Lars von Trier takes a slightly less contentious route in this aching sci-fi drama about depression.
Melancholia may be controversial filmmaker
Lars von Trier’s most accessible work, which isn’t saying much considering his credo that “a film should be like a pebble in a shoe,” and his other most recent films are
Antichrist (2009), the
two-part opus
Nymphomaniac (2013), and
The House That Jack Built (2018), which von Trier describes as a movie that “celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless.”
Calling his films unforgiving would be a feeble understatement: the Dutch filmmaker wields his camera like it’s some unholy beast poised with razor sharp claws pressed against the soft, fleshy underbelly of humanity, and when those claws dig in, our darkest, innermost secrets spill out.
In this sci-fi drama, von Trier tells a poignantly apocalyptic story of a woman - played by a gut-wrenching
Kirsten Dunst - with debilitating depression, who begins sinking into the abyss of her affliction on the day of her wedding, as a massive rogue planet hurtles towards Earth. The film is packed with symbolism, the through line linking the rogue planet with Justine (Dunst’s character), equating the behemothic Earth-destroyer with her depression, an illness that when unchecked and at its most crippling, makes every waking hour feel world-ending. There’s no glamorization of mental illness in this film; it’s brutal in its depiction of someone who’s been decimated by their own mind. It’s a scary concept - and a scarier reality - the havoc a simple chemical imbalance can wreck on one’s own well-being, especially in an unhealthy environment.
While his films may often appear grossly incendiary to the uninitiated, Von Trier has been quite public about his own battles with depression, and how his films act as a purging of the demons that plague his brain, acting as a mental and spiritual release. It seems likely that there’s a certain catharsis that can only be found in art at its most visceral - for artist, as well as audience.
In addition, although his films’ subject matter is typically disturbing and confrontational, von Trier’s imagery is just as lyrical and poetic as the works of
Terrence Malick. Rather than clashing, von Trier’s trenchant and evocative directing style marries these two opposing forces of the dismal and the sublime into a wholly idiosyncratic harmony that recalls the haunting allure of
Francisco Goya’s 19th Century
artwork.
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