Melancholia (Four Stars)

Denmark: Lars von Trier, 2011 (Magnolia, Amazon Instant Video)

Depression can be a state of anxiety and sorrow in which the world seems to swallow you up. Lars von Trier, who is nothing if not  depressive, on a grand scale perhaps, reverses that process in his new film, Melancholia. He, the artist, swallows the world up instead — using his art as a filmmaker and his fears as a human to hurl our planet (and all of us) into his private darkness and funk, plunge us into his own gloom and (final) doom.

By the way, von Trier was a jerk to make jokes about being a Nazi at the Cannes Film Festival.  It wasn’t funny. He’s no Mel Brooks. Speaking as a descendant of European Jews, whose father just escaped the Holocaust,  I think von Trier should, in future, more carefully measure his remarks, especially when the world is his stage. I will now drop the entire subject, because his film is a stunner, and no one has ever said that a superb artist couldn’t also be an asshole. (Richard Wagner, for example, who was my father’s favorite composer.)

Melancholia…What can you say about a film which begins and ends with the end of the world — and imagines that end in the most extravagantly arty 19th century way, with a musical lament from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” Prelude, falling birds and images of star Kirsten Dunst (who plays the movie’s depressive heroine Justine, von Trier’s emotional stand-in) floats by in the water like Millais’ Ophelia, while images of apocalypse resound like Wagnerian chords, or the prelude of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, restaged for some lunatic Festival of Armageddon? It better be beautiful — or von Trier will look like a fool. It better be striking; it better be memorable. It is.

After Melancholia’s gorgeous angst-ridden prelude to (or prediction of) catastrophe, von Trier takes us into a contemporary but somewhat Rules-of-the-Game-ish world where the rich and privileged are gathered for a party: a wedding celebration for melancholy Justine and her painfully indulgent new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsagrd), who forgives her everything — and there’s a lot to forgive. Accompanying this odd, mismatched foredoomed-in-every-way couple is a huge beautifully dressed assemblage  that includes Justine’s initially well-adjusted, can-do sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, of von Trier’s nightmare Antichrist), Claire’s rich, ultra-rational husband John (Keifer Sutherland), Justine’s nasty mother and nutty father, Gaby (the great Charlotte Rampling) and Dexter (the superb John Hurt), Justine’s money and ad-conscious boss Jack (played by Stellan, the elder Skarsgard),  and dozens of others. A fine cast, all of whom excel at partying and theatrical disintegration.

If the evening seems familiar, it’s because we may have seen before such dysfunctional movie gatherings as the wedding parties run by Robert Altman (A Wedding), Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married), and — a favorite of mine that tends to get ignored in these lists– Krzysztof Zanussi’s  Contract. I’ll bet the party though, that most inspired or engaged von Trier (or aroused his competitive juices), was Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 Danish birthday feast, The Celebration, the international arthouse hit produced by von Trier’s Dogma 95. The two films are quite similar in mood and style, at first — at least during von Trier’s film’s first part (called “Justine”), before apocalypse takes over in the second, “Claire.”

Von Trier is both close to Dogma here, especially The Celebration, and a long ways away from it. He began his career with films that were highly theatrical, visually flashy, almost Wellesian (The Element of Crime, Zentropa/Europa), then made a marked shift to the bare-bones, ultra-indie, jittery-camera style of Dogma 95 and Breaking the Waves. At first, his story’s victims were men; then they became women — preferably big famous beautiful, finance-able and adventurous movie stars like Nicole Kidman or here, Claire Dunst. Now, he seems somewhere between the two, and I wish he’d stay there. Dogmatism of any kind can wear you out. 

In this movie, the staging is complex, the acting is emotional, and the visuals are both spontaneous and lush. The structure is simple. The Melancholia party goes seriously off the rails. Then we discover that our universe is going off the rails as well. A large dark planet named Melancholia is heading toward Terra, and, within days, this world will collide with us, and wipe us out of the skies. Life, movies, politics, financial collapse, love, hate, The Cannes Film Festival: none of it will matter. The chords will crash, the world will end. Kaputt. Why was the wedding party so oblivious to impending doom? Why is Michael still so convinced it won’t happen? Why does Justine seem now not self-indulgent or mad, but prescient, right? Is she? 

In any case, the film is beautiful. Extremely beautiful and very anxious. Depressing, but what did you expect? Listen, face facts: We will probably never see a happy Lars von Trier movie. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the one.

Spoiler Alert

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