EW Movie Review: "Melancholia"

By:Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

The end-of-the-world flick "Melancholia", starring actors Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skaarsgard, opens in theatres this week. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly magazine filed the following review.

To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

The director Lars von Trier has developed a sixth sense for making mediocre movies that are great conversation pieces. His latest, "Melancholia", has a terrific hook. Its not just a drama about the end of the world. Its quite literally Von Triers version of a 50s sci-fi movie -- When Worlds Collide done with hand-held visuals and a grandiose Wagner soundtrack. When you finally get to the climax, with a distant planet looming larger and larger as it gets ready to crash into earth, it has a certain suck-in-your-breath, art-house apocalypse quality.

The problem I have with Melancholia is that before you reach that artsy-poetic armageddon punchline, you have to sit through a whole lot of not-very-convincing family psychodrama. The films entire first hour is set at a wedding that takes place in a ludicrously extravagant lakeside chalet, and everything that happens feels false and slightly hysterical.

Kirsten Dunst is the bride, who before her marriage to True Bloods Alexander Skaarsgard has even gotten under way, has already plunged into a stultifying depression. But why dont any of her family members look u! pon her with a trace of compassion? Von Trier hasnt staged a convincing wedding, or, for that matter, a compelling version of depression. Hes concocted a misanthropic cartoon centered on a dysfunctional bride who, despite Dunsts bristly and intriguing performance, walls off all identification with her.

Melancholia is the name of Dunsts condition, and its also the name of the planet thats heading toward earth.

The implication, on some psycho-metaphorical level, is that Dunst causes this disaster to happen. But that doesnt mean we have to care about it. Charlotte Gainsbourg, as Dunsts sister, brings a humane note to the proceedings, but the trouble with Melancholia, apart from the lurching implausibility of so much of what happens, is that it gives you the feeling that Lars von Trier has staged the end of the world because he thinks the world deserves it.