Melancholia Review

*Promotional Poster for the film Melancholia*

Some films you really want to like, other's make it easy for you to dislike them. Melancholia is a film that will make you question what you like. On the surface it is a beautiful film about depression and how one uses depression to cope with the end of the world, and on the other hand it is a depressing watch that makes you hope you never have to deal with the end of the world yourself. How you'll feel about everything by the films end will all depend on how much you're willing to accept what you as the viewer have just seen, and if everything you've experienced along the way is worth it.

Warning: This review may contain some spoilers as they may be essential to giving a good opinion on this film.

Right away the film opens with an artsy montage that climaxes with the end of the world. Depending on how you feel about such an abstract way to start things off, it will either rub you as truly unique, or very pretentious. From there the

story in a nutshell revolves around the main character  Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst in the first half of the film marrying a man who is more or less forgettable, and even harder to feel sorry for seeing as the world to our knowledge is soon to end. No information from what I can recall was given to how they had met, and how long they had been together, and by the end of the evening their marriage having just started ends just as quickly as Justine's mental health completely fails her. This is just as confusing as it sounds, since again, nothing much is done to explain to you why this is happening, as you are just left to assume that the point of the film is 'not to know'.

As the movie progresses and leads to the second half, we see Charlotte Gainbourg's character Claire, Justine's sister, take the lead and see us through to the end. The more reasonable and able sibling, she takes care of Justine, which leads to many awkward sequences of extreme depression and self loathing which see Justine deprived and defeated in her

opinions of the world towards her sister. Yet by the films end she aids in her sister and her sister's son Leo deal with the planet as it slams into Earth. Kiefer Southerland plays Claire's husband who perhaps is the most aware and outspoken of the insanity that is Claire and Justine's family. This is most understandable given the amount of money everyone seems to have, that being so selfishly depressive as Justine is, is just uncalled for and makes it very difficult to sympathize with her character. Justine feels very authentic in her pain and her desire for freedom since Dunst plays the part so well, but given the world they lived in before Melancholia's collision and everything building up to the end, gratefulness should have been on display rather than a complacent and melancholy acceptable that Justine played up so selfishly to. It just seems a hard sell, and the movie could've done more with a more heroic lead, rather than the reluctant and spoiled one. 

Now having seen other works of Lars Von Trier's such as "Europa" I knew to expect a film that goes very against the grain of contemporary cinema, and Melancholia achieves it goal in that department, but the lacking of characters to truly feel any care for just hindered this experience too much. Much like Natalie Portman's character in Black Swan, feeling sorry for people who have already succeeded beyond most others or been given the gift of the world yet still feel weak and controlled by their torment are hard for me to enjoy. We all have our weakness yes, and Dunst's character uses

those weakness and her depression to cope with the extreme nature of the movie's ending, but it feels like a very sour and hopeless ride up until that point, and renders every weakness lost moot. Why would one want to feel helpless? This question is not meant to be asked by the film, yet it seems to be what's left behind after viewing it. Nothing will make me return a film quicker and never want to watch it again more than a film that leaves me with a feeling of emptiness and regret for the world I watched die, or the people I was given a chance to watch grow either go nowhere or be destroyed for the sake of forced story progression. True, Melancholia let's you know from the get go that the world 'will' in fact end, but it doesn't cushion the blow at all when it's so doomed to relentlessly fall apart. It was my major complaint for me regarding *spoiler* The Cabin in the Woods ending *end spoiler*, and it's my biggest complaint for this film. Hopelessness is not something fun to watch if it's the note that the whole film ends on, in my opinion at least.

So, Melancholia is a hard film to recommend. It is beautiful yes, but it is a bittersweet watch for it's visuals and it's unique approach to telling a story given it's about the end of the world. But the world ends so many times these days for so many reasons, that aside from this being an arty outing, and offering up some great acting, the story itself is very tired and thin, and the character's are hard to like or feel sorry for, and overall the whole experience is depressing and no fun. For a movie that I had such high hopes for, I would recommend watching "Europa" instead. It's not a feel good film either, but it's perhaps the best I've seen from Trier and would have a hard time not recommending to anyone desiring to see a film of his.

Check out the trailer for Melancholia below!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzD0U841LRM


Review Score Card:                                                                                                                      

Storyline:                  Thin, depressing, and hard to enjoy beyond it's concept.

Characters:               Southerland's character is likable, everyone else is frustrating to watch.

Pacing:                     Slow, but fitting given the unique structure of the film.

Interest Level:            It's engaging, but for all the wrong reasons; hard to watch a second time.

Overall:                   4 out of 10, not a film I'd recommend; unique, but just too depressing.