Melancholia

 Melancholia (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from www.freefall-productions.com) 

2011 / Denmark / 135 minutes

“Is everybody in your family stark raving mad?”

Director: Lars von Trier / Screenplay: Lars von Trier / Director of Photography: Manuel Alberto Claro / Production: Meta Louise Foldager and Louise Vesth for Zentropa Entertainments / Cast: Kirsten Dunst (Justine), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Claire), Stellan Skarsgard (Jack), Charlotte Rampling (Gaby), John Hurt (Dexter), Udo Kier (Wedding Planner), Keifer Sutherland (John).

The world ends in Melancholia. The film opens at the story’s conclusion with the complete destruction of the planet well and truly confirmed. What follows is a two act artsy drama about the relationship between sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the time leading up to the apocalypse.

   We’re first introduced to the sisters and the rest of their eccentric, dysfunctional family at Justine’s wedding reception, held at Claire and her husband John’s (Kiefer Sutherland) vast country estate. The lavish ceremony is first disrupted by their feuding parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) at dinner but is eventually completely self- sabotaged by Justine.

   Having long suffered with debilitating depression, Justine finds the reception impossible to cope with and, after insulting her boss (Stellan Skarsgard) to end her advertising career too, she has sex with another guest in the grounds of the mansion and rejects her new husband, ending her marriage as soon as it begins.

   Some time later, Justine returns to Claire and John’s mansion, now in such a melancholic state that she’s almost catatonic and can hardly move. Since the disastrous wedding reception, everyone has become aware of the news that a rogue planet- named Melancholia- has emerged from behind the sun and will pass by close to Earth, with some believing that the planets will collide and destroy each other.

   As Melancholia gets closer, Claire and eventually John descend into worry and panic. Ironically, Justine begins to significantly improve and shows herself as being much more able to cope with the situation. As she explains to Claire, the way everyone else now feels is the way she always has done and “Sometimes, it’s easy being me”.

   Melancholia is the middle part of Lars von Trier’s informal “Depression Trilogy” that began with Antichrist in 2009 and concluded with Nymphomaniac in 2013 (both also featuring Gainsbourg in lead roles). Without all of the controversy surrounding the earlier film’s violent content and the later one’s sexual content, Melancholia is the least well known and most understated of the three but, in many ways, it’s actually the strongest.

   The story was inspired by therapy von Trier was undergoing for his own depression and specifically a psychologist explaining to him that people with the condition can often manage better under high pressure circumstances because they always expect things to go wrong anyway. Whilst basing much of the character of Justine on his own personality, von Trier wrote the part with Penelope Cruz in mind but when she was unable to take it, it went to Dunst (who had also suffered with real life depression) instead.

   Along with Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie 2012 (2009), Abel Ferrara’s drama 4:44- Last Day on Earth (2011) and Lorene Scafaria’s comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012), Melancholia was one of several high- profile “End of the World” films released around the turn of the last decade. The brief trend can most likely be attributed to the “2012 Phenomenon” relating to end of the Mayan calendar but watching Melancholia today, there are more than a few parallels with the Coronavirus pandemic (especially with all the contradictory and unreliable information the characters are given about the rogue planet).

   Scientifically, of course, the events of the film make little sense as far as real astrophysics go but such things were of no interest to von Trier, who instead focused on the human drama and put the opening sequence in to destroy any hope among the audience that the coming catastrophe could be avoided. 

   At the time of the film’s release he explained that “In a James Bond movie we expect the hero to survive. It can get exciting nonetheless. And some things may be thrilling precisely because we know what’s going to happen, but not how they will happen. In Melancholia it’s interesting to see how the characters we follow react as the planet approaches Earth”. Von Trier would also later claim that, although the world is destroyed, the film’s ending is in many ways his happiest.

   Filmed in a castle and its grounds in Sweden (von Trier can never shoot far from Denmark because he also has a fear of flying), the first half of Melancholia features a large ensemble cast of international talent as the wedding guests before the focus shifts to the small group in the second half.

   With the American Dunst, the French Gainsbourg, Canadian Sutherland, British Hurt, Swedish Skarsgard and German Udo Kier in lead parts, it’s never explained how all these people came to know or become related to each other (the reality is the actors all just wanted to work with von Trier). But such details are as irrelevant as the film’s dubious science (and, in any case, Gainsbourg again demonstrates her impressive and somewhat freaky ability to speak- and act- in English with no trace of an accent).

   Although the film itself doesn’t have a reputation even approaching the notoriety of its predecessor or its successor, there was some of the controversy that usually follows von Trier at its premiere at the 2011 Cannes film festival. Unable to resist winding up reactionary journalists with his unique brand of dark humour since putting the wind right up them with Antichrist, von Trier went from discussing Melancholia’s German expressionist influences onto making jokes about the Nazis which went down about as well as one would expect (to the point that Nicolas Winding Refn apologised for him on behalf of Denmark).

   But as literally as all that was taken, nobody thought he was being serious when he said his next project with Gainsbourg would be a porn film…