A few years ago I was fortunate to be in attendance at the Wexner Center when Lodge Kerrigan spoke at a screening of his film, Keane. (If you've not seen it, do so. It's one of the best American films of the last decade.) During the Q&A I thanked Mr. Kerrigan for not exploiting the main character's mental illness, by playing it for cheap laughs, like in a Robin Williams vehicle. Anyone who's dealt with mental illness, either personally or with a family member, knows that it's not funny.
But what about an artist who exploits their own mental illness? Van Gogh clearly suffered from some sort of psychological malady, yet his ability to channel his fears, dreams, and hallucinations into his work is an important part of why it's so compelling; we get a window into the world of someone not like us, and it's hard to resist.
Melancholia is a work of self-exploitation. Von Trier, while suffering from a bout of depression, was struck by how people suffering from depression handle stressful situations with seeming calm. Since even the worst reality imaginable, i.e., the end of the world, isn't as bad as their perceived reality, why get all bothered about it?
The end of the world in Melancholia is the destruction of Earth, caused by the collision into it of a much larger, 'rogue' planet, named Melancholia. The various characters anticipate or reject the possibility of this calamitous event to varying degrees, and their reaction to its inevitability is determined by various things, not the least of which, their mental 'health.'
Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is not mentally healthy. We discover this as we meet her, on her wedding day. As the film opens, she is two hours late to her reception, and spends the rest of the evening sulking, hiding, and avoiding most everyone, particularly her groom. One person she wants to talk to, her father, played by a well-disguised John Hurt, hasn't time for her, preferring to flirt with two young women named 'Betty.' By the end of the evening Justine has managed to quit her job, have perfunctory, anonymous sex with an erstwhile co-worker, and (unsurprisingly) alienate her new husband (Alexander Skarsgard, son of von Trier-regular Stellan Skarsgard, who himself plays Justine's boss.)
In the second part of the film, ostensibly focused upon Justine's sister, Claire (played by the ever-wonderful Charlotte Gainsbourg), the Melancholia-as-planet plot comes to the fore. John, Claire's impossibly wealthy husband, played by a suitably buttoned-up Keifer Sutherland, eagerly anticipates Melancholia's 'fly-by.' A believer in the 'non-sensationalist' variety of scientists (the ones who tell everyone there's no danger, that Melancholia will pass by the Earth with only the smallest of incident), John tracks the patch of the rogue planet each night with an expensive array of telescopes, initiating his and Claire's son into his stargazing hobby. He has warned Claire to not go online, that the scientists predicting doom and gloom are only angling for attention. Predictably, John is least able to cope with the truth of things.
(Incidentally, Melancholia may be von Trier's least misogynist film, coming on the heels of Antichrist, by consensus his most misogynist one. To be sure, Melancholia is by no means a feminist work, but, taken in the aggregate, the male characters are a far less appealing bunch than the females.)
As it becomes clear that Melancholia will not avoid Earth, the benefit of Justine's melancholia becomes clear - she just doesn't care that she, and every other living creature in the universe, is about to die. "Life is evil," she states blankly. The calm that she exudes is actually a saving grace, of a sort, to her sister and nephew. I don't really think von Trier is trying to make a statement here, that, perhaps, the depressives among us are actually capable of helping the rest of us through life's calamities, but I simply think he's investigating an interesting concept in the most extreme way possible.
Whatever the purpose of the film, I think that von Trier has gifted us with something special. "A beautiful film about the end of the world," (the movie's tagline) doesn't even approach the magnificence that has been achieved. Special mention should be made of the performance of Dunst, who was required to carry the emotional weight of the film, and does so admirably. She was awarded Best Actress at this year's Cannes festival, and it would be churlish to say the award wasn't deserved. For her performance, combined with Manuel Alberto Claro's photography, make Melancholia worth seeing. Everything else is a bonus.
