Movie Review — Melancholia
A jaw-dropping piece of cinema exploring depression, loss, and so much more that I’m going to try to put into words.
★★★★★ | Disney+ (watched on)
Warning — this review contains spoilers.
Melancholia is an unbelievable piece of cinema. It explores interpersonal relationships and their collapse, mortality, and how humans really react in the face of irrefutable destruction with such craft, and takes all the time it needs to demonstrate this. And it absolutely floored me.
I was slightly taken aback by the beginning of this film. After a lengthy opening scene, which presents the end of the film through a series of ironically delicate and gorgeous moments of slow-motion footage foreshadowing the film’s ending, it opens at Justine and Michael’s wedding, hosted at Justine’s sister’s sizeable estate. But throughout this first hour, we witness slow collapse of interpersonal relationships. We witness Justine slinking away from her own wedding, then witness her loss of job and husband, the loss of respect from her family. The only person seeming to stick by her side is her unbelievably patient sister Claire.
This part of the film was bizzare to me at first. It didn’t match what I’d seen in the blurb. However as it went on, I truly became wrapped up in Justine’s relatives intersecting, and her causing this slow destruction of almost everything she loves and cares about — rather viciously ironic that this occurs on the “happiest day of [her] life”.
The splitting of perspectives halfway through the film allows us to very deeply learn about these characters. While I enjoyed the wedding and its events much more than I imagined, the second half absolutely stunned me. We see Claire guide Justine through the monochrome, grim reality of depression and her immense care towards her sister, but all the while seeing the ever-nearing threat of the planet Melancholia heading towards Earth.
We see all facets of the human reaction towards disaster. We see Justine’s unwavering nihilism towards the destruction of Earth. We see Claire’s crazed and obsessive worry towards the disaster, who seems to be calmed by husband John — until he’s found dead from inferred suicide, revealing that perhaps he, a man deeply intrigued by space and planets, could not face the scientific improbablity of all he knew being torn out from underneath him. And we see the most naïve of all — Leo, Claire and John’s son, turn from inquisitive to confusion and meek ambivalence towards this cataclysmic event.
What really struck me at the end of this film was the sheer representation of all these characters as disaster became unequivocal. Seeing Claire attempt to romanticise the end of the world, while Justine near laughed in her face contemptously as she watched her sister violently come to terms with the imminent destruction of everything she knew. The climax was so perfect — this ongoing motif of a “magic cave” that Leo wants Justine to help him make as she arrives back at Claire’s in the thralls of depression re-emerges in the world’s final moments — they build a fragile, metaphorical sense of protection, cast in the melancholy blue light of their incoming death.
There is a lot of metaphorical resonance in this film that I need to observe in a rewatch, and, rather unfortunately, I could tell that Justine was in someway unstable, but this did not click to be depression until I read up about Melancholia online. I feel like a second viewing would definitely allow me to explore the film in greater depth, and perhaps I’ll put up another piece about it on a second watch-through.
I felt so attatched to the characters, so drawn into the world presented in this film. It is a truly powerful experience that touched me like nothing else I’ve really seen. It left me speechless for quite some time after its ending, and I will undoubtedly examine its impact in my mind for days to come.
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Stay safe! It’s a forest out there.
