’t see another way to approach art (form creator or receiver) intended to be so intensely psychoanalytical. I think his last few films are attempting to tell stories about emotions as color. Not ‘this is a film about a depressive, from a depressive’ but rather ‘this/these films ARE depression’.
The only fault they could possibly have is that they are linear or plot based. But even then I think the (slight) genre confines he’s placing on himself are incredibly interesting.
Yeah I didn’t feel it needed explanation. She seems to be manic depressive and I chalked it up to that. I have a relative who has this and this person’s behavior at times has swung wildly like that portrayed in the film. I might be wrong about this, but if someone is on Lithium, I recall hearing that their taste buds can be off and food can taste ashy or metallic. Hense Justine saying her meatloaf tastes like ashes?
Yes Jon, if you understand specific depressive neurosis you’ll find that this film, and the earlier ANTICHRIST are literally littered with depressive traits and connotations. For example, after seeing ANTICHRIST and knowing/understanding gynophobia the film opens up. It’s ABOUT that, not about a character WITH that.
He’s making films in the palette of psychiatric colors. I get depressed that others don’t readily understand this (and find this beneficial)…
Jamie that’s a really nice comment from you that makes a lot of sense to me. This is a really helpful point of view that you bring to the table here.
Per Freud (I think) melancholia is a sympton of mourning, but just what is it that Justine mourns (certainly not the fate of the planet and its 7 billion inhabitants, including her own family and young nephew)? The film lacks a moral dialectic and that’s what disturbs me about it.
By marriage material, I meant Justine shouldn’t be allowed to inflict her illness on others, especially her new husband. Due to the severity of her sickness and hostility, any competent psychiatrist would have tried to dissuade her from marriage.
Fair enough. I think at the films easiest base level, an easy connection between marriage (and what happens to the destruction of the individual) and the entire destruction of the planet could be made/understood. If, to an individual, the entire world is contained therein inside themselves, what would naturally happen when it’s trampled and crushed in an institution like marriage (symbolically the whole world would be destroyed right?)?
As far as what a good psychiatrists would (hopefully) recommend, I’d think they should advise all (mentally healthy and not) to never get hitched. Perhaps I have a poor opinion of matrimony? lol
Good point, and I think I’m being too much of a rationalist when approaching this dream-state film.
As for the marriage question, wasn’t it Rampling who said in ‘Life During Wartime’ that it’s unnatural to confine the most intimate experience of your life to just one person? Of course.
David, your intuition that “Some questions won’t be answered” here is, I believe, a most fertile approach to Melancholia. Jamie’s acute point about “emotions as color” enters upon the sense of phenomena spanning conscious entities and the world at large, a sense, I think, very germane to the experience of this film, and posing (as you’ve already begun to realize) insurmountable problems for “answering,” polishing off challenges of discernment.
This film is among one of my top 5 films of 2011 and I was struck by not how accessible it was but how Lars von Trier and Kirsten Dunst really got a handle into the world of depression. Having gone through the experience of that, it felt very real to me in what I saw and I’m not surprised by the way Dunst’s character reacted to what is happening because I would react that way too. I think the film is an indication of what von Trier can do when he doesn’t have to go to extremes while it’s making me more excited for what he will do next.
Steven, your insights into depression would certainly afford access to the hobbling of Justine. The darkness and harshness and smallness there come to be entry points to lightness worth suffering for.
Great essay, James! Doesn’t the fact that the film is so divisive and people can’t stop talking about it make it art? Obviously the film spoke to people in violent ways – making them either love it or loathe it.
For me, it was very close second behind The Tree of Life (in which I saw many similarities/polarities in theme to this) for the best film of 2011 – and I wouldn’t be shocked to find both films sitting comfortably near the top when this young decade is over eight years from now.
http://theschleicherspin.com/2011/10/10/melancholia-marriage-and-the-end-of-the-world/
Thanks David, for such a fertile, stimulating response.
I think your gambit, about the fires burning around this production, is spot on. Melancholia is art precisely because it wraps up the audience in elemental matters extending far beyond show biz. (The deceptively fluffy entry, The Artist, it seems to me quite remarkably deals with this anguish and creative wellspring from the amazing perspective of the “innocent” era of filmmaking.) As you so rightly recognize, The Tree of Life carries close affinities to this issue of almost incredible, certainly cosmic, difficulty of comprehensively creative equilibrium.
Your response and your exciting blog tackle head-on the extreme physicality of this drama streaming from and beyond Melancholia. That slo-mo kickoff is about the narrative, sure enough; but it’s also a vetting for entry to crucial and dangerous dancing. (I saw my first couple of run-throughs at the film festival facility, and, at the second one, a staff person came out before the screening to warn us that the early hand-held scene in the limo has been causing vertigo and anxiety for some viewers. She recommended sitting far back from the screen, and offered counselling for anyone distraught.) I think the love/hate swirling around indicate its touching a nerve of awesome consequentiality. In this, it confirms a stature for film every bit as powerful as that of literature, science, art and design.
I, too, find 2011 to have provided us with an amazing number of audacious and brilliantly crafted films. Also I’m struck and delighted by the level of carnal transparency in Kirsten Dunst’s performance.
Love your whole “dance” thesis – and your closing sentiment packs a wallop:
“Justine looks at them quietly, braces herself and they disappear in a gigantic sheet of electrodynamics, a crescendo of nature at war with itself. Leo had asked, “Can anybody make that cave? Justine (whom he always, rather puzzlingly, referred to as Aunt Steelbreaker [long ago, on his Grandpa’s side, there was an issue of alchemy]), unsmilingly, tells him, “I’m not anybody.” It is remarkable that a scenario about the end of human life could still compellingly maintain the urgency of being not just anybody.”
This speaks to the overcoming depression aspect of the emotional narrative as well – feeling like you’re nobody when you know you’re somebody and then taking action in the final hour to reassert that you’re not just anybody. It’s all mirrored three-fold in layers in Von Trier the author, Justine the character and Dunst the actress – beautifully deep stuff.
Thanks, again, David.
The “deep stuff” here is indeed thrillingly beautiful. Its drama does not merely pretend to be dangerous; it is palpably so, in a very challenging—and rewarding—way. As you can see from this blog’s thread (including an aspect just in today) we’re not simply engaging in personal therapy here, but the full range of the equilibrium at issue touches upon public history and its inquisitorial agendas.
Seeing MELANCHOLIA again tonight on the big screen for the third time. I’ll return if anything new emerges.
James i can’t believe you liked this movie. Didn’t you think it was too depressing? And when the girl from the vampire movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt takes a bath didn’t you think it was inappropriate to see her nudity? And this director is not very well like he said things at a press conference that were very offensive to many people. I don’t know him personally but things that people have said make it seem like he’s not a nice person. You’re taking a big risk supporting this kind of a movie in a public place.
Jack,
In fact I didn’t think Melancholia was “too depressing.” Nor did I think for a moment that the bath scene was “inappropriate.” If you ever get around to reading my essay, you, you might discover other perspectives from which to comprehend these factors.
I have no idea why von Trier stupidly claimed to be a Nazi. I’m only interested in the very constructive features of this film.
As to your final sentence, I wonder: Is that supposed to be news, or a threat?
Ahh Jim I don’t threaten people, I’m a peaceful person, and I think, uhh, many people would say that I like a lot of people, so that would also make me a people person. I was only trying to say how dangerous it is to put yourself behind a person who bragged about being a Nazi. A lot of people take that very seriously even now. I don’t think you’re a Nazi but the wrong person might get the wrong idea. I think you are a great writer and you seem like a good person so I look forward to reading more of your work and hopefully it won’t be as controversial next time although I won’t be upset or bothered if it is I will continue to support your right to do it.
Great to hear from you again, Jack. Your second entry contains a welcome clarification. The films I’m most interested in tend to be contentious but seriously troubled by and alert to the possibilities and difficulties of offsetting violence.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. My next piece is about The Artist, and I’m sure you’ll find it a welcome easing of pressure.