The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 20 - ‘Melancholia’

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1:02feel right now, Amanda? Sure. Yeah. No, but yes. I'm so excited that we're doing this. I was like, and so this is, I mean, this is, you agree with me. We agreed on all of these, but this was just like an elated Amanda pick. And I'm like almost giddy. And I've been telling people in our life, we were even talking with Jack before we started and everyone's like, wow, what a depressing movie. Oof, you've got to watch that right now. And I have to be honest, it's obviously incredibly dark, but I find it exhilarating. Let's talk right away about why that is. So the film is directed by Lars von Trier.

1:37It's a full 25, 30 years in his career, the famed Danish filmmaker. It's a critical movie in a lot of ways. It's a movie that sort of signals his arrival to, even though this film was not made in Hollywood, and in fact, he's never been to America, a kind of American and English movie movie. He had previously worked with, Nicole Kidman and Bjork and Emily Watson, but this is an American movie star in Kirsten Dunst and a largely English-speaking cast. Stellan Skarsgård, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Gainsbourg, of course, French stars as her sister, your boy Brady Corbet, a number of other actors, the Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Kiefer Sutherland in American.

2:22And it feels like a classic Lars movie and yet a totally different kind of Lars movie. So contextualize it for yourself, for us. When did you see it? How did it impact you at the time? I do think I saw it the first, around the time that it came out, because I would have been in New York and, you know, I was like in my art house era. But I honestly, I think I really came to this movie because my dad loved it so much, which is also just an incredible take. We'll come back to him. Yeah. Yeah, and the Kirsten Dunst of it all. And I think what you said about it being both a quintessentially Lars von Trier movie and also a departure.

3:05The departure is what brings me into it. Everything from the staging, the sumptuous lush. The first half of the movie is at a wedding at some ridiculous estate and everything is beautifully designed. Well, the whole movie is. The first half is the wedding. The second half is just like, you know, people dealing with, you know, space and the Internet and doom. It uses Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in this memorable and really operatic, pun intended, like over the top way. but there is something big and lavish and showy about what it's doing and not grimy and perverted in the way that many other Von Trier movies can be.

4:05And so the openness or the difference is kind of what brings you in to then what is an incredible movie about his signature subject, which is depression and the world being awful. Yes, a place of pitiless despair. So this movie, which I assume many listeners of the show have heard, but many have also not seen, is now streaming on Netflix and Tubi. So if you'd like to watch this movie, we highly recommend it. We're going to talk about some of the details of the story. It is what it says on the label. It is a story about deep, deep, deep sadness and pain and also a kind of metaphorical pain that comes in the form of a planet that is hurtling towards Earth.

4:50It's on a collision course. And two sisters. Or is it? Well, we can talk about that. We can talk about the literalism or lack thereof in the movie. But the two sisters, Dunst and Gainsbourg, one of them is trying to cope with her depression or is engaging with her depression, depending on how you read the movie. and the other is kind of having a hard time accepting the destiny of these two characters and it's kind of a bifurcated movie that you know says it is about these two women but I find that it is ultimately very much about the Kirsten Dunst character and her pain and also her sense of wisdom and whether or not depression is actually the act of the wise is an interesting question of the movie Dunst character shares her name with the title figure in Marquis de Sade's 1787 novel Justine about a virtuous woman who endures a crucible of suffering and after being reunited with her sister is fatally struck by lightning.

5:46Right. Yeah. Off to an auspicious start. That's not a coincidence. There are many, many literary and artistic homages and illusions throughout this movie. It opens with this, as you use the word sumptuous, I couldn't agree more, this kind of gorgeous fantasia of pain at the very beginning. It is like an overture and it's set to the prelude from Tristan and he's old. And it's like living paintings is like the best way that you can describe it. And it features the actors in the film and scenes and really does set out for you what is going to happen in this film, including the ending, which Von Trier has talked about.

6:26And his reasoning for that is that it's important for you, the viewer, to not be wondering, like, is it going to collide or is it not going to collide? Like, you need you actually need to know the ending in order to understand what he wants you to understand about these characters and the way they're seeing the world and the choices that they that they make, which is sort of his way of saying that he wants you to understand that the depressed person is right. which is like amazing and this so this movie is very is funny on its on its face like there are actually comedic moments but to me there is I guess it's the way I respond to like nihilism and this like deep depression I'm just like it is actually hilarious to me that he just makes this like entire like opera about how how how the depressed person is the only person seen clearly it's or should who should at least be listened to or who's like whose journey towards acceptance is rational in some ways because the the feeling of depression is so irrational and that those who are not kind of in sync with someone who is feeling depressed are often approaching them like what is wrong with you what is wrong with you right so this idea of like orienting the truth inside of the person who is illogical is such a smart concept.

7:51And the only way to actually, to like, to find peace and to make it through whatever is left of the world. Right. It's, I mean, it's audacious. It is. And funny to me. I think it is. Because it's so depressing that I don't know how else to respond to it. Yeah, I think all of Von Trier's movies have a sense of humor about them because he takes bleakness to their absolute for this extent. I think one thing that, one reason that this movie I feel is differentiated and is ultimately my favorite of all of his films is he makes a choice to not make the lead female character like a humiliated victim.

8:27She is a person in pain, but I think there is an incredible sensitivity to her pain. And that idea of like her being right is something that you don't necessarily feel in Breaking the Waves or in Dancer in the Dark. There's like a punishing quality to those movies in Dogville, Manderley, like all of these movies that he's made, especially those sort of more the English ones are in the are really hard to sit through and accept. And when you arrive at the end of them, you say the same thing that you say at the end of this movie. But when you say it at the end of this movie, you can say like, well, I guess we're fucked.

9:01Instead of like, we are fucked. Yeah. And even though he doesn't necessarily shift his totalizing view of the world, the energy that he brings to it and I think the sort of like sensitivity that he has to these characters is a little bit different, which I find really interesting. Like I'm not even sure what brought him to this stage in his career. He's such a controversial filmmaker and there's a lot of controversy embedded in the release of this movie. Really, some self-sabotage for sure. We can talk about that in a little while, but I just find it to be a bit different from any other Von Trier movie.

9:35We'll mostly talk about Kirsten Dunst, I think, with Reason and this is Kirsten Dunst's movie and she is, I think, the Von Trier stand-in for lack of a better word. But the Charlotte Gainsbourg character is really important. both in when I watched it again for this podcast I was like oh so one's depression and one's anxiety which is a really like fascinating you know and I struggle with both so it's they are two prongs of the same experience there must be some of him and her and Gainsbourg's character as well yeah but the Gainsbourg character is there showing both a lot of empathy for the dense character and is kind of the vehicle for everything you're saying about not punishing the person, at least trying to accommodate.

10:26And she gets frustrated with the dense character as well, but it's someone else who understands that this is an illness. That's one thing that she says to Kiefer Sutherland's character. Like, she's ill. But then the other thing that the Charlotte Gainsbourg character is doing is she is providing... She is a hopeful person or she's not hopeful, but she wants it to work out. She is there in opposition to Kirsten Dunst, whose character, who's literally just like the world is evil and it's good that it's going to die. And she is, so she provides that sort of like human, um, connection of wait. No, actually we don't like not every, not all of us wants, not all of our human person wants this, wants this to turn out this way, even if it's going to.

11:15And I think that makes it like a little, and a little less, not like closed off, I guess. Yeah, I think it also just makes it feel to me a little bit less like an experiment. A lot of his movies often feel like exercises in endurance. And I feel like this movie is just much more sort of gorgeous. And even when things are turning really bad in the third act of the movie, and, you know, the hailstorm begins, It's just a beautiful image. It's so beautiful. And he's always been a filmmaker with a strong eye, but he usually shoots in the Dogme 95 style, which is this really grainy, intense, digital format.

11:56And it's a lot of close-ups. It's a lot of handheld. It's a very unforgiving style of filmmaking. Right. And this is a style of filmmaking that is using all the same tools, but is trying to paint with them. And it just makes for a different kind of movie. And if you look at the later Von Trier movies, you can see that this movie is kind of a turning point for him. Like Nymphomaniac, another insane movie that is like very unpleasant through much of it. But is a bit more gorgeous to look at, even though it is lots of depraved sex acts for three and a half hours. So it's a critical movie for him.

12:32I thought it was a critical movie for Kirsten Dunst. And I'm not sure if that's actually true. because it's a big breakthrough for her. It gets her out of Mary Jane and being typecast as the cute, bubbly, blonde, you know, post Bring It On and Dick. Or even as a teen because with Sofia Coppola, she's working, you know, in the... And she's amazing at it. But Marie Antoinette, which is still just like, you know, what if a significant historical figure were just a teenager? Right. And so it is... I guess it's her first true adult role, but it does not trigger... The aftereffects of this movie are fascinating to me.

13:15Right. And what parts she took and what movies she made and certainly how you view her. I think it's fair to say she's your favorite actress. Probably, yeah. And she's, I think, pretty widely beloved and respected. Has had really good taste for the last 20 years, but doesn't have seven melancholias on her resume. You know what I mean? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think I was a little surprised, like, reading so much about her at this time. There's a big feature about her in the New York Times in the aftermath of the release of this movie, in part because of the Cannes press conference when the film premiered.

13:47And they're writing about her as though she is about to be Cate Blanchett, I would say. Right. You know, like, this is a young actress who's emerged from the chrysalis and is about to take over the art house forevermore. forevermore. And it took a while. It took a while for her to get into the power of the dog and civil war. And, you know, now she's going to be, what is her next? Oh, she's going to be in the entertainment system is down the new Ostland movie. Right. She's in roof man and roof man. So those four movies to me feel like the four movies that would come in the immediate aftermath of melancholy, but it doesn't quite happen.

14:17And I wonder if maybe people either didn't see this movie or didn't quite like, weren't ready to accept her as this kind of a performer quite yet. I don't know. What do you think of that? I mean, she wins Best Actress at Cannes, which is not always a predictor of mainstream American success. In fact, it rarely is. But it does at least usually give you some attention. I do think the Lars von Trier of it all around this movie just really limited its reception and certainly its American crossover. I mean, this is like a deeply dark, weird European film. you know, that, that I, we both love, but it's not like, you know, go see the star, bring it on in like, you know, doing her best Ophelia.

15:04Like what it's, it's, it's not commercial to begin with. And then I think it was so easy after the dumb press conference to, to kind of write it off for a bit. You know, I don't know why more directors aren't working with her in those few years afterwards. I mean, you're right. It's like almost 10 years. I know she has kids, during this time as well. And she's doing TV. She was on Fargo. That's where she met Jesse Plemons. But it is, it's pretty confusing how the next five years don't have anything really of note. It's not that the work is bad. It's just, you know, she took Bachelorette, which is a great movie, right after this.

15:41Such a fun comedy. But then it's like the two faces of January. She's got a modest part in Midnight Special, a modest part in Hidden Figures. She makes The Beguiled with Sophia, which is a good movie. But like, I cast her in like, you're 35 now. These are the kind of parts you have to play. It's my least favorite of the Sophia movies. And then Woodshock she makes with her friends. No, that's what your play ring is. Is it the Malibi sisters? Yes. And then now I felt like Power of the Duck kind of reset her trajectory as like, this is one of our great American actors and deserves these parts. You're right that Fargo is pretty significant in that respect too.

16:17But I think this is up there with her best I mean, this is like, you could say Marie Antoinette and the Virgin Suicides are obviously hugely critical. This movie does something very similar to those two films, which is that it doesn't have her speak much. And particularly in the first half of this movie, her character does not have a lot of dialogue. So she has to convey all of this pain while also performing at her own wedding. and I think we all know that feeling when you're at a big event and the attention is focused on you and you are like not happy but you need to pretend to be happy and just the way like that her smile fluctuates and there are like you know 4 ,000 different versions of it as she is reacting to really all of the different absurd things I mean this is an amazing wedding and the wedding from hell and I had forgotten the opening with that lovely scene in the stretch limo between her and Alexander Skarsgård.

17:23You know, and there are... One of the most painful parts about this movie is all the moments of, like, beauty and love and, like, nice things that are there for a fleeting moment before she, like... But she can't hold on to them, whether it's her nephew, Leo. Poor... I mean, tough for Leo. It's... It's not an ideal life. I don't think that I had seen this movie since I had kids. And once again, I was just like, oh. I did like how the movie is kind of constantly circling back to what about Leo? What about Leo? Which is what it's like when you're a parent. You're kind of like always circling back to what's going on with your kid.

17:58And also Justine is locked in on that too. But then, you know, the wedding is just a nightmare in all of the ways. There are stupid wedding, you know, games like the beans. The parents are not behaving. There's a schedule and a mean wedding planner. Yes, Udo Kier is so. hilarious. And at some point he gets mad because Justine can't handle it, has to take a break. And he just walks around the rest of the movie like this with one hand up. He's like, I can't look at her. She ruined my wedding and commits to the bit through half of this movie. That is hilarious. Stellan Skarsgård gets mad and just starts smashing a plate at the catering shop.

18:40Before that, he gives her work at her wedding. He asks her to write. Excuse me. Well, he gives her the promotion and it's like attached to this promotion is you will give me a tag for this ad campaign during the wedding. Which is, you know, there are a series of perversities. That's a very Von Trier-esque addition to the story. And also like whatever tagline, like, you know, there's just some like very perverse sexual BDSM image that needs the tagline. So, you know, Von Trier is still Von Trier. Still doing his thing, very much so. But yeah, everyone, I would say with the exception of Alexander Skarsgård, who I think is portrayed, who portrays a very kind of sensitive, thoughtful, like they're in love, they care about each other.

19:18but the magnitude of her depression is so profound that there's something shielding her from him and he can't quite get to where she is feeling and how she is feeling as hard as he tries. I think that the movie managing to balance something like that, that sensitive, impossible to illuminate distance between two people who are so close while also showing you all the outlandish, ridiculous, silly like punishing foolishness of daily life is part of the genius of the movie but then it's compounded significantly by this interstellar ecological disaster right which is that this planet melancholia is we think racing towards earth but might miss earth and well that's what certain characters are saying but we know that's the thing because we've watched the overture and it collides like beautifully by the way like it's just again it's really really for a low budget european if you're gonna make sci-fi make it look like this i know i know there's something to that for sure at using the key for settling character john um gainsberg's character's husband as the know-it-all rich guy dickhead who's like don't worry everything's gonna be fine i know what i'm talking about, you have to read the news.

20:40You don't know what you're talking about is also just like such a precise trope. Like he has identified a guy in the world. Maybe I am that guy sometimes. Unfortunately, he's also given the line, have you been going online again? Which is that, listen, good point. You know, even the idiots speak truth sometimes. It's true. He's got a point there. I think that this movie is the internet existed in 2011 and it was toxic at that time, but it really also presages where our negative energies go when something bad is happening and how we kind of like amplify those things back and forth to each other.

21:11That being said, in this case, you know, the planet really was going to hit. Yeah.

21:47This is just an absolutely gorgeous movie. Do you think all life on earth is evil? No. Is it just a manifestation of the sadness, the way that she takes it to the extreme of thought? Yes, I think so. And it's like, and it's, she's giving over to depression. You know, there's, there's an amazing scene where, um, as Melancholia is approaching, uh, Justine goes out in night and then I guess like sun bays, moon bays, planet bays, um, in like the blue glow of Melancholia. Uh, and you know, and it looks like a Renaissance painting and, but Justine is like feeling some sort of like release or joy. or it's, and to me, it's, you know, giving into melancholia and what's going to happen.

22:43But it's like this, this sadness, this, uh, this illness that you can't keep at bay and that you've been fighting for so long. You just like, let it, let it take over. Um, and there is like release in that, right? Because depression is something that you are like fighting against. I speak from experience. And so I think that the, I don't think that, I don't even think the movie thinks the world is all bad because it has the Charlotte Gainsborough character. It has Leo. It has the moment between Alexander Skarsgård and Kirsten Dunst and the apple trees before she just leaves the photograph. Even like her idea of her father and her father kind of slipping through her fingers as John Hurt in the movie.

23:25You know, there's like, there's real love and connection or lost connection that she feels like is important to her. So it's not that it's, this is not, it is not nihilism. I don't think. But I think you're right though, that the moon bathing is the acceptance of the darkness, right? That is like, this is happening and we cannot beat it. And so I have to embrace it, which is extreme, one of the darkest point of views you could ever have. It is truly the nature of suicidal tendency. Like that is exactly what he is located. But he's doing it with contrasting it with like literally one of the most beautiful women on the planet, completely nude, painted on screen in like in a sci-fi glow.

24:07It's just an amazing image making. Amazing. Yeah. But then he also, the end of the movie, once Justine has that acceptance and then she, you know, gives, there's the speech that she gives to Claire, Charlotte Gainsbourg character, which is, you know, all life on earth is evil. I don't want to go like have a glass of wine with you on the terrace while the planet hits and the world ends. But he still gives you Leo and the child character. And there is that moment, even as Kirsten Dunst has like accepted, has like given in to the dark side of the force, I guess. I was just listening to your Star Wars rewatchables.

24:53she's made to confront Leo and so they embrace and she like does try to reassure him and she tries to make the end of the world okay for him but that last shot it's Claire who's freaking out and it's Justine but also Leo who are like very calm in the magic cave as they call it and there is something to me the darkest thing is Leo's calmness in that moment. You know, he, the world is ending and also his parents are pretty absent. So, you know, I get it. An under-discussed theme of this movie is your parents can really really fuck you up. Yeah. Charlotte Rambling all time 15 minute three days on set performance.

25:47Yes. She plays a mother who a classic narcissistic personality disorder person who has made the event of the marriage all about her and her discontent with the idea of marriage and rejecting it in part because her marriage dissolved to John Hurt, who is this kind of like, you know, carousing party man who's kissing various Bettys and embarrassing himself and embarrassing his family. But she stands up at the wedding and is like, I didn't go to the church because I hate weddings that I hate everyone here. It's really... She's incredibly well cast. Yeah. Charlotte Rampling is truly the dark side of the force.

26:25And then Kiefer Sutherland, I also, I've got some notes for him. For his behavior. Well, as a dad, you know? Yeah, sure. Total denial and then finds, takes all of Claire's like special pills. But for a movie with like such big gestures and such kind of like purposefully overstated imagery. I just find his ability to locate the truth in people's real actions. Like the archetypes are so real. You know, the mom making it all about her at a wedding. Yeah. The overconfident husband who will not accept that anyone could be feeling anything other than his truth. You know, the kid who like retreats in moments of fear.

27:09Like they're very, very nuanced portraits of very specific kinds of people operating inside of a genre movie that is also, you know, has homage to like last year of Marian Bad and this broad tradition of existentialist European cinema. And it's just a masterful synchronization of all of his interests and also bringing something new to the table that it's really, really exciting. I've read a lot about this movie in the run up to this and A.O. Scott in his review of it, which is an excellent review of this film, notes that Robert Altman Noah Baumbach and Jonathan Demme had previously used quote the angst and pomp of a wedding to zero in on the fragility of the human condition and there is something to that you know my theory about weddings I thought of you as I rewatched any movie that opens with a wedding is probably a masterpiece and any movie that closes with a wedding probably tripe does this count as opening?

28:08I think so okay yeah I mean she's in a wedding dress on the way to the wedding at the start after the overture yeah yeah and she's in a wedding dress for some of the overture as well So I just didn't know whether the Overture disqualifies it. I think it's fair to say. I do think the Overture is one of the great openings in cinema. I had totally forgotten about it before I sat down to watch this again. It is the total opposite, but it's up there with the first 10 minutes of up. One is just like, here is the possibility of life. And one is, here is the impossibility. That's a fabulous comparison.

28:37No, 2009 is up. I was going to say they come out in the same year. But both are about the acceptance of death in so many ways. what is this movie's legacy? Well, I guess we'll talk about the press conference, though. So, at this movie premiered a can, and there was a press conference, and they gave Lars von Trier a microphone. And he made some comments that he now says were a joke, and maybe they were at the time, saying that he was a Nazi. Some other, you know, some stuff that... He was kind to Hitler in some of his comments. Not ideal. Not what you want. It's really not good. And it was not received well.