Lars Von Trier's Melancholia

This does warrant its own thread.

friend of mine saw it at the Castro theater and said he laughed through tons of it, which was um an atypical reaction in terms of the rest of the audience

― Full Frontal Newtity (Shakey Mo Collier)

I had the same reaction, actually. Much of it is quite funny. How can you have this much nihilism without a little levity? Von Trier may be the most depressed filmmaker working right now, but that doesn't make him humorless.

John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as the parents are caricatures, but great ones. Keifer offering a toast "to life," and Charlotte Gainsboug's reaction: "To life? What do you mean to life? You said it was all going to be ok!" All of the major performances in this movie are fantastic, if not flat-out revelations. The whole thing is intensely beautiful. Easily my favorite Von Trier movie thus far. I love a movie that your mind gets closer to the farther away you get from it in time. "Resonance," I believe is the word.

there is nothing "revelationy" about Kiefer Sutherland

pretty much everything he did in the '90s beats this one

You liked Dancer in the Dark?

(I did, I just wouldn't have thought of it as a "you" movie.)

I thought Keifer was great in this.

Love this paragraph from the NYT review:

Unlike other von Trier victim-heroines — including those played by Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves”; Nicole Kidman in “Dogville”; and Bjork in “Dancer in the Dark” — Justine is not assailed and humiliated by other people. The element of male aggression that was such a powerful force in those films, and an integral aspect of Mr. von Trier’s creative personality, has been neutralized here. The men who hover around the wedding, including the clueless Michael and the officious John, are not menacing, just useless.

John is worse than officious, in the end, I'd argue, and worse than useless. He says nothing to anyone, disappears while everyone is asleep, and takes *all* the pills. What an asshole.

pretty much everything he did in the '90s beats this one

You liked Dancer in the Dark?

That was 2000. (I chose the decade very deliberately.)

fwiw I think melancholia is his best film

I liked the prologue, the ending, and Dunst and Rampling; Gainsbourg was OK. All the men were uninteresting dicks, or floppy ones.

But intentionally so.

And yes, the prologue -- though I think it's more properly a prelude, as is the music behind it -- is a masterstroke.

i was very impressed by this movie, but i had to get out of my seat and move back about 20 rows during the first part. i was :this: close to vomiting thanks to the queasy cam stuff.

i might have to give the film credit for intensifying a preexisting depressive episode, though.

i saw this on jan. 1. after the final noisy cataclysm it would have been kind of awesome for this text to appear on screen:

"happy new year!
--LVT"

^ Like.

I enjoyed the fake lens flare that he uses in several places, most obviously in the prelude, with the sun slowly receding behind the earth, but even later as well. You see lens flare from a non-existent thing in the sky when Claire is following Justine down to the creek, a scene that ends in her seeing Justine lying naked on the riverbank. Attention to detail. Lovely.

And the lens flare is even matched, digitally I assume, to the hand-held camera. That's almost Pixar-level tech, to do that.

Huge fan of this. I've been intrigued, bored, infuriated, entertained to some degree by every Von Trier film that I've seen. None of them ever came together like this one did for me.

Did anyone else notice how thoroughly creepy the sound of the birds chirping was?

Or the way that in the prelude, you see Claire running (In extreme slow motion) with her son across a hole with a flag with the numer "19" on it?

I tried to watch this but drifted to sleep, does the world eventually end?

Yeah, you find that out at about minute 8. How quickly did you drift to sleep?

Justine had fucked some young guy while hubby is somewhere, and then is dancing with her dad.

so the smaller planet crashing into larger planet is foretelling of things to come? I was looking forward to Von Trier's take on sci-fi.

No, that's it. That's how it ends. The smaller planet is Earth. And is it Von Trier's take on sf, as far as willing to go into the science.

It's sf in the way that "Solaris" is sf.

i got bored and sleepy during the first eight minutes and watched videodrome instead (again)

should i try again? i really liked dogville and kingdom and europa and the idiots etc etc but for whatever reason the intro sequence put me off, seemed kinda ... heavy

yes

then again i don't like any of the things you mentioned (except i haven't seen kingdom) so maybe not i dunno

i only watched videodrome recently and i feel in terms of very vague ~vibes~ there was something of melancholia in it (or the reverse, obv), insofar as there was that utterly incomplete and dispersed f'd upness of it all, so i'd say give it a go.

Justine OTM.

i loved this film, and it's also my favorite von trier film (displacing Dogville). It's intensely beautiful, all the acting is excellent. Yeah nothing happens in it that is very much a surprise (except for the the depths of kiefer's character's assholism) but yeah.

The grey cobweb substance Justine runs through in the prologue

Two shadows on every object at certain points

It looks like an advert? Justine is in advertising?

this movie is so silly. couldn't stop laughing. good with pot though.

the opening credits to this and enter the void are basically the best things for stoned viewing

On the SWANS Facebook page, Michael Gira said Melancholia was the inspiration for one of his new tracks. Depressed the hell out of me. This movie's fucking stupid.

It's not a stupid film, but nor is it a revelatory one.

Actually quite tempted to poll end-of-the-world films, if anyone would be interested? (Button, not ballot.)

Between this and Synecdoche and I dunno, "The Wall"? There's a lot of "love it" / "hate it" polarization depending imo on your capacity to sympathize with crazy people

What else? Oh gee, "Margaret", or "Rachel Getting Married", they work well as character studies and I love these movies but I can understand people getting pissed off with them too

to be fair, i kinda skipped around and didn't watch the whole thing. i am just not a fan of that guy. i was really just watching for the dunst. i have a hard time taking his movies seriously. they seem like an elaborate hoax. and i live for sad stuff.

I enjoyed this film even though it is very flawed. Best use of Wagner in a film since Boorman's Excalibur and it has some wonderful imagery. I reckon a lot of the hate for it is mainly the VT factor.

Between this and Synecdoche and I dunno, "The Wall"? There's a lot of "love it" / "hate it" polarization depending imo on your capacity to sympathize with crazy people

More like your capacity to sympathise with any particular idiosyncratic kind of craziness, imo. Which maybe makes for more interesting discussions, nailing down the differences between kinds of crazinesses and why they are or aren't personally appealing.

Or maybe not.

this movie is great! and basically everyone should agree with me

This movie is ok! Synecdoche is great!

wow this is a short thread and apparently devoid of slocki opinions.

The only thing I didn't like-- even hated! as in it ruined the movie!-- in this film was the repetitiousness of the Wagner theme. The beginning ruled, why did they have to keep Tristanning for two more hours? Wait, I think I posted something about this already.

More like your capacity to sympathise with any particular idiosyncratic kind of craziness, imo. Which maybe makes for more interesting discussions, nailing down the differences between kinds of crazinesses and why they are or aren't personally appealing.

Maybe? I didn't distinguish particular brands of crazy in the respective characters. With these four films I mentioned, I detected some kind of link between "the artist"-- whether scriptwriter or director-- and the protagonist, that the character's mania was somehow linked to the artist's own creative process. And it gave the films a sense of inevitability. I mean, re: this link, we know it to be the case with von Trier and Kaufman. I don't know anything about Rachel Getting Married or Margaret, maybe they were just good movies. But there are other examples of movies with kinda-annoying audience-baiting paranoiac leads that don't speak to me the same way, like "Another Year", or "Safe" (which rules nonetheless), just because the film doesn't feel, well, borne of necessity the way "Melancholia" did, to me. The crazy people in them seem like "people the director know" instead of "the person the director is"

The Synechdoche New York reference is interesting. I like both films and I think for the same reasons. They seem like expanded (Synechdoche) and focused (Melancholia) versions of the same sensibility?

i finally watched it and thought it was pretty good.

"this movie is so silly. couldn't stop laughing. good with pot though.

― scott seward, Saturday, February 23, 2013 6:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

otm

to be fair, i kinda skipped around and didn't watch the whole thing. i am just not a fan of that guy. i was really just watching for the dunst. i have a hard time taking his movies seriously. they seem like an elaborate hoax. and i live for sad stuff.

― scott seward, Saturday, February 23, 2013 4:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hes an admitted troll, but i dont think thats all hes doing, i liked this movie

otm. I felt like Melancholia was if anything overly earnest. But Kirsten Dunst is really good, and it's gorgeous to watch.

Loved Melancholia. I'm a huge fan of Lars von Trier, but he has a tendency to follow his trails a bit too far into the wilderness, and when he is bad he is bad beyond belief. Manderlay, especially, is just inexcusable. Except that he seemingly wasn't sure what he was doing.