Lars von Trier
Melancholia

After the underrated and unfairly criticized Antichrist (in my opinion, one of the most successful chapters of his career), the beloved/hated Von Trier returns this year with another film, which for once seems to agree with virtually everyone (critics, who have been very flattering this time, and audiences alike).

The film begins with unsettling premises: the planet Melancholia will soon intersect Earth's orbit, scientists assure us that a collision is out of the question, but is it really so? Obviously not. And the film starts by immediately spoiling itself, in a magnificent opening sequence (bearing some resemblance to that of Antichrist, with which it shares several points), featuring a Wagnerian soundtrack (specifically "Tristan and Isolde"). We witness a series of seemingly disconnected slow-motion images, computer-reworked and evocative of Flemish art, which promise nothing good: desperate faces, birds falling dead from the sky, characters struggling through the decaying ground... Finally, just to remove any doubt from even the least insightful viewer, we witness the colliding encounter of the two worlds, in an explosion that takes one's breath away. All this immerses the viewer in the same sentimental "mood" of resignation and inevitability that, in the first part of the film, gradually begins to torment the poor Justine.

But let's proceed in order. The film is actually about two sisters, Justine and Claire and is narratively divided into two chapters, different yet complementary, as the two sisters will ultimately prove to be as well. The first, following the apocalyptic introduction, focuses on Justine, a career woman and newlywed, who, with her new husband, is heading to her sister’s husband's villa (owner of a golf course) where the celebrations will be held. But during the journey, the unfortunate woman notices the planet approaching in the sky and with a sort of terrible foreboding, she begins to carve out in her a strong apathy, which will lead her throughout the evening to completely destroy her social life; the cynical Von Trier indeed enjoys mocking openly the hypocrisy of human relationships and social conventions, yet maintaining, despite an underlying gloominess (the viewer, due to the previous scenes, already senses the stench of decay and rot in the distance), a comedic-ironical tone, a sort of dark parody of romantic comedies. In the second part, however, the attention shifts to the sister Claire, apparently the stronger and more solid of the two, attached to family values and altruism, but what depth do these have in the face of the certainty of one's imminent end? The tone here becomes decidedly darker and more desperate, keeping away from the exaggeration and spectacle typical of disaster movies; everything here adopts a calm and intimate tone, resulting in being much more dramatic and unsettling, but at the same time cathartic, the universal drama that becomes first and foremost private and familial and vice versa, micro and macro-cosmos that overlap each other. In short, after many successful films that nonetheless tended at times to lean a tad too much on simple emotionality (one of the main criticisms from his detractors), in his two latest films Lars, in my view, achieves his maturity. Deep and pessimistic films, that touch a multitude of themes and push for reflection. Even though his previous films weren't exactly carefree comedies, any glimmer of hope has been lost in these latest works by the director, his pessimism becomes increasingly exasperated and total.

If in Antichrist there was still talk of "natural" pessimism, that is, the clash between rationality and instinct, man and nature (where the latter was presented as a cruel and insensitive stepmother), now we can even speak of cosmic pessimism; in the end, even reason and rationality (a lifeline in the previous film) can do nothing against death and destiny. A must-see (preferably at the cinema), to love.