Melancholia
Directed By Lars Von Trier
Denmark
When describing the filmmaking qualities or narrative strategies of Lars Von Trier, one word shows up again and again: provocateur. The Danish director wants to get inside our skin, distort our comforts, and make us shout at his vision of the world as false. This applies not only to his films like Dogville or Antichrist, but also to his personality off the screen. At the premiere of Antichrist at Cannes, he claimed that God had declared him the greatest director in the world. And this year, at the premiere of his latest film Melancholia, Mr. Von Trier went on a rant that ended with him claiming himself a Nazi. Give it, the director was only joking, knowing the Cannes press core would eat such comments up (it did; the jury declared Mr. Von Trier persona non grata). But Mr. Von Trier was really loves watching those reactions nonetheless. This is a director who loves fucking with you.
And thus comes Melancholia, Mr. Von Trier’s latest, and surprisingly restrained examination once again of depression, except this time with a bang. The apocalyptic imagery that surrounds Melancholia not only makes for some moments of truly shock, but there is certainly much more under this surface as well. Mr. Von Trier suffered from a severe depression in 2006 and has been slowly rebuilding himself as a person, including the blunt instrument that was Antichrist in 2009. But now with some distance, and a real provocation out of the way, Mr. Von Trier has created a more thoughtful and shocking approach to not only examining his own depression, but how to fuck with us as well.
