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)
― 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.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 04:26 (thirteen years ago)
there is nothing "revelationy" about Kiefer Sutherland
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 13 February 2012 04:41 (thirteen years ago)
pretty much everything he did in the '90s beats this one
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 13 February 2012 04:42 (thirteen years ago)
You liked Dancer in the Dark?
(I did, I just wouldn't have thought of it as a "you" movie.)
― tanuki, Monday, 13 February 2012 04:49 (thirteen years ago)
I thought Keifer was great in this.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 04:52 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:03 (thirteen years ago)
That was 2000. (I chose the decade very deliberately.)
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:07 (thirteen years ago)
fwiw I think melancholia is his best film
― tanuki, Monday, 13 February 2012 05:08 (thirteen years ago)
I liked the prologue, the ending, and Dunst and Rampling; Gainsbourg was OK. All the men were uninteresting dicks, or floppy ones.
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:09 (thirteen years ago)
But intentionally so.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:10 (thirteen years ago)
And yes, the prologue -- though I think it's more properly a prelude, as is the music behind it -- is a masterstroke.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:19 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:47 (thirteen years ago)
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"
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:48 (thirteen years ago)
^ Like.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:51 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:55 (thirteen years ago)
And the lens flare is even matched, digitally I assume, to the hand-held camera. That's almost Pixar-level tech, to do that.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 05:57 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― Chris L, Monday, 13 February 2012 05:59 (thirteen years ago)
Did anyone else notice how thoroughly creepy the sound of the birds chirping was?
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 06:14 (thirteen years ago)
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?
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 06:34 (thirteen years ago)
I tried to watch this but drifted to sleep, does the world eventually end?
― JacobSanders, Monday, 13 February 2012 07:23 (thirteen years ago)
Yeah, you find that out at about minute 8. How quickly did you drift to sleep?
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 07:26 (thirteen years ago)
Justine had fucked some young guy while hubby is somewhere, and then is dancing with her dad.
― JacobSanders, Monday, 13 February 2012 07:28 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― JacobSanders, Monday, 13 February 2012 07:30 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 07:45 (thirteen years ago)
It's sf in the way that "Solaris" is sf.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Monday, 13 February 2012 07:47 (thirteen years ago)
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
― the late great, Friday, 20 April 2012 23:15 (thirteen years ago)
yes
― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Friday, 20 April 2012 23:34 (thirteen years ago)
then again i don't like any of the things you mentioned (except i haven't seen kingdom) so maybe not i dunno
― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Friday, 20 April 2012 23:35 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― michael nyman cat (Merdeyeux), Friday, 20 April 2012 23:38 (thirteen years ago)
Justine OTM.
― Pita Malört (Je55e), Tuesday, 1 May 2012 03:28 (thirteen years ago)
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.
― akm, Tuesday, 1 May 2012 04:14 (thirteen years ago)
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?
― cardamon, Saturday, 23 February 2013 18:20 (twelve years ago)
this movie is so silly. couldn't stop laughing. good with pot though.
― scott seward, Saturday, 23 February 2013 18:41 (twelve years ago)
the opening credits to this and enter the void are basically the best things for stoned viewing
― þjóðaratkvæðagreiðsla (clouds), Saturday, 23 February 2013 18:55 (twelve years ago)
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.
― circa1916, Saturday, 23 February 2013 20:16 (twelve years ago)
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.)
― emil.y, Saturday, 23 February 2013 20:26 (twelve years ago)
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
― i hold the kwok and you hold the kee (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 23 February 2013 20:43 (twelve years ago)
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
― i hold the kwok and you hold the kee (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 23 February 2013 20:45 (twelve years ago)
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, 23 February 2013 21:22 (twelve years ago)
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.
― Damo Suzuki's Parrot, Saturday, 23 February 2013 23:26 (twelve years ago)
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.
― ledge, Saturday, 23 February 2013 23:52 (twelve years ago)
Or maybe not.
― ledge, Saturday, 23 February 2013 23:56 (twelve years ago)
this movie is great! and basically everyone should agree with me
― zero dark (s1ocki), Saturday, 23 February 2013 23:58 (twelve years ago)
This movie is ok! Synecdoche is great!
― ledge, Sunday, 24 February 2013 00:00 (twelve years ago)
wow this is a short thread and apparently devoid of slocki opinions.
― ledge, Sunday, 24 February 2013 00:01 (twelve years ago)
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.
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"
― i hold the kwok and you hold the kee (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, 24 February 2013 01:28 (twelve years ago)
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?
― cardamon, Sunday, 24 February 2013 02:32 (twelve years ago)
i finally watched it and thought it was pretty good.
― the late great, Sunday, 24 February 2013 04:52 (twelve years ago)
"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
― nostormo, Sunday, 24 February 2013 11:52 (twelve years ago)
― 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
― lag∞n, Sunday, 24 February 2013 12:19 (twelve years ago)
otm. I felt like Melancholia was if anything overly earnest. But Kirsten Dunst is really good, and it's gorgeous to watch.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 24 February 2013 12:25 (twelve years ago)
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.
― Frederik B, Sunday, 24 February 2013 14:44 (twelve years ago)