---
product_id: 57032612
title: "Melancholia [Blu-ray] [2011]"
brand: "kirsten dunstcharlotte gainsbourglars von trier"
price: "A$31"
currency: AUD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/57032612-melancholia-blu-ray-2011
store_origin: AU
region: Australia
---

# Melancholia [Blu-ray] [2011]

**Brand:** kirsten dunstcharlotte gainsbourglars von trier
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- **What is this?** Melancholia [Blu-ray] [2011] by kirsten dunstcharlotte gainsbourglars von trier
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## Description

Melancholia [Blu-ray] [2011]

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    BrownPolar Verdict
  

*by B***R on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 March 2015*

I have followed Lars Von Trier for the last 40 years as one of my top favourite directors, ever since I saw one of his early shorts in the 70’s. Highly admired for being a director of immense creativity, originality and vision, Von Trier is also renowned for his daring in addressing challenging issues and taboo subjects through his prolific work. A filmmaker who never makes a movie which is similar in character to one that he has previously made, he is one of those few artists who have notably and significantly contributed to the expansion of the boundaries of cinema.‘Melancholia’ is yet another great instance of Von Trier’s ceaseless passion in creating a new movie that surpasses what faithful fans might expect from him. However this time, it is actually quite personal in that the film takes on a subject the director himself is concerned with.  Melancholia is a mental condition which appears now to be quite common, particularly amongst those who live in the industrialised parts of the world. Considered as a precursor to more debilitating mental illnesses such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder, the condition may be hereditary, although childhood trauma may also cause it in adults.I was surprised to learn that Von Trier himself is suffering from clinical depression, form an interview with the director on this DVD. He is not the only famous person who suffers from this life wrecking illness or from its twin, bipolar disorder, but a number of other celebrities like Stephan Fry and Freddie Flintoff. As it is the case with almost all mental illnesses, these conditions are not fully understood by most ordinary people, making them react unfavourably or, in extreme cases, unsympathetically to the often bizarre behaviour of the sufferers.‘Melancholia’ therefore is a noteworthy contribution in an accessible and enjoyable form to the general knowledge of these widely misunderstood illnesses, which might become even more common in the future, as a result of the stressful and materialistic lifestyles of a majority of us in the west as well as of increasing numbers in the east.In developing this enlightening theme, the writer-director Von Trier adopts a lucidly romantic tone, which readily makes the film highly engaging and satisfying, despite the dark subject matter that it addresses. The script cleverly uses an impending catastrophe of the earth colliding with a rogue planet called ’Melancholia’ as an underlying ploy to keep the audience bemused and arrested throughout, thereby facilitating the well rounded characterisations to merit our affections. To ensure that the film is not going to be taken as a mere disaster flick, the director unravels the catastrophe at the very outset, in a visually stunning and captivating, ultra-slow-motion overture or a prelude that is set to Wagner’s blistering ‘Tristan and Isolde’, and thereby effectively setting the romantic tone for the rest of the movie. The visualisations used in this prologue are not entirely computer generated, but are derived from real imagery by beautifully integrating CG elements.Strikingly, the prologue is in lightly blue tinted, natural colours while the two chapters of the main story which follow are yellow-orange tinted and blue tinted respectively. This is to aid the contrasting characters of the two sisters who are the protagonists of this moving tale: Justine, the troubled, childlike and otherworldly sufferer of melancholia, who ends up with clinical depression; and Claire, the mature, caring and strong one, who is seemingly in control of her successful life.  The former believes that ‘earth is evil, and no one is going to miss it’ if destroyed in the impending disaster, while the latter has everything to lose.As I know from my own experience of the illness, for a depression sufferer, the end of the world would be a welcome relief from the endless suffering that is life. For the majority of us who love life though, it would be a real catastrophe to which their reaction would be unfathomable. The genius of this film lies in the use of this contrast between otherworldly and worldly perception of life by two groups of the same species, and thereby bringing home the truth that human evolution no longer is just the survival of the fittest as it was 10,000 years ago, but also the survival of the most intellectual, particularly in the digital age that we now live in.Von Trier employs handheld capture in the sequences that follow the overture to give a docudrama feel to them. The performances are rock solid in all cases as expected from such a talented cast, but it is noteworthy that Kirsten Dunst’s demanding and challenging role as Justine is the best she has delivered so far, proving that this much loved actress has now come of age.Melancholia is a film that is worth revisiting time and again, because it is full to the brim of tweaks, twists and visual treats which take a lot more than just one viewing to appreciate. It further confirms my long held belief that Lars Von Trier is a true master of his craft.BrownPolarApril 2012

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    I'm in the 'work of genius' camp
  

*by J***E on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 January 2012*

I suppose it was pretty predictable how opinion would divide about the controversial Lars von Trier's (relatively uncontroversial) film.  People will either love it or hate it.  Those who are in thrall to Hollywood conventions of pace and narrative structure will not have the patience and stillness to absorb and relish this brooding meditation on madness and the end of the world.  This is film as art, almost symphonic in conception, expressing complexes of thought and emotion that could never be communicated with words, or even images alone.  It is a film about many things; madness and the paradoxical strength to be found at the bottom of despair; the fragility and irrationality of love; the absurdity of life in an insentient universe.  It is also about the treacherously beautiful planet, Melancholia, which increasingly fills the sky as the intense but understated drama unwinds, until impact and near instant annihilation.  This is not a science fiction or disaster movie; the planet is merely a device by which to explore the deepest human potentials of its characters, in otherwise inconceivable circumstances.  The resulting film is a slow and majestic philosophical epic, on the theme of Schopenhaurian pessimism, in the spirit of Tarkovsky or Kubrick.I will never look at Kirsten Dunst, an actress I've never really taken much notice of before, in quite the same way again.  Her characterisation of Justine, sister to Charlotte Gainsbourg's Claire, and her descent into severe depressive illness, and then fragile but timely reintegration in the face of cosmic catastrophe, is a lifetime achievement, and it is no surprise she took best actress at Cannes.  Kiefer Sutherland as Claire's uptight, somewhat pompous, but essentially decent husband, John, is also magnetic, his presence being felt as much through the spaces he leaves for the sisters.  Another star is the magnificent Swedish castle of Tjolöhom and its grounds, which provides the basis of the sumptuous cinematography, which at times verges on the painterly, reminiscent perhaps of the German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich.Another key ingredient is the extensive use throughout of Wagner's transcendentally beautiful prelude to Tristan and Isolde, rather in the way that Visconti used the Adagio from Mahler's 5th for Death in Venice.  My guess is that many of those who didn't respond well to the film might well have taken exception to this music, which is not just used as emotional filler, but as an integral component in the film's narrative flow.By all accounts Trier is not the most pleasant of people, and seems to wilfully court controversy and misunderstanding.  Nonetheless, a mind capable of conceiving this work of bleak, enigmatic genius, must have some nobility hidden somewhere in his soul.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    When two worlds collide
  

*by K***D on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 November 2021*

I’ve avoided seeing most of Lars von Trier’s movies since a friend and I sat in a London cinema one evening in 1984(!) trying not to fall off our seats laughing at The Element of Crime, one of the silliest movies we’d ever seen.I was more impressed by Breaking the Waves, and just about endured Dancer in the Dark, then I gave up on the Danish enfant terrible.Until now.Melancholia is a grave, sad, sometimes comic, poignant tale, in two complementary parts, of two sisters, Justine and Claire {Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsboirg, both brilliant}, Claire’s husband {Kiefer Sutherland, superb}, their rakish father {John Hurt, hilarious}, and Justine’s potential father-in-law, played by the always good Stellan Skarsgård. Charlotte Rampling has fun as their waspish, cynical mother. In the first part  we are at a wedding in Claire’s sumptuous country house; the more sober part two concentrates on the fears concerning the blue planet ~ and the mental state ~ of the title, as it approaches our own…I can only call this unusual, wonderfully acted film what it is: beautiful. Its writer-director finds humour and a skewed optimism in an apocalyptic scenario, with the perennially underrated Dunst, and the soulful, selfless Gainsbourg repaying him tenfold.However, I could have done with less of the ‘whispery’ acting so prevalent these days, and I say that as someone with very good hearing.Von Trier is himself a depressive, and here he honours the illness both literally and visually, with Dunst {also a sufferer} in the role of her life ~ she won best actress at Cannes, but why not an Oscar? Yes, that good.One to keep and watch again, one dark and rainy day.

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