Melancholia is so honest, so bereft of its maker's seeming inability not to burden his films with at least one huge, garish, self-consciously edgy flaw, that Lars von Trier's disastrous press conference for it at Cannes now makes sense. That was just the cosmic balance reasserting itself, spilling out the usual tacky, ill-thought-out, offensive nonsense that weighs down so many of the director's half-baked screeds and cruel character studies. Here at last is a film that displays von Trier's genuine attempts to come to terms with emotions and thoughts, most of them at the darker end of the human spectrum, but without the, to cut to the chase, usual bullshit.
Few artists make openings as striking, gripping, or aesthetically distinct (not just from everyone else but the rest of the films in question) as von Trier, and his super-slow-motion montage here is one of his finest.
Melancholia tantalizes with its apocalyptic, despairing imagery even as it clearly plays the film's finale up-front. This will not be a mystery of whether the Earth will die, something its title makes equally obvious. The apocalypse is coming, but neither von Trier nor his on-screen proxy can seem to care. As Justine (Kirsten Dunst) coldly asserts, "Life is only on Earth, and not for very long."
