Melancholia is a haunting portrayal of an impending apocalypse; split into two parts, we are shown the separate perspective of two sisters.
It is no secret that I do not rate
Kirsten Dunst as an actress but she has knocked this one out of the park producing the performance of her career playing Justine, a woman battling with seemingly severe depression. You can only assume she is using method processes, drawing from her own experiences with depression to encapsulate this illness so perfectly.
In the film, Melancholia is a planet moving towards Earth and 'experts' have calculated that this planets' path will avoid any impact. The spectacular opening scenes (extremely reminiscent of
Terence Malick's The Tree of Life, released earlier this year) show the inevitable end of our planet and yet the whole way through you are willing this not to be the case.
This film, similar to The Tree of Life, is encouraging the audience to contemplate the meaning of life. Justine is welcoming the end of the world and this makes such a huge contrast with her sister Claire (
Charlotte Gainsborough - captivating); she is frantic that her son won't get to grow up and that the family won't grow together. This is where the film being split into the perspectives becomes important because this shows us how the sisters' differing values and emotional states determine how they cope with and what they want from the situation.
Just a quick mention for the soundtrack - Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in this film is used to create incredibly powerful, hair-raising atmospherics.
These apocalyptic films are becoming more and more prominent and in this age of terrorism, conspiracy theories and large numbers of natural disasters you can really understand why. This never fails to make me feel more anxious; the more I see, hear and talk about it, the wilder my imagination becomes.
Upon reading more about writer and director
Lars Von Trier you learn that he has many phobias and is quoted to have said:-
"Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking."
Upon recognising his anxieties he has channeled everything he fears into the one thing he doesn't and from this process has produced a very special, visually bold and terrific film that will no doubt split opinion all across the world.
