(Rated 4/5 )
Billed as a
psychological disaster movie, this is the self-admitted melancholic Lars von
Trier at his best. The visual imagery is stunningly beautiful and
extraordinary. Really riveting! The film opens with a sequence of slow-motion
snippets from the film, so powerful it’s hard to blink even! And hints at what
we are to expect.
And then flows
into normal motion and sequences of highly natural acting and direction. To me
this felt like a documentary – really like the camera discovered scenes that
mattered to best show us who and how these characters are, and how they
interact with each other, and recorded them for us.
Kirsten Dunst
and Charlotte Gainsbourg play sisters, Justine and Claire, and the story is
told in two parts; the first more from Justine’s POV and the second from
Claire’s. The melancholic Justine is getting married and attempting to live a
‘normal’ life. Claire does her very best to try to make everything work for
Justine, but in a way with all her fixing makes matters worse. We get an
excellent insight into Justine’s psychology through witnessing her family’s
behaviour at the wedding and how she responds to it. The camera sees into her
soul via her eyes and body language.
Then, in a
slightly bizarre twist we see how Claire and Justine handle the prospect of the
planet Melancholia on a possible course towards an impact with earth. So much
metaphor at work here! But also questions as to who is more able to handle real
impending catastrophe – the sister with self-created anxieties and distress, or
the more positive and apparently capable one.
A wealth of
great names inhabit the characters in this film, but the core and heart of the
acting and emotion come from Kirsten and Charlotte. They are superb and so
revealing of their characters and the subtle twists and turns of the
relationship between them. All so beautifully and artistically exhibited in the
direction. Amazing and wonderful as well as truthfully insightful and disturbing.
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