The first ten minutes or so of Lars von Trier's
latest film Melancholia
are amongst the most gorgeous film making you'll see this or any other
year, as the
cast move in ultra-slow motion through a variety of settings that hint
at a catastrophe to come.
And come it does, as the Earth is crushed into
insignificance by a much larger planet.
With
close to two hours left to run you would be right to worry about where
things were heading, so when Kristen Dunst turns up laughing in a
wedding dress it's a palatable relief… until her wedding reception
turns out to be just as big a disaster as she alienated pretty much
everyone with her increasingly erratic behaviour.
We then jump ahead six months to a time where
everyone (well, her sister and
her sister's husband, who the now clinically depressed Dunst is staying
with) are obsessed with the new planet Melancholia, which is supposed
to just miss
Earth.
Supposed to miss...
Melancholia
is basically three different takes
on the titular condition of despair and depression – the first told
purely in images, the second playing out in a real world, the third a
"real" world where the metaphor of crushing depression has become real
– and it's never less than engaging thanks to an astounding performance
from Dunst and a string of beautiful imagery from von Trier.
Melancholia is
hardly light viewing, but it's a film that repays the effort again and
again.
It's also the sort of movie specifically designed to thrive on a giant
HD TV, with a Blu Ray disc spinning at optimum clarity. For tech nerds,
this is the the sort of movie you want playing in the background just
to show how crystal clear your TV image is!
DVD Special Features
The film itself never made much money, but that's
to be expected of an art house film. So it's great to see that there is
still plenty on offer here in terms of extras, especially on the Blu
Ray.
