Melancholia

2011 science fiction movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A woman gets married but winds up losing both her job and her husband on her wedding night as she deals with a crippling depression. Her sister takes her in, and they ride horses. Meanwhile, another planet--the titular planet actually--is coming dangerously close to colliding with Earth, and although I'm not a scientist, I'm pretty sure that would be a good thing at all. Jack Bauer looks at it with a telescope.

Another Lars von Trier joint that I've got serious conflicting feelings about. I almost liked Antichrist but was convinced by a reader that I really didn't. This doesn't shove any mutilation or Dafoe penis in your face and isn't uncomfortably surreal like that one. Instead, it's really really dull, probably the slowest-moving science fiction movie of all time. Of course, I guess you're not expecting von Trier to make Star Wars here, so something that moves like zero-gravity molasses shouldn't surprise anybody. This is in two parts--pre- and post-wedding--and after we get some very poetic and very beautiful still images backed by some Wagner, that wedding sequence, with its shaky camera work and focus on improvisational minutia, is about the most excruciatingly boring thing I've ever seen. Lars, I just don't want to watch that much of a rich couple's wedding reception. I think I've been to weddings shorter than that. The only reason I stuck with the movie was because I thought Kirsten Dunst might have a wardrobe malfunction. The second half of the movie is the slowly-unfolding sci-fi dilemma which isn't terribly interesting either since we were already shown what happens at the beginning of the movie. Well, minus the distraction of Kiefer Sutherland and his telescope. Now, the imagery is stunning, and I do like how that aforementioned big sci-fi dilemma doesn't happen like it would in a movie like Armageddon or something. It unfurls like a catastrophe like this really would, and instead of getting frantic news talking heads or screaming pedestrians, the approaching planet and its potential repercussions are developed through the characters' reactions, that languid pace, and the reflective tone. With its extended metaphor (almost as obvious as they come) and fine performances by Dunst and the not-at-all-naked Charlotte Gainsbourg, this almost works. But just almost. And it's really boring and very long, generally an awful combination. Of course, it's often stunningly beautiful, hence the conflicted feelings.