Kirsten Dunst greets the apocalypse

“Melancholia” is Lars von Trier’s intelligent, melodramatic, achingly beautiful and wickedly funny new film. It tells the story of Justine (a transcendent Kirsten Dunst), a severe depressive, and her doting and practical sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine’s depression takes the corporeal shape of a planet called Melancholia, which is on a steady collision course with Earth. In the film’s stunning prologue, Mr. von Trier tactfully relieves the audience of any suspense concerning Earth’s fate, allowing the tone to shift from an end-of-the-world thriller to a character and relationship study. “Melancholia” uses the premise of an apocalypse to expose the frays in familial bonds — specifically, the intricate bonds and dynamic between two sisters; a bond that is both affectionate and cruel, supportive and insensitive.

The film is divided into two parts named after each of the sisters. Although part one is named after Justine, the “melancholic” sister, this section of the film proves to be the most humorously absurd. Mr. von Trier is—gasp—having a bit of fun as we follow Justine through the grand charade of her wedding celebration. He has reined in all of his pals from films past to play members of the wedding party, including Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt as Justine’s backbiting parents, and Udo Kier the prim and fretful wedding planner. And despite Justine’s deep sadness during what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, Ms. Dunst is luminous. Instead of portraying Justine as incessantly bleak, Dunst’s performance during this half the film is almost sphinxlike in its spontaneity. She does not skulk around in her wedding dress (although she does, at one point, gracefully urinate in it beneath the moonlight), but rather ventures in and out of the festivities like an elusive specter. And because von Trier has revealed the fate of these characters in the first ten minutes, the audience can empathize with Justine as she views her wedding with a growing sense of dread and indifference.

Part two is named for Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Justine’s pragmatic but anxious older sister. Although Claire grows weary and frustrated with Justine’s erratic behavior, she understands her sister’s illness and knows how to take care of her. Claire’s relationship with Justine becomes increasingly complicated in the film’s second half, as Claire grapples with her own growing anxiety over the path of Melancholia while simultaneously caring for Justine, who has become incapacitated by her depression. In contrast to the darkly sumptuous aesthetic of part one, with an alluring Justine wreaking havoc in a wedding dress, part two is more subdued and more painful to watch; Justine has lost her enigmatic glow, and von Trier, who has long suffered from depression himself, depicts Justine’s descent with alarming candor. It has been suggested that Mr. von Trier uses female characters in his films to represent his own struggles with depression. If “Antichrist” was too vicious and misogynistic, his rendering of Justine’s inner turmoil in “Melancholia” is as upsetting as it is compassionate.

But part two is named “Claire” for a reason. As Melancholia becomes more of a threat, (the planet and the illness) Claire becomes fraught with worry that the end is near, and the sisters’ reactions to the planet begin to diverge. Justine begins to emerge from her depression and becomes more lucid, but is callous towards Claire’s distress. Justine feels a kinship with Melancholia; she embraces the planet as an actual representation and justification for her chronic illness. Yet, just as Claire strove to comfort Justine during her lowest points, Justine’s coldness turns into an intense stoicism, and eventually, into her own display of compassion, especially towards Claire’s son, Leo.

In “Melancholia,” the end of the world is not rendered with mass hysteria or with an overblown sequence of natural disasters, but rather with understated beauty. Bugs creep up from the soil, hail the color of pure white flower buds falls from the sky, all as Melancholia—massively exquisite in itself—looms closer and closer overhead. Despite its morbid theme, bone-rattling soundtrack straight from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and the fact that it’s a Lars von Trier film, the tone of “Melancholia” is almost soothing. Mr. von Trier proposes that the end of the world, like his film, may just be a thing of beauty.

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Vanessa is the press representative/blogger for The Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center in Patchogue, NY. You can read her blog at stickyourthumbselsewhere.wordpress.com

Lars Von Trier calls himself a Nazi at Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival declared Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier a “persona non grata” and banned him from the festival Wednesday for saying he sympathizes with Hitler. The remarks came as the filmmaker told an awkward, rambling joke during a news conference to promote his film “Melancholia.”

“What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end,” von Trier said. “He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews. …

“I am very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass.”

Festival President Gilles Jacob said Von Trier had been banned from participating in the rest of this year’s festival, including accepting the coveted Palme d’Or should his film, which remains in competition, win. Though it unclear whether the director is banned just for the remainder of this year or for future years.

Von Trier, whose “Dancer in the Dark” was awarded the festival’s top honors back in 2000, offered an explanation for his remarks after the interview.

“I don’t have so much to say, so I kind of have to improvise a little and just to let the feelings I have kind of come out into words,” Von Trier told The Associated Press. “This whole Nazi thing, I don’t know where it came from, but you spend a lot of time in Germany, you sometimes want to feel a little free and just talk about this (expletive), you know?”

Watch it happen:

The clip features sisters (played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) discussing the nature of the life on earth while the specter of major catasrophe looms large. Watch:

Now, two years later, the Danish filmmaker’s “Melancholia,” an apocalyptic drama starring Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Alexander Skarsgard is one of the hottest tickets at Cannes.

Aiming to increase the hype surrounding the film Zentropa prods has established a website www.melancholiathemovie.com and released several new photos and stills from the production.

“Melancholia” will debut in competition in Cannes in May.

I realized that much of “Antichrist’s” terror stems from Mr. Von Trier’s use of the woods as a representation of paranoia, anxiety, and dread of the natural world. The first image we see of the woods is when He (Willem Dafoe) and She (a mesmerizing Charlotte Gainsbourg) are still in the drab, but nevertheless safe, surroundings of their apartment. After She accuses He of indifference towards their son’s death, the scene shifts from their bedroom to a starkly black and white image of a wooded area. There is no music, but a sinister, restrained roaring noise, as if the woods are seething. The color is so contrasted that it looks more like a painting then actual woods. The trees and bramble are bone-white and skeletal, jutting out from the underbrush like the claws of some indiscernible but omnipotent beast. Some branches are shaped like arches, almost as if they are portals to a parallel state of reality where, as She later asserts, “nature is Satan’s church.”

Likewise, the eerie white glow of the branches also illuminates Ms. Gainsbourg when, almost like a macabre fairy tale, She is shown in a dream-like sequence, in extreme slow motion, walking over a wooded bridge. It is a long shot from above, and her figure is glowing in an incandescent, ghostly white in contrast to the gray and rust colored wood. What is most unsettling about this shot is that we can clearly see her figure from afar, and that She is gazing straight at us. Yet, her face and eyes are slightly blurred, giving the viewer the impression that she can see us, but we cannot see her, instilling the feeling of being watched by some unknown and indiscernible entity. The image is at once breathtakingly beautiful and chilling.

In another scene which similarly draws on the claustrophobic terror of the woods, He (Willem Dafoe) is attempting to guide She through her fear of the natural surroundings with a “game,” wherein She must walk from one stone to another through several feet of grass. Her bare feet exposed to the long, overgrown grass, again shot in slow motion, gives the sense that each moment the bare foot is exposed to the earth is one of profound vulnerability. The simple, rational action of walking on grass is no longer safe, and any rational thoughts about nature and the woods we’ve been clinging to thus far are slowing disintegrating.

The penultimate moment of these disturbing scenes in the woods is She’s flashback of hearing what she believes is the sound of a crying baby.  At first, the wailing sound is distinctly human, but there are certain moments when the crying has an animalistic, bestial edge; the beginning and end cadence of the cries sound more like snarls, and we are unsure as to whether or not She is hearing the sound of  a child, her child, or whether it is the howl of some fabled, terrible  beast. The most unnerving part of this scene is when, after searching all over the perimeter of the cabin for her son, she finds him blithely playing in the shed.  In a conventional horror film, this would be the moment when the crying, imaginary, psychological, whatever, would cease: “Tah da! Just my mind playing tricks on me! My child is safe and sound, I must just be paranoid!” But not this time. As She stares right into her child’s face, who gives her a somewhat chilling, toothy grin right on cue, the howling continues. There is a close up on She’s stunned face; then, the camera drifts up, up, until we see the vast expanse of the deep woods, which itself may be the origin of the incessant, infinite wailing.

I admit that I do admire Mr. Von Trier as well as Mr. Dafoe, and especially Ms. Gainsbourg, for their artistic fearlessness and audacity. However, I ultimately feel that the film would have benefited from more use of the woods as an expression of this extreme grief and depression rather than the literal mutilation which occurs. For instance, the scene where He crawls into the foxhole, of which the shape is distinctly yonic (female phallus–yup, there’s a word for that!), and She frenetically stabs and tears at the dirt in desperate effort to unearth him, has violent sexual undertones which could have easily and artfully replaced the extreme sexual violence that ensues.

Using the wild, arcane, and dangerous elements of the woods as a representation/expression of the “grief, pain, and despair” that She feels may have been the more imaginative and tactful choice. But then perhaps, the disquieting, subtle moments detailed above would not be as effective if not juxtaposed with the film’s more physically ferocious moments. I personally am mesmerized by films that have those wild, outrageous moments, when you’re staring, (or forcing yourself to look away) from the screen in awed disbelief. That’s what “Antichrist” was for me: a film that took me to the edge while also maintaining moments of quiet, understated power.

*A version of this article first appeared in Alt Film Guide, June 22, 2010.  It has been published here with permission from the author and copyright holder.

IFC, the film’s largest buyer at the Cannes Film Festival, snatched up the surreal, psycho-erotic horror thriller starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe during the festival.

The film caused quite a ruckus at Cannes with most of those who saw either falling in love with it or outright rebuking it.  It was reportedly even met with boos in the screening room.

Meta Louise Foldager produced and Peter Aalbaek Jensen and Peter Garde executive produced “Antichrist,” which won the jury’s actress award for Gainsbourg’s performance.

IFC plans to broaden its theatrical release following its initial launch in the country’s metro areas.  “Antichrist” is also scheduled for a video-on-demand release on Oct. 21.