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The quite lengthy opening sequence features a series of eerie "paintings" of a dreamlike beauty, evoking the pre-Raphaelite era (you will notice Millhais' Ophelia) or the works of photographer Gregory Crewdson. We see Justin (Kirsten Dunst more touching than ever) in various settings: with dead birds falling from the sky; with a dying horse (shot in slow motion), wearing a wedding dress and her feet tangles in vines; in gardens lit by the stars or sprinkled with ashes. What Von Trier shows us here is Man against the elements and the inevitability of fate. A romantic-nihilist philosophy supported by the end of this introduction: the collision of Earth with a planet the size of Saturn, the giant planet swallowing almost literally ours. While we might then expect to follow the last moments of our world, before the disaster, and witness to a vast and impressive catastrophe, Lars Von Trier takes the viewer off guard once again, going instead for an intimate story, exploring other themes such as women's psyche and ... melancholy -- an approach contrasting sharply with Hollywood apocalyptic flicks, which rely mostly on massive destruction. Passed the introduction, the film is divided into two parts, each bearing the name of two sisters whose temperaments are radically opposed, yet complementary. It starts with Justine heading to her wedding in a limousine too long to maneuver through the country roads leading to the family castle where guests have been waiting for two hours. That chapter (which is somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Vinterberg's Festen, a film that adheres to the Dogma code, which initiated by von Trier himself) aims at unraveling the rituals that form the backbone of a marriage. The wedding which had cost a fortune to Justine's rich brother (a pragmatic Kiefer Sutherland) does not go as planned, the lucky bride being absent. Despite thinking that a marriage ritual is a way to be in sync with the world, she slowly succumbs to her instincts, looking for ways to escape, whether it's through taking a bath, a nap or sleeping with one of the guests in the park. Completely overshadowing her husband, Justine becomes a romantic figure, a representation of the impossibility of finding a place in a society trapped in its codified universe. At the end of this first part, the marriage falls apart, the guests are gone (including the husband); what remains is only the solitude of a depressed woman unable to find happiness. On the other side is her sister, the central figure of the second part of the film. Several months have passed. Justine took up residence in the castle of her sister Claire. Meanwhile, a hidden planet is suddenly getting dangerously close, everybody (including spectators) wondering if there will be collision or not. Just like everybody else, Claire is concerned, despite her husband's effort to reassure her with scientific calculations. What makes the difference with Justine who seems to accept her fate with serenity, is that Claire has everything to lose (a family, a domain, a lifestyle), which explains she is gradually succumbing to her fears. The nihilist fatality that inhabits the entire film places Melancholia among those works that question the human condition in the universe and the cosmos. Justine says, "Life on Earth is evil," which implies that we all deserve our fate, that we deserve to disappear, to return to nothingness and cosmic dust. Particularly pessimistic, Lars Von Trier's film invites a reflection about the place of man and the meaning of our lives; an open question to which the film offers a more radical response: A void. Scary but beautiful.
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