Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
The way I find myself describing Melancholia is that it's Lars von Trier's 2001.
In part it's the superficial similarities between its beautiful, slow-motion introduction, and Kubrick's planetary waltz to The Blue Danube. It also has the same cosmic scope, the same insistence on being read allegorically -- in true von Trier style, it tells a story simultaneously small and grand, about depression and the ability to cope with extraordinary stress.
Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is getting married, but events are overshadowed by her erratic behaviour -- it is increasingly obvious that her happiness in the opening scenes masks a deeper melancholy -- and, more literally, by a rogue planet looming in the sky, on a collision course for Earth.
Melancholia was my second CIFF 2011 apocalypse, after Take Shelter, and like that film it carefully balances its portrayal of apparent mental illness with supernatural elements. The various other players, notably John (Kiefer Sutherland) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), have different and entirely understandable reactions to different stresses they're exposed to -- and the eventual implication is that perhaps Justine was the most rational of them all.
Not since The Fountain have I seen a film that so effectively pushed all my buttons: it's gorgeous to look upon, and as a realist -- some might erroneously say "cynic" -- I like the idea that, just maybe, it's quite rational to be depressed. After all, the end is coming.