Melancholia

Director Lars Von Trier says he was inspired to make this movie by his own bouts of depression. Watching it, you can very much see how the subject of mental illness and how it’s handled by both the people who have it and the people around them is an important subject. The first half of the movie is all about Kirsten Dunst’s Justine on her wedding day. Battling depression, she tried to force her way through the day with a smile but it’s not real. She disappears constantly just to get away from it all. Her behavior ends up ruining the night, torching her job, and ending her marriage in mere hours. The first half is as much about how she battles it and fails as much as it is the people around her being more concerned about money or social standing than her. This comes full circle in the second half, when a rogue planet is careening towards Earth on a deadly collision course, and Justine’s sister Claire is panicking but Justine comes out of her shell. I’m reminded of another movie about depression and how it affects everybody: Prozac Nation. The difference is that Prozac didn’t need bombast or the weird and unnecessary artistic flourishes Melancholia has. Von Trier is way more concerned about making Art (capital A) with a statement mixed in than actually examining mental health. A perfect (if weird) example is a comparison of the nude scenes for the lead actress in both movies. In Melancholia, Dunst bathes in the light of the rogue planet stark naked. The camera leers over her body as she touches herself and stares absent-mindedly into the sky. It’s artsy and yet pervy and totally unnecessary in the latter half of the movie. We know she’s beyond the pale by this point. Moonbathing is not showing us anything we haven’t seen, character-wise. In Prozac, the movie opens with Christina Ricci on the edge of the bed naked the morning she’s supposed to be leaving for college. She hasn’t packed. She can’t even bring herself to get dressed. She’s totally unprepared, because she doesn’t really want to do this. She doesn’t have the energy to do anything. Her nudity underscores her lack of interest in life. That is a statement on mental health. Melancholia approaches it like a Playmate video. So, yeah, it’s heavily flawed in execution. I still admire the performances — Dunst is working her ass off here like never before — and when Von Trier can be bothered to put the camera on a tripod, he gets some great shots. But what is meant to be a deep dive into a serious topic feels like a surface skimming because he’s more interested in making a statement than saying anything.