Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide into the Earth.
Beginning and ending with a bang, but with too much whimpering in between, Melancholia is low-key Lars. But committed turns and poetic visuals will ease you through to The End.
Kirsten Dunst gives a career best turn as the deeply troubled Justine, while, as in his last film Anti-Christ, Charlotte Gainsbourg is the key to guiding the viewer to the final reveal.
Von Trier is a burr under the hide for many viewers, and the unconverted won't be convinced. But it's audacious, beautiful, tactful filmmaking and perhaps the perfect match for The Tree Of Life on a bipolar double bill.
Visually sumptuous and vaguely provocative, it's his least obnoxious film in years, and would be even more bearable without an unyielding score of classical music, which feels like being stuck with Your 100 Most Overfamiliar Tunes. It's what you'd hear if your massage therapist wanted to induce a stroke.
Melancholia steadily grows more transfixing as the shadow of impending extinction looms over its characters, building to a forceful climax that will lift you out of your seat.
You may like or hate Melancholia. It’s hard, though, to imagine being indifferent to it. The film seethes with ideas, darkness, bruising soulfulness, visual invention.
There’s something powerful here, but Melancholia hasn’t quite managed to force it through the screen.
Melancholia is an absurd film in many ways, and yet it would be obtuse not to acknowledge those lightning bolts of visual inspiration.
Distressing examination of depresssion.
Strictly for pseuds.
Melancholia beguiles with the beauty of its apocalyptic visions and the soaring Wagnerian soundtrack but the film is overlong, with dialogue that doesn’t ring true and characters that are often intensely annoying.
Not since Solaris (1972) have science fiction and psychology been blended to such powerful effect.
Goofy and overblown, this is also von Trier's most sincere film to date: a serene meditation on life, family and his artistic method.
Lars von Trier's would-be apocalyptic take on the end of the world is a narcissistic and humourless exercise.
I don't know if the world will quickly forgive him his Hitler quips, but for Melancholia, I'll even forgive him Antichrist.
All in all, the film is long-winded, and Lars von Trier’s taste for the outrageous can be overbearing, but it is certainly a unique cinematic experience.
Photo credit: Christian GeisnGeneral release. Check local listings for show times.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday December 2, 2011, until Wednesday December 7, 2011. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
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