Cinema Notes: Melancholia

The last few minutes of Melancholia had me paralyzed with fear, on the verge of tears. The film then cut to black and, as if in the place of an insufficient exhale, I began laughing hysterically. That is the spectrum Lars von Trier’s incomparable film inhabits. With their shared emotional, metaphorical and allegorical motifs, Melancholia is very much a companion piece to Trier’s previous film, Antichrist—though Melancholia is the more exhausting work. The film is lensed with the same clockmaker’s precision and it dances along to sobering pieces of Wagner’s opera, Tristan und Isolde. Trier’s blood-colored glasses have only gotten darker, but his fascinating narrative and visual contemplations have become less inclined to impishness, which is surprising given his increasingly inflammatory public persona. Depression is obviously inherent to Trier’s work. With Melancholia, he stares directly into the affliction and I suspect the film’s often stark earnestness stems from a kind of resigned reverence. Staring into the abyss takes a toll, but it can make for great cinema.