'Melancholia' (2011) - Flick Through Review
I approached Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) with quite a lot of apprehension - like I was waiting at the door on a rainy day. You see, as somebody who has tussled with a lot of melancholy and often has to dig myself out of brain holes like a grey matter mole, the film was ominous. Looming. Every recommendation called it real and haunting and emotional.
But I braved it and faced the film. And I can now happily say that it is a haunting take on the mind of a depressed person. But it is also beautiful, in a way that someone with the same helpless hopelessness as Justine (Kirsten Dunst’s character) can admire and lose themselves in.
The opening sets up the tone pretty well. We see a few characters reacting in slow motion - a child, a terrified mother, and a bride. They each observe the approach of a meteor that seems to spell death for everyone in the film. And then we are in a car with Justine and her new husband on their way to their wedding reception. Justine has just been married, perhaps this is where the visions of the end of the world came from. She seems excited, if distant. But Justine is a depressed person, who does not fully understand why she feels the way she does throughout the film but acts self-destructively and uncomfortably.
By the time Justine and her groom arrive at the reception, they are late and the whole reality of the film seems to shift through time slightly, with the light of the evening disappearing almost entirely by the time things are settled. Kirsten Dunst is incredible in her performance of somebody trying desperately to hold things together. We can quickly see little gaps in her facade but the erratic and awful way that Justine’s brain works seems too familiar and too accurate. She refuses her husband’s advances, refuses to open up to him, and decides to remove herself from the situation by going for a bath. While she is suspended in this hellish state of trying to appear stable, time just stagnates and acts as something of a purgatory for the characters. Justine’s sister is outraged that she could be upset on her special day and takes it out on her. Justine’s brother-in-law helped to pay for the event and he is pissed. And their whole family seems dysfunctional in such a believable way - their mother is dealing with her own crises and their father is sad and drunk and reminiscing over failed romances past. The climax, no pun intended, of the night sees a slightly drunk Justine deciding to have sex with a random service worker at the reception in a field, and Justine’s husband leaving because he has nothing left to give. And all the while Justine never seems unlikeable - merely broken and doomed.
I relate a lot to Justine - her inexplicable choices acting on self-doubt and fear. She is constantly pessimistic and proves herself right by making herself into the worst thing that she can be. The morning after the reception, Justine cannot get out of bed and her sister comes to lift her up, to bathe her, talking with her the whole time while our protagonist appears catatonic. It is disturbing, but while for some it might be painful to watch, for me it is a jarring spotlight onto things from the other side. Every day that I cannot move, and when I literally have not got the juice to speak or move or even exist anymore - it is a frightening reality for the others in my life like in Justine’s life. And things will always carry on; things can and do get better. But I won’t spoil the second half of Melancholia here because it really does get to the heart of how I feel about the mental health crisis. It asks - what if things shouldn’t carry on? What if the bride whose marriage is over before it began will be that woman forever? What if it feels like the end of the world because it really is?
I recommend Melancholia to anyone and everyone. Well worth your time. But make sure before you go in you are really prepared for the film. The ending is cerebral and gorgeous.
Let me know what you think below! And if there are any other films that use art to show mental health in a similar way please recommend them to me here or on Twitter.
Another Flick Through Review is incoming next Thursday, so I’ll see you then!