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+--- Thread: Melancholia (2011) by Lars van Trier (/showthread.php?tid=3558)
Melancholia (2011) by Lars van Trier - cranefly - 11-12-2015
The sun turns into a jack-in-the-box, and when the music stops, a feather pops out and falls to Earth to tickle the foot of a baby, who pukes.
Okay, that’s not really the plot of this movie. But when a director who knows nothing about science decides to make a science fiction movie, just about anything can happen. A planet can appear out of nowhere and chart a course ruled less by gravity than Brownian motion -- clearly at the whim of the director.
Of course, this isn’t really a science fiction movie. It’s an exercise in psychoanalysis, if one reads the Wikipedia article on the movie. Every character symbolizes something, every event is noteworthy on a psychological level. I missed nearly all of this meaning, for what it’s worth.
Lars van Trier shot most of this with a handheld, and without a script. It mostly takes place at an affluent wedding reception gone awry at a remote location. The footage is roughly pieced together, shaky, to my mind amateurish and cheap; but other reviewers have called it brilliant. I hated just about all the characters.
I felt most of the actors were terribly wasted, especially Charlotte Rampling and Udo Kier. Lars van Trier should make a two-hour movie with Charlotte and Udo engaged in a staring contest, with Aishwarya Rai as referee. All those pale ethereal eyes would be hypnotically spellbinding. Now that I think of it, what a wonderful seizure-inducing psychotronic gif that wound make!
Charlotte Gainsbourg wasted, Kiefer Sutherland wasted, John Hurt wasted... Then again, this is just my opinion, as others thought this movie was brilliant.
I’ll grant that the movie had an absolutely chilling five-second sequence. But that comes after a very long wait.
Re: Melancholia (2011) by Lars van Trier - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 11-12-2015
Rumor has it that Lars Von Trier knows nothing about directing as well as science.