I've heard a lot about von Trier - he's a filmmaker who inspires adoration and vitriol in equal measure, one who delights in confounding the expectations of his fans. Some think he's an iconoclastic genius, who follows his muse whereever it may take him; to others, he's a novelty act, the cinematic troll extraodinaire. So I recently decided (recently means this morning) to watch all of his films. At first, I wanted to start at the beginning, but Kirsten Dunst was naked in his last film, so I watched that one first. I guess I'll work from end to beginning.
Melancholia
This film is many things. It's a refutation of cynicism; it's an allegory for depresion; it's a poetic disaster movie; but most importantly, and most fundamentally, it's a story. A story about people's lives, the unravelling of them, and a big fuck-off planet that's going to kill the crap out of everything.
Melancholia is a hell of a film. It's got a stellar cast - Kirsten Dunst, John Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland all turn in excellent perforances. Lines that could have sounded overwrought or cheesy in the hands of less talented actors come out sounding exactly right. The cineatography is also top notch; the lush, almost aggressively opulent colours should be terrible,digital at its worst, but somehow von Trier makes it work, so that the film looks like a Caravaggio portrait, though rendered in far colder colours. The story is great - it starts out as a Pinteresque account of a wedding gone disastrously wrong, but what I love about it is the complete lack of attention paid to the conventions of stortelling. Standard filmmaking logic tells us that if a film starts out as a moving account of marital and familial strife should end the same way, whereas von Trier logic says that if a film starts out as a moving account of marital and familial strife LETS THROW A PLANET AT EVERONE. Seriously, this is a great film. Watch it.
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