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
Lars von Trier
Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Brady Corbet, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling
Denmark
2011
English
Best Actress (Kirsten Dunst), Cannes
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Credits
Screenwriter
Lars von Trier
Cinematography
Manuel Alberto Claro
Editor
Molly M. Stensgaard,
Production Design
Jette Lehmann
Art Director
Simone Grau Roney
Also in This Series
These movies speak to our times and push the boundaries of the art form — the true modern classics we’re confident will withstand the test of time.
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai's most acclaimed and popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses + a newly released short companion piece from 2001.
Paprika
A device capable of transmitting dreams falls into the wrong hands in this dazzling anime meta-movie from visionary filmmaker Satoshi Kon. The imagery here is never less than overwhelming; it's probably the greatest scifi movie of our times.
Margaret
Seventeen-year-old Lisa is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident. But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.
Certain Women
Spare, incisive portraits of four Montana women (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone) brushing up against the everyday wears and tears of difficult men, their own circumstances, and the desire for something better.
Melancholia
Lars von Trier squares up to the end times with this grandly luxuriant but surprisingly punky sci-fi, set in an imposing country mansion house, where Justine (Kirsten Dunst) blows up what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
Moonlight
Moonlight is many things -- a portrait of a young black man coming of age in Miami in the 1980s, a film about fathers and sons, about mentorship and about the scourge of drugs -- but it is also one of the most piercing movie romances of the last decade.
Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig's first film as writer-director is a delightful, painful comedy about "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a Sacramento teen on the point of swapping high school for college, and her hard-working mom, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).
Silence
This sober, probing examination of faith, ego, cruelty and compassion is the most underrated film from the often under-valued latter half of Martin Scorsese's brilliant career; a passion project, about Catholic missionaries in 17th Century Japan.
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- all great, all successful -- then turned director with Synecdoche, which is a masterpiece and which basically went unseen. It's overdue rediscovery.