When I sat down to spin the wheel for this write-up-a-film-review project, I told JMB “I just don’t want to have to talk about Lars right away.” Of course, I rolled his stuff right at number one and had no way of getting out of it, so I’ve been putting off the very first installment of this film auteur odyssey for a while. To prompt me to actually sit down to write this piece, I made a deal with myself that I could kill some space talking about what I am doing as a whole, so I’m going to start with that and you’re just going to have to scroll down to read about our first director.
The Project
I decided that to encourage myself to watch more movies, and to learn a bit more about what would ostensibly be called “famous” directors (also to just get more stuff on the website so our editor in chief JMB would take my wife out of his Clockwork Orange dungeon where he has his prisoners watching the 2019 Fiesta Bowl on repeat), I came up with a list of 50 directors, a mixture of whom I have and have not seen their work. I tried to come up with a spread of what most people would agree are “good” directors, in addition to some of my personal favorites, ones most people would consider “bad,” and a few which are just straight up memes. The rules are that I must randomize the order of the list, watch at least one movie by each director in that order, and then write a review of the film along with background research and discussion of the director. The only choice involved my actual selection of the movie I would watch. Each film will receive a rating on the MJD index, and will be recorded into the annals of INTBQ.
Needless to say, the list came out super weird:
First of all, the top five is a complete roller coaster no one should have to endure. I don’t know if I can even mentally grasp the back and forth of watching that range without going into a Lovecraftian horror seizure. There’s also the potential of three super hero films back-to-back with 12-13-14, but that’s not gonna happen (sorry JMB). 24 to 33 is an absolute powerhouse and I cannot wait for that stretch to hit (if I can even make it that far :4head”). Finally, I am very sad I have to wait until the very end to watch Guillermo del Toro, but at least I get to wait to the end to watch Sofia Coppola.
Anyway, with that out of the way, I guess I’ll talk about this dick head.
Melancholia – My Feeling Going into this Film
“Melancholia” is defined in Merriam-Webster’s English Dictionary as “severe depression characterized especially by profound sadness and despair.” The definition is similar in Oxford’s New English Disctionary, Webster’s International Dictionary, and all other basic English dictionaries which are accepted for the purposes of claim construction by the Federal Circuit. See, e.g., Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
It also describes my general feeling having to sit down to watch Lars Von Trier’s magnum opus, also named Melancholia (2011). Premiering on 18 May, 2011[1] at the Cannes Film Festival, it won a bunch of awards, there are all kinds of reviews from people who went to film school saying it changed their life and it made basically $0 at the box office; all in all a successful Palme d’Or contender. It’s the only film by Von Trier I have seen (who I shall now call Lars, since we are acquainted), and while I’ve wanted to see his stuff for some time now, I was dreading this for a number of reasons. I don’t think that can be explained without talking about the man himself, though.
My Struggle – The Lars Von Trier Story
Lars is a 65 year old Danish film maker who most people’s mom’s and neighbors have probably never heard of, but European film snobs love him. He’s made something outrageous like 30 films which are all super arthouse and pretentious, and he’s been doing it since 1977 with The Orchid Gardener. His films are generally about high-minded philosophical themes and technical excellence (or so I’m told). And basically any synopsis I could give you is plagued with self-indulgence. One of the only scenes of his I had seen before Melancholia was the most outrageous pontificating I think has ever been put down in the medium of film, which you can watch here as Charlotte Gainsbourg explains in the most sophomoric way why being a pedophile isn’t all that bad.
His films are usually set out as self-proclaimed “trilogies” which have some kind of theme running through them, with his first being the Element of Crime – Epidemic – Europa trilogy. Side note, and speaking of self-indulgence – Epidemic is the second installment because it’s a movie about Lars making Element of Crime mixed with some other stuff that is supposedly loosely correlated to it. My criticism of this God complex can be summarized by another egocentric Auteur.
Melancholia is set in a trilogy consisting of Von Trier’s films Antichrist, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac in that order, which is essentially only connected by the fact that Charlotte Gainsbourg is in each of them. It also famously got the man kicked out of the Cannes film festival when he proclaimed “I am a Nazi” and it is a beautiful train wreck each person should see. I just wish I could find the clip where Kirsten Dunst on a hot mic says “Jesus Christ Lars” after all of this. Wikipedia claims it was a joke but I know those shills are watching that website like Goebbels spreading Lars propaganda. Anyway, I won’t belabor the point about the man’s philosophy so much I get INTBQ confused for a wing of Stormfront, so without further adieu, let’s jump into this shit show.
Weirdest Episode of Star Trek Ever
Melancholia is about a woman named Justine (played by Kirsten Dunst) and her sister Claire (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) who generally don’t like each other because Justine is basically so depressed that she is non-functional throughout numerous portions of the movie. The film is split into two chapters titled “Justine” and “Claire,” with the former centering on Justine’s wedding to Alexander Skarsgard (I forget the name of the character), bankrolled by Jack Bauer. Throughout the first half, everyone is doing everything they can to make Justine happy, and she goes through oscillations of joy over things like helping Askars get their limo out of some mud but ending up being late to their reception, to bouts of depression where she is completely non-functional. Jack Bauer is basically the biggest asshole ever in this film and just bitches constantly about how he paid for everything and he does everything and he is Claire’s masculine savior. Justine on the other hand could not give less of a shit about being at this wedding and tries everything she can to get away from it while constantly affirming to individual people “yes, this is exactly what I wanted.” Their parents are divorced, with a supportive father and a mother who gives a toast saying marriage is a waste of time and humans were never meant to be monogamous (I assume this is a Lars surrogate speech and I rolled my eyes so hard they popped out the back of my skull). Justine’s boss is an advertising guy who spends the entire night trying to get work out of her, and she eventually quits her job and goes off on a tirade about something anti-capitalistic. I assume Von Trier wanted a generic suit kind of job and thought “yes, advertising,” but it definitely should have been finance or something so obscure but money-making-sounding. But I digress.
So anyway, Justine goes out onto the golf course (did I mention the wedding is at a golf club) and bangs her intern out of nowhere. My take on this was some kind of desperate need to “feel” something or take control of her life? Not sure, but I definitely would have gone for Skarsgard and gotten that sweet sweet Tru Blood :tm:. The “Justine” half ends with her rejoining the wedding party and pointing out how interesting a random star in the sky is (which we find out more about later).
We get to the “Claire” half of the film, and things are very different. Justine doesn’t seem to be married anymore, and she is completely catatonic 90% of the time. She is being driven up to Claire’s home, where she is staying with Jack Bauer and a kid actor in this palatial estate. Justine is so depressed, she cannot even get into a bathtub without help, to the point where her and Claire are halfway to getting her into the tub when she says “that was good progress, let’s try again tomorrow.” We find out from exposition that there is a planet called “Melancholia” that is on track to swing close to earth, but some people are worried it might actually hit the earth and end all life as we know it. This is presumably the star Justine was pointing to in the first half during the wedding. There are a few character scenes, with stand outs being Claire yelling at Justine and saying “sometimes, I hate you” (I actually got chills at this performance), and Claire finding Justine basking naked in the light of Melancholia by a creek at night as it goes closer to earth. There is this loose theme throughout the half of Justine “just knowing things” where she says that she has this star-sense intuition about how there is no life in the Universe except on Earth (and not for long). Nothing really comes of this, and I think it’s supposed to be some theme about how depressed people have a special insight into the universe or meaning, or that smart people are more prone to depression. The third act consists of Melancholia barely passing by Earth, with Jack Bauer basically telling Claire she’s a dumb bitch for reading trolls online saying the calculations of all the smartest scientists in the world were wrong. Anyway, Jack Bauer kills himself because the planet does a second pass and fucks up the world. Justine is the only one calm in the situation, as her, Claire and Claire’s son decide to endure apocalypse together. Claire wants to have a glass of wine on the porch, but Justine says that’s stupid and has them make a teepee on a hillside (personally, I’m on the side of Jack Bauer and/or Claire on this one). The film ends with Melancholia crashing to Earth, destroying all life as everyone holds hands in the teepee.
Kirsten Dunst Has Scoliosis
Kirsten Dunst basically carried this film the entire way through, which in no small way was why she won best actress at Cannes in 2011. That’s honestly the only reason I would give her a pass for displaying her breasts on behalf of Lars Von Fucking Trier. She was legitimately awesome the entire way through, cringey dialogue about the evils of advertising aside, and really was the star of the show. She did a great job of showing the back and forth between happiness and sadness for someone going through the kind of depression Justine is going through, and she completely sold me on the role. She did an awesome job immersing me in the story, and I really don’t have a bad thing to say about her here. Not sure if I can really say the same about Gainsbourg, even if it is her trilogy. If Jack Bauer’s singular goal was to make you hate him, he accomplished that to the nth degree, because he was basically a vicious asshole the entire time. 9/10 Acting and 7/10 Characters.
I really just want to talk about Star Trek
The story left a lot to be desired, in my opinion. It was a very obvious allegory for depression, but I felt a lot of it was very confused. There was this underlying sub plot about how Justine just “knows things,” i.e. has some kind of extra insight into the world over others, which I assume was Lars trying to say that depressed people have a special way of coping with crazy events. Either way, it felt kind of like a shitty version of a Star Trek Next Generation Episode (like we are talking season 1) about coping with inevitability because someone who has reached oblivion is “already there.” I found the portrayal of extreme depression by Kirsten Dunst and its effect on her family the most compelling part of the story, but the overall framing device and allegory didn’t work for me. The “Justine” and “Claire” chapters made me roll my eyes and I don’t see the point of it. I did appreciate the fact that there was no ambiguity at the end and the film literally killed all of human civilization. Story 6/10.
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Apparently Lars slapped that green filter on his camera lens and didn’t know how to take it off the entire film. This is the greenest movie ever in the second act, and I’m not sure what that color hue was supposed to be – maybe it was blue and it’s supposed to represent depression? Definitely the night scene where Justine is naked in the woods gives you the deepest blue, but is also when she is happiest? Interesting. Overall, I didn’t mind the visuals but JESUS CHRIST STOP WITH THE SHAKEY CAM. Holy moly this whole movie felt like it was shot by Michael J. Fox. I really would have preferred less shaky camera work for “realness” in the first half, but I’ll say I enjoyed most of the second half, and the scenes with Melancholia in the background as a matte painting looked excellent. Visuals 7/10.
Holy shit – I almost forgot – in the very beginning of this movie is this super stylized animated retelling of the entire film where all kinds of stuff happens. You have tentacles coming out of the ground grabbing Justine as she runs in a wedding dress, the planet crashing into the Earth, and all of it is in this interesting dream like state. It was the most self indulgent garbage I’ve ever seen in my life and I fucking hated it, but it looked cool. Edit: Visuals 8/10; Story 5/10.
The Sound of Silence
I thought the sound mixing was particularly good in this movie; lots of scenes where you were able to pick out little details really well. When Justine was molesting her intern on the golf course, you could really get the distance and rustling of the wide shot married with the cinematography. I think the score was excellent, and came into focus at the appropriate times. In particular, I liked how it was married to the animated portion at the very beginning of the film. Sound 8/10.
Overall Review
I did not hate this movie, not by a long shot. I did not love this movie, not by a long shot. It was above average, carried by performances and craftsmanship, and I certainly appreciated Von Trier (I’m sorry, Lars), a bit more after this. Certainly not my cup of tea with the message, but I actually think this film is pretty accessible art house filmmaking, and isn’t un-entertaining at the end of the day. A bit dour (maybe don’t take grandma to it), but worth a watch at some point in your life before the giant planet in the sky kills all of us. Maybe I’ll watch another Lars film if I can survive Sofia Coppola. Overall Impression 7/10.
Total Score: 44/60
[1] Dated in Frenchified format.