The Thousands

I feel strongly that Lars von Trier is fucked in the head and that we should condemn his films’ glorying in women’s psychological (and sometimes physical) suffering. But Melancholia surprised me with its romanticism… albeit the sublime kind tinged with suffocating dread. It’s an intimately powerful film that imagines the end of the world with tenderness rather than bombast.

Its disquieting, slo-mo prologue of apocalyptic imagery feels like video art. Like a nihilistic companion piece to Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, it’s set to the prelude from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. This music recurs almost obsessively, coming to represent the florid inertia of sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).

Severely depressed Justine fails to keep her shit together at her wedding to gormless Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) at the country estate of Claire and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Some months later, almost catatonic, Claire returns to the house as an undiscovered planet named Melancholia collides catastrophically with Earth.

The sisters’ terrifying mum (Charlotte Rampling) abhors the sentimental rituals Claire cherishes. But Justine’s more atavistic rituals – baths; nude moonbathing as the planet encroaches; constructing a ‘magic cave’ with her small nephew – provide solace at the last.