Melancholia is a 2011 science fiction drama film written and directed by Lars von Trier and starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Kiefer Sutherland, with Alexander Skarsgård, Brady Corbet, Cameron Spurr, Charlotte Rampling, Jesper Christensen, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgård, and Udo Kier in supporting roles. The film's story revolves around two sisters, one of whom marries just before a rogue planet is about to collide with Earth. Melancholia is the second film in von Trier's unofficially titled Depression Trilogy. It was preceded in 2009 by Antichrist and followed by Nymphomaniac in 2013.
On 18 May 2011, Melancholia premiered at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim and Dunst won the festival's Best Actress Award for her performance, which was a common area of praise among critics. Many critics and film scholars have considered the film to be a masterpiece. Along with von Trier's previous film Dogville (2003), it was included in the 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000 conducted by BBC and has since been featured in various listings of the best films of the 21st century.
Plot
The opening sequence showcases extreme slow-motion shots of the main characters, a collapsing horse, falling birds, butterflies, different planets, and images of Earth colliding with a rogue planet.
Part One: Justine Justine weds Michael in a castle owned by her brother-in-law John and her sister Claire. Justine and Michael are late for the reception due to their stretch limousine's difficulty traversing the narrow and winding rural road. Upon their arrival, Justine sees a star in the sky shining brightly. John, an astronomy enthusiast, explains it is the star Antares. When Michael and Justine arrive, they are asked by the wedding planner to guess how many beans are in a bottle for a game. Michael answers but Justine does not. The festivities are less than harmonious; Justine's divorced parents Gaby and Dexter verbally abuse each other in front of the guests. Justine, to John and Claire's annoyance, keeps wandering away. Justine's employer Jack, who announces her promotion to art director of his advertising firm, expects her to write a slogan for a new campaign during the celebration. Justine finds herself pushed into a role that others have chosen for her and falls back into depression, from which she has been suffering for a long time. Toward the end of the party, which goes on until the early hours of the morning, she quits her job in an argument and calls off her marriage to Michael. After everyone leaves, Claire is told by the wedding planner that the number of beans in the bottle was 678 and that nobody guessed correctly. Early the following morning, while horse riding with Claire, Justine notices that Antares is no longer visible in the sky.
Part Two: Claire Some time later, Justine arrives at John and Claire's estate, having sunk even further into depression, where she struggles to leave her bed and is unable to eat. Antares's apparent absence is revealed to be due to a rogue planet, "Melancholia", which appeared from behind the Sun and passed in front of Antares, occulting it. John says that according to the scientists' calculations, Melancholia will pass in proximity to Earth, but will not collide with it. Claire looks anxiously at Melancholia's path on the internet, learning of a theory that having bypassed Earth, it will turn back and collide with it. John tries to calm her down but secretly secures food and gasoline. In view of the approaching planet, Claire increasingly loses her composure, while Justine longs for the end of the world. Justine tells Claire that "all life on earth is evil", and deserves to die. Justine also confidently claims that there is no other life in the universe. When Claire asks how she knows this, Justine simply responds, "I know things" and reveals that she somehow knew there were 678 beans in the bottle at the party when nobody else did. Claire follows Justine into the woods at night as she "sunbathes" naked in the planet's glow.
Strange omens occur in the days that follow. The electricity in the castle goes out, the butler does not come to work, the horses in the stable are restless, St. Elmo's fire is seen at various times, and the weather changes erratically. Melancholia initially flies past Earth, seemingly vindicating John and the scientists. However, a gravitational interaction between the planets sends Melancholia across Earth's orbit for a second time, now moving on a path towards it. On discovering this, John takes his life by overdosing on pills. Claire finally knows for sure that Melancholia will collide with Earth and hides John's death from the family. She attempts to flee with her son Leo, but the cars will not start. Justine declines to spend her final moments with Claire on the terrace by candlelight and wine, finding this suggestion absurd. Instead, Justine calms Leo down by suggesting that they build a "magic cave" out of branches. Shortly before the collision, Justine, Claire, and Leo sit under the "cave" and hold hands. While Justine and Leo seem apathetic to, or at peace with, their impending doom, Claire panics and lets go, succumbing to her despair. Melancholia finally collides with Earth, engulfing them in a sea of flames as both planets shatter against each other.
Cast
Production
Inspiration Von Trier's initial inspiration for the film came from a depressive episode he suffered. The film is a Danish production by Zentropa, with international co-producers in Denmark, Sweden, France, and Germany.
Filming took place in Sweden. Melancholia prominently features music from the prelude to Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1857–1859). It is the second entry in von Trier's unofficially titled "Depression Trilogy", preceded by Antichrist and followed by Nymphomaniac.
Development The idea for the film originated during a therapy session Lars von Trier attended during treatments for his depression. A therapist had told von Trier that depressive people tend to act more calmly than others under heavy pressure, because they already expect bad things to happen. Von Trier then developed the story not primarily as a disaster film, and without any ambition to portray astrophysics realistically, but as a way to examine the human psyche during a disaster.
The idea of a planetary collision was inspired by websites with theories about such events. Von Trier decided from the outset that it would be clear from the beginning that the world would actually end in the film, so audiences would not be distracted by the suspense of not knowing. The concept of the two sisters as main characters developed via an exchange of letters between von Trier and the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz. Cruz wrote that she would like to work with von Trier, and spoke enthusiastically about the play The Maids by Jean Genet. As von Trier subsequently tried to write a role for the actress, the two maids from the play evolved into the sisters Justine and Claire in Melancholia. Much of the personality of the character Justine was based on von Trier himself. The name was inspired by the Marquis de Sade novel Justine (1791).
Melancholia was produced by Denmark's Zentropa, with co-production support from its subsidiary in Germany, Sweden's Memfis Film, France's Slot Machine, and Liberator Productions. The production received 7.9 million Danish kroner from the Danish Film Institute, 600,000 euro from Eurimages, and 3 million Swedish kronor from the Swedish Film Institute. Additional funding was provided by Film i Väst, DR, Arte France, CNC, Canal+, BIM Italy, Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Sveriges Television, and Nordisk Film & TV-Fond. The total budget was 52.5 million Danish kroner.
Cruz was initially expected to play the lead role, but dropped out when the filming schedule of another project was changed. Von Trier then offered the role to Kirsten Dunst, who accepted it. Dunst had been suggested for the role by the American filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson in a discussion about the film between him and von Trier.
Filming
Principal photography began 22 July and ended 8 September 2010. Interior scenes were shot at Film i Väst's studios in Trollhättan, Sweden. It was the fourth time von Trier made a film in Trollhättan. Exteriors included the area surrounding the Tjolöholm Castle, in Halland, Sweden. The film was recorded digitally with Arri Alexa and Phantom cameras. Von Trier employed his usual directing style with no rehearsals; instead the actors improvised and received instructions between the takes. The camera was initially operated by von Trier, and then left to cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro who repeated von Trier's movements. Claro said about the method: "[von Trier] wants to experience the situations the first time. He finds an energy in the scenes, presence, and makes up with the photographic aesthetics." Von Trier explained that the visual style he aimed at in Melancholia was "a clash between what is romantic and grand and stylized and then some form of reality", which he hoped to achieve through the hand-held camerawork. He feared, however, that it would tilt too much toward the romantic, because of the setting at the upscale wedding, and the castle, which he called "super kitschy".
Post-production The prelude to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde supplies the main musical theme of the film, and von Trier's use of an overture-like opening sequence before the first act is a technique closely associated with Wagner. This choice was inspired by a 30-page section of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, where Proust concludes that Wagner's prelude is the greatest work of art of all time. (Von Trier may have conflated this six-page passage with the much lengthier one in the same volume given over to the narrator’s thoughts during a performance of the imaginary Septet by Vinteuil, which does refer to some of Wagner’s later works (specifically Tristan, Rheingold, and Meistersinger) as “masterpieces . . . whose very perfection might perhaps have prevented them from being understood.”).Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 5, The Captive, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Gilmartin, rev. trans. D. J. Enright (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 350–51. Melancholia uses music more than any film by von Trier since The Element of Crime from 1984. In some scenes, the film was edited in the same pace as the music. Von Trier said: "It's kind of like a music video that way. It's supposed to be vulgar." Von Trier also pointed out parallels between both the film's usage of Wagner and the film's editing to the music and the aesthetics of Nazi Germany.
Visual effects were provided by companies in Poland, Germany, and Sweden under visual effects supervisor Peter Hjorth. Poland's Platige Image, which previously had worked with von Trier on Antichrist, created most of the effects seen in the film's opening sequence; the earliest instructions were provided by von Trier in the summer 2010, after which a team of 19 visual effects artists worked on the project for three months.
Release In his director's statement, von Trier wrote that he had started to regret having made such a polished film, but that he hoped it would contain some flaws which would make it interesting: "I desired to dive headlong into the abyss of German romanticism ... But is that not just another way of expressing defeat? Defeat to the lowest of cinematic common denominators? Romance is abused in all sorts of endlessly dull ways in mainstream products."