[Melancholia].

Abstract

This is a film review of Melancholia (2011) directed by Lars Von Trier. This film review is available in Journal of Religion & Film: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol16/iss1/10 Ever wondered about the “end of the world?” In America such speculation is both a shared disease and a profitable industry. In Lars von Trier’s recent film, Melancholia, the prospect of apocalypse receives an interpretation that neither fuels the disease nor will (alas) reap massive profits. Prosaically, the film is the story of a newly discovered planet, Melancholia, that is on orbit to collide with Earth. More substantially, the film reveals a theology of the cross in cinematic splendor. It’s apocalypse new. The Dane, von Trier, is a frequent cinematic commentator on religion. In Breaking the Waves (1996), he analyzed a conjunction between trauma, religious rigorism, and sexual libertinism. The result was a brutal study of a distinctively modern form of religious masochism and sexual sadism, with a cheap (to my mind) resurrection at the end. In Antichrist (2009), von Trier again explored sex and guilt, and a living hell of torture and misogyny absent of any resurrection. But in Melancholia, von Trier announces a new thread that works through cataclysm to the virtues on the other side. It is apocalypse beautiful. His awful comments in an interview at Cannes ought not, to my mind, detract from appreciation for this work of art. The film has precedents. It’s not Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and it’s not Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, but it has elements of both. It was filmed, like both predecessors, on location in Sweden—with its austere light. Von Trier, in Melancholia, is also as critical of conventional faith as Bergman in The Seventh Seal, and as languorous about life as Tarkovsky in The Sacrifice. The theme of languor comes through especially in the way the female lead, Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, appears in the film. She’s mad but beautiful; fragile but substantial. Much commentary has focused on a scene where Dunst drapes her naked body across a rock in