We Need to Talk About Melancholia

As promised, now that the Cannes film festival has closed up, now that all the surprises, awards and upsets are out on the table, I have a couple of films that I'm excited about. The first one is the dreamy, end of the world, romantic fantasy, Melancholia by Danish filmmaker, Lars von Trier. In the immediate aftermath of its screening at Cannes it was receiving excellent reviews, it was called a masterpiece, it was just about the buzziest of all the buzz-filled films, heck, it was being called a masterpiece AND accessible (ie - enjoyable beyond just the tiny strata of intellectual film buffs.) The film follows Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at her lavish wedding reception held at her sister Claire's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) house. Justine's melancholic nature haunts her even through her fairytale of a wedding while her sister Claire's naturally sensible disposition allows her to thrive in all social situations. Justine's mental state further deteriorates and Claire becomes her caretaker. In the second half of the film, a planet on a collision course with the earth is about to bring an end to life on earth. The tables turn and Justine's melancholia allows her to thrive in the face of The End while her sister struggles to say goodbye to a world she loves dearly. The plot is romanic and apocalyptic, and the soundtrack is full of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Drama, beauty and the romantic ideal of the sublime are exquisitely rendered, and Dunst's dreamy performance won her the best actress award. However, von Trier, the filmmaker most recently known for the shockingly brutal film Antichrist, and previously knownfor the Björk fest, Dancer in the Dark, seemed unable to do the smile and wave, thanks for all the the praise, modest head bob, and perhaps a little eccentric show of artsiness routine that's expected of makers of masterpieces, accessible or not. His tattoo (nsfw) was plenty balls out eccentric and he could have gone with that as his memorable moment but he didn't.

Instead von Trier took the path of most resistance and bombed his press conference with increasingly line-nudging jokes about casting his female leads, Gainsbourg & Dunst in a pornographic film next, understanding Hitler, and a reflection on his German family tree as making him "a nazi." Cannes quickly responded by naming him a "persona non grata" and banning him from the festival. Von Trier later attempted to run damage control and explain that no, he is not a nazi, that his words were the result of a struggle to express himself properly in english (not his native language,) and that they were "stupid." Stupid displays

of antisemitism have not been as uncommon as one might expect (just ask another Cannes guest, Mel Gibson) but nazi jokes, other than the ubiquitous "Hitler hears about X" clips, are pretty much universally in bad taste. As far as I can tell, it seems unlikely that von Trier, who grew up with a jewish father, is actually an honest to goodness anti-semite, however, whatever self destructive impulse that drove him to make those comments is probably best left at home next time.

Watch the Trailer for Melancholia Here

The other film I am excited about is Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on the book of the same name by Lionel Shriver. Tilda Swinton stars as Eva, the somewhat ambivalent mother of Kevin, a teenaged boy who has just committed a violent crime. Swinton has an impressive presence on film. A friend first pointed her out to me over a decade ago in the film The War Zone. Watch her face, he said, it's fascinating. It was. She has since starred in several films, taken home an Oscar and cornered the market on tall, jumpy, gaunt women. In this film the strained

relationship between Swinton's Eva and her son Kevin is on display and Eva worries that it was a catalyst for his actions. Eva is a parent who is, it seems, trying to do her best but ends up feeling responsible for creating a monster out of her son.

Watch a clip from the film Here and Here