Melancholia

If there’s any filmmaker you might choose to usher in the end of the world, let it be Lars on Trier. Who better to marry the grand, devastating spectacle of the apocalypse with the detached, sardonic wit of the satiated cynic? That’s not to say the film is flippant. Melancholia has been described as the best film ever made about depression, and von Trier knows the subject intimately. But he’s also made a film of rich, luxuriant aesthetics (Richard Wagner, meet Andrei Tarkovsky) and surprising comic energy, at least in the first of two evenly balanced halves, as Justine (Kirsten Dunst) blows up what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life. In the second half, as planet Melancholia closes in on its collision course with our own blue dot and attention shifts to her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbour) the tone sobers up some (though Justine seems weirdly cheered by impending termination).

Kirsten Dunst won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her superb performance, and it’s probable the movie would have at least shared the Palme with Terence Malick’s equally cosmically-inclined (but much more sanctimonious) Tree of Life, had not von Trier sabotaged himself with some ill-chosen jokes at the film’s press conference. Yet as the dust has settled, Melancholia’s reputation continues to grow.

Von Trier creates a blackly comic delirium that is terrifying and completely exhilarating.

Amy Taubin, Film Comment

A masterwork of grandeur, millennial angst and high romantic style.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

For all von Trier’s history of explicit provocations, this soul-baring, devastating vision might just be his most transgressive of all.

Leigh Singer, Sight & Sound