Melancholia - Responses & Retorts

Ben Franklin believed the most important question for fostering good conversation in his weekly pub gatherings to be:


"Have you met with any thing in the author [director] you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physics, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?"


In the spirit of our B.A. Junto, here are some responses to HOM's tweets on Melancholia:

Response One:

This is one of the best HOM reviews yet. The twitter platform really works I think. It works well -- continuity of ideas but with a time-stamped notes -- very helpful, easy to follow.

I still can't decide if there's anything redeeming about this film. All the beautiful things are saturated with meanness, self-loathing, self-ishness. You're right - the sister seems to be the closest thing to a redeeming character.

Also, this review is full of gems, especially that death star reference -- I fucking agree so hard!

Response Two:

OK, some not very well thought-out thoughts:

Maybe it was just the mood I was in at the time but I actually didn’t find it totally depressing, I think people would probably do a lot worse things if they really thought the world was about to end. That aside, what did I like about it...

The first half, as a character study, was awesome – I thought Kirsten Dunst’s character’s depression was incredibly well portrayed, she was insanely frustrating but at the same time you couldn’t really be angry with her. I just felt incredibly sorry for her husband! Also loved her crazy eccentric parents. Granted a wedding was an obvious tool to make a lot of the family issues clear, but I liked that you could tell they had had all the same arguments a million times before – it may have appeared contrived but maybe it was meant to, because sometimes those situation are for real? Having said that, I do agree that some of the ‘rich people issues’ were very in your face.  However, I’m not sure I agree that the emotional scenes needed to become emotional – maybe they were deliberately like that – none of these people could communicate emotionally with each other effectively so the audience was left with the same feeling?

I thought there were a lot of good performances in it – Kirsten Dunst was awesome and should have been recognised in the award season (don’t even get me started on Drive). Charlotte Gainsbourg was equally as good in a part which, in my opinion, was a lot more difficult to shine in. I also loved John Hurst as their father (especially the spoons!).

As for part 2 - the sense of impending doom and claustrophobia were really well achieved - you really felt like there was no way out, that everyone was suppressed by the weight of what was about to happen. I found it more suffocating than depressing, and for that reason probably wouldn’t watch it again for quite some time. Having said that, it was one of the most memorable things I saw last year and here we are still talking about it now.... 

I have to say, there was also a lot I didn’t like – the opening shots and the scenes where Kirsten Dunst had lightning flying out of her hands etc didn’t really do it for me.  I’m also not really a fan of overly ponderous, not-much-happening-but-we-are-being-artistic moments, which may surprise you as this film had quite a lot of those. For some reason it didn’t feel too drawn out and slow to me – but I think that may be because I had bought into the world he created from the start and was wrapped up with their situation. If you stood back from it and tried to unpick it all maybe it didn’t work so well?

I think my personal fav comment of yours was the one about gravel :)

Wow, I hate overanalysing films. I always end up feeling like a pretentious idiot.

Response Three:

Great review!  The twitter works.  I especially like the multiple feeds(?) like the RedBox, and I'm down with the play-by-play style.  

To be honest, I wasn't really into this movie at first but liked it better in retrospect.  Dathalinn loved it, so I know there is redeemable stuff there.

It really shows that Von Trier has never been to America.  That's exactly how I picture some Danish dude to imagine the US of A.  Also, the thing I like best of this movie is it's depiction of the all-consuming nature of depression.  It covers everything and really is like the world's going to end.  So the idea of an utterly subjective, myopic kind of Earth is kind of cool.  But in terms of enjoyment and being pissed off about the "Earth sucks" and "God is nothing" message, I'm right there with Jone Bone.

That being said, it is kind of beautiful and thought-provoking.  So who knows?!

Response Four:

Dude, can't stop thinking about that fucking movie. Nytimes review is halfway persuasive, I think ebert generationally misses the point, and a whole lot of other commentaries are all over the place. I liked yours for the most part. Now that I am removed from the two hours where I actually had to watch such loathsome content and characters I am able to think about some of the dynamics. Particularly referring to Justine and Claire's relationship with each other, themselves, and others. I think there is a lot there that is kind of brilliant. I would be willing to unpack that statement if you asked me and I wasn't typing on my phone. At any rate, the female elements of this movie have my brain spinning. That is to say, my wheels are spinning, I am still not convinced that trier depicted these things very well and I still think his movies are too pompous and somewhat of a sideshow, vindictive even. Then again, he might have been bullied by my high school friends. In that case, I might should be a little more forgiving. Then again, I really don't like pomp. Or rich white guys. One love. 


Response Five:


Dude, what made you think I would care about this? Why'd you send me this? Duh. I've never heard of Lars Von whatever. I actually liked the movie though. I'm over it though. Twitter is weird to me anyways. Have you seen that freak ass movie with Bjork, gf just told me that's by the same director as this one was. That movie was sick*.


*This reviewer is from California. Sick, in this context, means that this reviewer thought that "freak ass movie with Bjork" was good.