Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is the anti-Tree of Life.  I am not the first, nor the smartest, and certainly not the highest-paid critic to make that observation, and yet it forms the crux of what I find so captivating about the infamous provocateur’s newest film.  Terrence Malick saw in death one man’s grief and within that the very lifeblood of existence.  He marveled at the wonders of the universe, found hope through tragedy.  Not so for von Trier, who views the apocalypse itself inside one woman’s crushing misery.  “The earth is evil,” spits Justine in an affectingly tetchy performance from Kirsten Dunst, “We don’t need to grieve for it.  No one will miss it.”

Such defiant misanthropy has always been a hallmark of von Trier as an auteur, but here he’s surprisingly toned-down his more shrill impulses for perhaps his most subdued and ambiguous film yet.  Not that he wants to lull you into a feeling of comfort, though.  The opening of the film is a hypnotic, visually stunning series of surreal images right before our planet collides with another, much larger one.  Right from the start von Trier doesn’t give us any illusions about the end.  At first, I felt that this dreamlike prologue was a little too picturesque a depiction of the apocalypse…but I’ll come back to that later.

One of many incredible shots in the film's prologue.

From those arresting images, we come to “Chapter One: Justine.”  After their stretch limo delays them for nearly two hours, newlyweds Justine and Michael arrive at an extravagant wedding reception.  Over the course of the first hour it becomes the party from hell, as Justine’s parents bicker, her boss and Michael’s best man announces her promotion right before cruelly pressing her to complete a project, and she recedes into what is very obviously an extreme form of clinical depression.  Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, the first woman to tackle – or perhaps endure – a second collaboration with von Trier, and given far more to work with than Antichrist) becomes increasingly exasperated by her sister’s behavior.  One of the unspoken symptoms of depression is selfishness, and boy does he not hold back in showing Justine’s destructive impulses.

Duplicitous and mopey, completely unaware or just uncaring of those around her misery, it’s difficult to like or even tolerate Justine.  In fact, the biggest flaw in Melancholia is that it’s difficult to understand why anyone would put up with her.  While von Trier is at his best a master at dark perspectives in a heightened reality, it’s clear from this film that he hasn’t yet understood, well, normal people.  It makes sense that someone like Claire would try to take care of her damaged sister; it does not make sense that she would convince her rich husband John to spend a fortune on a lavish wedding, knowing full well what kind of person her sister is.  The supporting characters are even more puzzling, especially since we don’t get any context of who they are beyond the wedding.  You’re telling me that not one person would try to interrupt Justine and Claire’s mother Gaby during her cynical speech?  Even Justine’s behavior stretches credulity at times.  Depression or no, it is a little silly to believe that any woman would reject sex with Alexander Skarsgård for an oddly puffy-looking Brady Corbet.  It is possible that these odd diversions are the director’s characteristic methods of keeping his audience disoriented, but even if that was the case not all of them really pay off.

It is in “Chapter Two: Claire,” about the actual arrival of the rogue planet Melancholia, that the film not only becomes more compelling but justifies the first hour and complicates the film’s two-ply character study.  The second half opens with a near-catatonic Justine, half-asleep and barely functioning from her depression when she’s first told about the planet.  From there, the film doubles back on itself in intriguing ways: several lines of dialogue and subplots faintly repeat themselves from the first half, and often in a completely different context.  For a time I believed that von Trier’s self-indulgence would get the better of him: depression is painful, but when times are really bad, you’ll see that only those used to the worst will know how to act!  Such a flattering perspective of Justine stuck me as absurd until I noticed suggestions that Melancholia is a manifestation of her own internal apocalypse; the entire “Claire” chapter is simply her dream dealing with her self-imposed disaster at the wedding.  This also brings the prologue full-circle: its protracted and just a little too “pretty” imagery – complete with Justine in her wedding gown – a metaphor for the imminent doom of the reception.  Melancholia was not in fact trying to be an apologia for depression, but a soul-searching exploration of a depressed mind and all of its despair and contradictions.

"Sometimes, I hate you so much..."

As a cinematic craftsman, von Trier has rarely been more elegiac in his execution or so intimate with his subject.  Working for the first time with cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro, his visual flair is just as impressive as the pictorial accomplishments in the otherwise worthless Antichrist.  While Dunst has received the lion’s share of acting MVP accolades (and a possible future Oscar nomination), Gainsbourg, Sutherland, and the younger Skarsgård are also impressive.

Clearly von Trier is a man who understands depression inside and out, and here he has captured the visceral sensation of pervasive mental hopelessness in a way that is against all odds strangely poignant.  Such a considerate approach to an extravagantly gloomy story is something that one could only say about a head case like von Trier, and only he could attract comparisons to The Tree of Life in that manner.  While the result, alas, is not as emotionally powerful or philosophically rigorous as my favorite film of the year so far, Melancholia’s engaging, passionate and occasionally maddening vision of doom deserves to be considered among the most fascinating artistic statements of the year.

Of course, not everyone will be as impressed by the film as I was.  As Joey made clear in his review two weeks ago, Melancholia did nothing for him.  You can read his dissenting opinion here.

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