Melancholia vs The Virgin Suicides

 

 Justine and Michael (Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skarsgard) have just been married. After comically navigating a winding country road in a limo, they arrive at her family’s looming estate for the reception. Justine and Michael were cute and happy in the car, but everyone at the party seems furious with them. We’re left to draw a few conclusions: Something happened at the wedding; things are tense within Justine’s family in general; or the marriage hasn’t met everyone’s approval. None of these theories ever bears out, so I just figure Justine is the baby in her family, and her sister and brother-in-law (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland) are bitches.

Throughout the party, which goes on forever (they don’t cut the cake until 11p.m.), Justine’s mood shifts between blushing bride elation, and a curious cloud of bitterness. Her face will collapse into an exhausted stare, and she’ll sneak away. At one point, she takes off her wedding dress and soaks in a tub. Every time she comes back, someone else is angry with her. If it’s not her sister, it’s her husband, or her boss (Stellan Skarsgard). Her parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) hate each other, but dote over Justine, in their own way. Her father is busting with pride (and booze), while her mother is more controlling and cynical.

By the end of the first half of the movie, Justine’s world seems on the verge of ending. Her job, her marriage, her sanity all hang on the brink.

And that’s when we learn that the actual world is on the verge of ending as well. During Justine’s wedding reception, she saw a star she didn’t recognize. Now everyone knows it as Melancholia, a planet previously blocked by the sun. Her brother-in-law insists it will pass them by, and that it will be beautiful. Her sister, Claire, spends all her time on the internet, tracking Melancholia’s journey, sure it will obliterate everything. Justine has dissolved into a terrible depression, almost catatonic, unable to speak or walk or bathe herself. Dunst gives a hypnotic performance, like something out of a David Lynch movie. So much of Melancholia is silly and overdone, but Dunst is interesting throughout. She gives one of those performances that make you watch her arms and legs and fingers, in case they might hold information. As the planet nears—you can see it in the sky, like a second Earth—Justine becomes more practical and cynical, like her mother, while Claire becomes unwound and scattered. Throughout the movie, the actors and scenery are presented in freeze-frame, or slow-motion, or in a staggering, blurring effect akin to a moving diorama or claymation. It’s fascinating. An image of Justine in her wedding dress, tethered to the ground by tree roots is among the most stunning I’ve seen in a movie this year or last.

Melancholia was directed by Lars Von Trier, whom, as you know, loves to fuck a bitch up. He will shackle an actress, cripple her, blind her, hang her, rape her, murder her, lock her up in the back of a truck. If it ever comes out that Lars Von Trier makes his actresses do their own stunts, dude is going to prison.

Melancholia, by focusing an end-of-the-world story on just a handful of characters whose world is metaphorically ending anyway, gives a new angle to a story we’ve seen so many times in movies. Unfortunately, there’s so much focus on the characters’ mental states, that you might question if the world that’s ending is symbolic instead of literal. Regardless, when it comes, it’s amazing and fast (and you know if Lars von Trier sets out to make a movie about the end of the world, the world is going to end). Justine, with static electricity extending from her fingertips, seems, for a moment, like maybe she’s returning to her home planet. Her clear-headedness in the moments before Melancholia (the movie and the planet) comes to its conclusion, might be a clue to whatever Von Trier statement you might be looking for in the film, Justine’s character, or both. The depressed see the world as ending already, so when it comes, they’ll get satisfaction out of being right. Maybe he’s onto something. The Lisbon sisters might think so.

The Virgin Suicides follows the lives and young deaths of the Lisbon girls (Kirsten Dunst, A.J. Cook, Hanna Hall and Chelse Swain), all of whom committed suicide before finishing high school. Lux (Dunst) is the dreamiest, in both appearance and demeanor, and the object of lust by the coolest guy in school (Josh Hartnett.) Dunst and Hartnett as the top high school couple circa 1975? Sounds like fun, right? Sorry. The Virgin Suicides came out at the peak of the Trouble In The Suburbs trend in movies, in which the deepest, creepiest secrets were kept by our country’s cul-de-sacs. As in those movies (The Ice Storm, American Beauty, Magnolia, etc), things inside the Lisbon home are not as they might seem to outsiders. The girls are sheltered by their parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods), who feel the girls’ burgeoning sexuality is terrifying, shameful and worth postponing. Despite (or because of) this, the girls are popular at school, and lusted after the boys in the neighborhood. Lux, who has the sort of name that makes her hair bounce in slow-motion, loses her virginity, and then in short order, everything else. The other girls follow suit. The Lisbon girls have the world on a string, and then that world ends, just because they were girls.

The Virgin Suicides was the directed by Sophia Coppola, setting up certain themes that show up again and again in her work: the power of young beauties; the victimization of the same; the memories gleaned from moments of silence or solitude; and, of course, the benefits of a hot soundtrack. Unlike Von Trier, Coppola seems to relish putting her actresses in beautiful settings, situations, and costumes (They’re both inspired by Dunst though. Each movie features her lying on the grass, glowing). And though Coppola eventually chips away at her heroines’ sunny dispositions, she makes life ever-so-sweet for them first (She literally showed her Marie Antoinette eating cake). I think I prefer it this way. After two hours of Melancholia’s Justine watching the world end, it’s a tiny comfort to think the Lisbon sisters never knew what hit them.

Melancholia: B

The Virgin Suicides: A-