Melancholia

Alright before I get into the review I need to be perfectly clear that I was really not in the right mood to see this kind of film. I went in distracted, and really only went because its been on a bunch of best of lists and I wanted to get it in before it got pulled from the theatres. I wholeheartedly acknowledge that my reaction might change if I see it again in a better frame of mind.

Okay now that the preliminaries out of the way lets get to it. Melancholia is an incredibly bleak film. And not 'wow that was intense' bleak, but tediously bleak. It opens with the titular planet destroying the earth in super slow motion, and then jumps back in time a few months to lead us back to that moment. The rest of the film focuses on four characters (two sisters, a husband, and a son) in one location - a manor in some indeterminate location. We then get two hours of watching a mentally ill woman (Kirsten Dunst) act really sad, and then everything ends. Plus the main point seems to be that everything is meaningless so just accept our destruction (and yes I'm being intentionally flippant). That's not my issue since I've seen other films powerfully make this same point, but they did it in a much more engaging manner. I had at least six indiglo moments during the runtime, and spent the rest of the time fidgeting (granted that can probably be attributed to the meth, but still).

Now its not a worthless film. I liked the matter a fact way it approached the end of the earth, and the performances, such that they are, are good (I would go so far to say this is Dunst's best performance since Bring it On). Still I can't get past the fact that it was just really pedantic and tedious, which ended up overwhelming its positive elements.