For better or for worse, actors carry something of their past roles with them into every film they make; for me, in the case of Melancholia, this meant that the first half of the film (title-carded, in characteristic von Trier fashion, 'Justine') was underlaid with shadowy echoes of Marie Antoinette, another mood piece with Kirsten Dunst at the centre of a gaudy, elaborately appointed series of events and settings, and like that other, lent both intimacy and distance by Dunst's ability to convey a mingled sense of rich (if inchoate) internal emotional experience coexisting with a sort of listless, alienated affectlessness (here, through the sequence of formalities at Justine's abortive wedding, and in the other, across a series of events and vignettes mostly at Versailles).
The most striking part of the film is its vivid, symbolically-charged prelude, in which the major images and happenings of its second section, 'Claire', are foreshadowed; frankly, parts of the rest of its more than two hour running time drag. But it's certainly an experience - I'm glad that I've seen it.
(w/ Andreas)
The most striking part of the film is its vivid, symbolically-charged prelude, in which the major images and happenings of its second section, 'Claire', are foreshadowed; frankly, parts of the rest of its more than two hour running time drag. But it's certainly an experience - I'm glad that I've seen it.
(w/ Andreas)
