Starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Cameron Spurr, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgård, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier
Directed by Lars Von Trier
Expectations: High. I love most of the Von Trier films I’ve seen.
Ah geez, why can’t I watch the easy to review movies? While watching Melancholia I wasn’t sure if it was any good, or if I liked it, and now a few hours later I still feel the same way. A bit of my history with Lars Von Trier: I was taking my first college course (Film History) and the teacher was a big film snob dude who loved him some arthouse cinema. He offered extra credit to anyone that went down to Hollywood and watched Lar Von Trier’s latest film, Dancer in the Dark starring Bjork. I didn’t have anything better going, so off I went. At that particular time I was at the height of my own film snob phase, actively shunning nearly every modern film and focusing on watching all the classics (hence taking Film History). So when I sat down to Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, it was with a scowl and a “Let’s see what this pompous fucker can do” attitude. By the end of the film, I was blown away. It had single-handedly renewed my faith in what contemporary cinema could be and made me instantly curious to see more of his work. I ended up watching The Idiots next, which I absolutely hated, but later films have proven to me that when he was on it, he was fucking on it.
I’ve been slacking in keeping up with his latest releases (I haven’t seen anything after Manderlay), but all the good buzz for Melancholia reawakened those feelings of love and I felt compelled to check it out. I knew next to nothing going in, other than it seemed to follow the general Von Trier story where a tortured woman copes with some fucked up situations. That woman is Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, and cope with fucked up situations (on the grandest of scales) she does. There isn’t a lot of traditional plot so I won’t say too much, but the film opens with Kirsten Dunst’s wedding and kind of spirals off from there.