Melancholia

This may well be about depression,and the planet Melancholia an all too obvious reference, but my sense is that Melancholia is real, and the problem for most people in the film is that they can't be moved from their self-centered lives to see doom ahead. The reference is to climate change, a now irreversible disaster.

As Some of the Other Posts Have Alluded, there are various Styles of Cinematic Discourse & What seems like Two Or Three Seperate Films within the Gestalt if one Includes the Opening Silent Montage. I watched the First Hour in 2 X And can Concur the Gathering is slow & Pretentious. The last Hour is more of what I was Expecting the Movie to Encompass & was more interesting & Engaging.

This movie was so long that when I watched it in theaters it had an intermission. So keep that in mind. It is very depressing and very beautiful. It is very Lars von Trier, so if you like what he does then I say go for it. Otherwise you may not be inclined to sit through such a slow moving movie of sadness.

This is a gorgeous and powerful film featuring superb performances by its two female leads, as well as two of the best sci-fi special effects scenes I know of. (The night scene lit by both Melancholia and the Moon, and the final scene.) But it's not for everyone. If you don't have a strong attention span, you might not even make it past the surreal slow motion prologue, or the brilliant opening scene of a limousine stuck in a sharp curve of a road. And the movie's slow developmental pace -- absolutely essential to its purpose -- will quickly exhaust you. But if you have the mental muscles to immerse yourself in the poetry of a film over a long haul, you'll be rewarded by a virtuoso portrayal of depression and recovery, the two aforementioned sci-fi scenes, and, in the end, by what I see as a sublime affirmation of human-ness in the face of the inevitable death of all things.

Kirsten Dunst received due accolades for her portrayal of crippling depression, but less discussed is the film's utter devotion to the sublime. Von Trier's trademark composited shots overwhelm and dazzle the senses. The film luxuriates in the grandeur of the universe and natural world with prolonged and painterly tableaus. Such imagery is in stark contrast to a narrative doused in bourgeois mores and the protagonist's subsequent malaise. The apocalyptic finale legitimizes this position as one response to the absurdity of life.