Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@emap.com


REVIEWS


Melancholia REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL


The end of the world is nigh in Danish maverick Lars von Trier’s long-awaited psychological disas- ter movie — and for all the film’s command of dark fairytale atmosphere, it is such a long and sluggish haul that many in the audience will find themselves cheering on the apocalypse. An authoritative per- formance by Kirsten Dunst (probably her best yet), a magnificent Wagnerian soundtrack, and effective use of the film’s otherworldly country-house loca- tion cannot disguise the fact this is one of von Tri- er’s most dramatically flaccid films to date. Despite the film’s widescreen panache, the


script feels like an uncooked avant-garde play. And yet some power remains nevertheless, as it did with Antichrist: von Trier has become a stager of fears and anxieties, a sort of psychic circus-master, and despite its faults, Melancholia lodges in the mind like a scary fable told by a strange uncle. Pre-sold by TrustNordisk to a raft of territories,


with Magnolia releasing in the US, Melancholia will split the critics pretty much everywhere it opens, but it is enough of an event to attract a wide arthouse crowd. It also has none of the horror turn- off (or turn-on) problems of Antichrist; there are even some laughs along the way this time round. The film’s opening pre-title section is a stand-


alone tone poem, accompanied by the soaring, romantic Wagnerian orchestral theme (from the prelude to Tristan and Isolde) that will recur throughout. For eight minutes, we are presented


n 8 Screen International at the Cannes Film FestivalMay 19, 2011 COMPETITION


Den-Swe-Fr-Ger. 2011. 135mins Director/screenplay Lars von Trier Production company Zentropa Entertainments International sales TrustNordisk, www. trustnordisk.com Producers Meta Louise Foldager, Louise Vesth Executive producers Peter Aalbaek Jensen, Peter Garde Cinematography Manuel Alberto Claro Production designer Jette Lehmann Editor Molly Malene Stensgaard Main cast Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Stellan Skarsgard, Alexander Skarsgard, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling


with a series of captivating symbolic tableaux shot with dreamlike clarity: birds falling dead from the sky around an expressionless Dunst; Charlotte Gainsbourg trudging with a young boy in her arms through grass on a golf course which seems to have turned to quicksand; and other doom- laden augurs, which culminate in a magnificently visualised planetary collision. Then it is into the first of two narrative sections,


which follows Justine (Dunst) on her way from her wedding to the reception with her devoted new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). As they arrive at the historic country-house hotel which belongs to Justine’s sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and her rich, irascible husband John (Sutherland), we begin to realise not all is well with the new bride. Though it is never explicitly stated, her forced


smiles and compulsion to wander away from the crowd, and her husband, make it clear she is suf- fering from depression, or melancholia. She gets little help from her parents — amiable flaneur father Dexter (Hurt) and bitter, misanthropic mother Gaby (Rampling) — or from her mani- pulative advertising-agency boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgard), so it is left to an increasingly irritated Claire to try to keep Justine on an even keel, and the wedding reception on track. But Justine’s inner darkness overcomes her, and


even Michael is pushed to abandon his bride — though quite why this apparently patient and lov- ing man would not stand by his woman is just one of several plot cruxes we are forced to accept.


Part two of the narrative, ‘Claire’, focuses on the


more ostensibly together of the two sisters, but also fast-forwards the action to some days (or weeks) later. The arrival of an unknown ‘planet’ had been touched on allusively in the prologue and the film’s first section, but here it becomes a reality, and is given a name: Melancholia. The setting is the same hotel — owned and run


by Claire and John, it seems — where Gaby returns, in a near catatonic state of depression. But gradually, as Melancholia’s trajectory puts it on a collision course with Earth, it is Claire who lets her fears overcome her, while Justine gradually light- ens up, reaching a kind of serenity, and taking charge, as the world approaches meltdown. The English dialogue is often stilted, for no


good reason (“I’ve reached a conclusion in regard to the tagline,” says Justine at one point). The director often seems to stifle his actors’ natural expression for his own mannerist ends; this is a film whose emotional heft lies as much in the musical soundtrack as in the performances. And yet Melancholia’s imagining of a lonely, internal- ised apocalypse — experienced, in the end, only by Justine, Claire, Claire’s young son and the horses in the stable, in a big old country house isolated from the rest of the world — does build a weirdly memorable dreamscape, for all its faults of story, script and character.


SCREEN SCORE ★★


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