Melancholia

So, opening sequence, the world ends. A big massive planet crashes into the Earth, enveloping and destroying it. Boom, game over.

Cut to a couple of months before, and we're at a wedding reception. Kirsten Dunst is marrying Some Guy, and her brother in law, Kiefer Sutherland has thrown a lavish party. Kirsten Dunst is clearly suffering from depression, and so obviously her family reacts by hassling her, bullying her and cajoling her to bloody well cheer up and stop ruining the party for everyone. Despite it being obvious that they know she suffers from depression, and that it's *her* wedding for fuck's sake. So basically, everyone she knows is a catastrophically self-absorbed asshole; even her supposedly loving husband who looks initially like he might be the exception begins making demands on her that she just can't deal with, and eventually leaves in a huff.

Cut to months later, Kirsten Dunst is still depressed, quite seriously now, unable to get out of bed, and so her sister brings her to live with her and her aforementioned husband, Kiefer Sutherland. And now we're more focussed on the sister, who is terrified that this new planet astronomers have spotted is going to crash into the earth, but who her amateur astronomer husband says is just going to pass by quite close, and it's only crazy people who say otherwise.

So, part the first is an irritating, self indulgent piece of toss, made in a dreamlike (i.e. in Glorious Badly-Out-Of-Focus-Vision) style, by Lars Von Trier, a director whose own experiences with depression have clearly led him to aggrandise and glorify the condition.

Part the second is somewhat better, as the three adults and a child tensely and testily wait for the end of the world, or not (but which, obviously, we, the viewers have been pre-spoilered that it is going to happen). What we're basically being told is that the depressive copes with Ultimate Doom better than everyone else, because they're used to it. Which is possibly true, but really not worth sitting through over two hours of Lars von Trier self indulgence to discover.

It's odd to review a film like this, because while, in some sense, yes, it's obviously better made, more thought provoking, better acted and so forth than trash like Man on a Ledge or Clash of the Titans, that only serves to give me a more substantial thing to hate.