I went to see Melancholia on my own, late at night at the cinema, a few months ago, in a fragile state of mind. My friend Lucas told me to mix Prozac in my popcorn, I even know of a few friends who left before the end. But if I’m down I’ll watch Gaspar Noe, or a documentary about cannibals or pedos, as no matter how bad I feel I still haven’t eaten my parents, or turned up to UCL with a gun, so I think I’m ok really. But in Melancholia I met my match. Something to do with Wagner ( ‘Tristan and Isolde’ in the prologue), accompanying the mesmerizing hyper real paintings. It’s a film that eats you raw and spits you out at the ending, like any Lars Von Trier (Dancer is the dark remains one of my favourites of all time), but I could only feel uplifted and happy by the end.
Justine is going through a pretty rough patch, a depression of seismic proportions. She doesn’t see the point in trying to even be happy at her own wedding (where obviously everything that can go wrong does go wrong). Dunst is so perfect at just giving off the bad vibez. You kind of feel like saying, Justine you’ll get over it, it’s not the end of the world…
Cue the planet Melancholia getting dangerously close to Earth and threatening to wipe everything out. That’s when the roles are reversed, and the depressed finally find peace, and the others start freaking out (like her sister, played by charlotte gainsbourg).
“I’m trudging through this grey, woolly yarn. It’s clinging to my legs. It’s really heavy to drag along” mumbles Justine (Dunst). I had never seen melancholia so well depicted. Justine is so convinced that ‘she knows things’, so justified in her pessimism, she is immune to any form of happiness around her, and worse, she just wants her despair to take shape in real life events and the whole world to go down with her. No point even pretending to be happy in front of her groom, the wedding planner, her parents, her brother in law who financed it all. Even less point grieving in advance for an Earth which is she tells her sister is ‘Evil’. She is selfish, self-destructive and unstable. She doesn’t believe in silly rituals, all the speeches, the cake, the fakeness at weddings, as well as the proper way to wave goodbye to life as we know it. The german grandiosity is a tad laughable, but it had to be done. I know it can all easily be seen as grotesque but Dunst is just so good. I love love love her for this. It was compared to the Tree of life, which I had found a bit boring and narcissistic... I couldn't relate to it the way I did to Melancholia.
Personally I’ve always fantasized about the apocalypse... Any film about it, more or less, can make me interested. Something about needing our inner chaos to be reflected in the violence of natural disasters... sometimes we want the world to end so we can all get it over and done with. We’ve done a shit job. But for now this film will suffice.
I've been recommended the film 'Les derniers jours du monde' (the last days of the world), a French interpretation of the apocalypse, therefore obviously one where everyone starts humping on everyone.
