A 1001 Films We Will Never See, Britt and Liz's Journey Through Cinema: Joint "Melancholia" Review
My Melancholia review
Britt
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| Y SO SRS |
Okay, Melancholia. Blah blah blah Lars Von
Trier blah blah weeping Charlotte Gainsbourg (not disemboweling any penises
this time) blah blah Kirsten Dunst can really act! Blah blah oh look Kiefer
Sutherland now has something to do after they cancelled 24.
JUST
KIDDING. I totally Ashton Kutchered you.
For me
personally, there was a LOT riding on this film, because Lars Von Trier is a
whirlwind of a fellow! I mean, this guy is just something else. It’s as if we
live in this world of movie directors who are chocolate bars (the Hershey
variety, noneother) and here is this dude who is made out of vanilla plastic.
He made Bjork want to never act again. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN!
What I
saw of Antichrist left me bemused, entertained and very
aroused. I happened to watch the entirety of Melancholia, unlike my
companion, who passed out like a sleepless baby within the first few seconds.
Seriously, I kept glancing at Liz to make sure she was:
a.) Still alive
b.) Cognizant
c.) Breathing?
I tried
to stir her to action a few times but that was to no avail. Like, poke, you
okay dude? And some incoherent J EWARRJKERJKER JABBERWOCKY I’m just really
tired Brittany! Whatever; we both had rough nights. My night involved the
police and making out on a rock. How are you doing?
That
aside, watching Melancholia felt akin to sitting in a darkened
planetarium with weird new age music pumping. And I really, really liked it.
The idea
behind the movie for Von Trier was the concept of how utterly calm depressives
can stay when the world is falling apart around them. And oh boy!
When you
have a gigantic planet about to destroy the Earth, named Melancholia (why would
you name anything after a form of massive depression, beats me), well! The
world cannot fall apart more than that.
Kirsten
Dunst is the depressive in question, the bride-copywriter who just can’t get
happy. And it’s like sometimes you just want to crawl into the film and slap
her into submission, but because this is a weird form of reality you cannot do
so. Kirsten Dunst is hot; she lies naked in a field at one point. I digress.
Twas nice.
She won
the acting award at Cannes for her role in Melancholia and
it’s obvious why. She plays as placidly sad as one possibly can. When her
wedding dinner turns into a sheeeetshow, she’s pretty down. When her sister
(Charlotte Gainsbourg, the lovely woman herself) flips out and is screaming and
crying and wants to drink wine and sit with her son and sing a song and watch
the world burn to a crisp, Kirsten tells her straight-out “I think your plan is
a piece of shit!” Best moment of the movie, right there, in a nutshell.
I THINK
YOUR PLAN IS A PIECE OF SHIT, KIRSTEN!
Overall, Melancholia is
a gorgeous work of art. But perhaps sometimes it tries too hard and can come
off as really, really pretentious. The music and the visuals and the story
itself, as well as the acting, deserve applause. Lars Von Trier did good here.
If you approach it with an open mind and a palette for aesthetics, you will
probably find yourself impressed. Or asleep, if you are LizRo.
Liz's Turn
Britt
seems to have been rocked to her core by this artistic movie.
“It was artistic, Liz,” she said to me. As if my being pop-culturally
challenged means I haven’t any sense of art. On the contrary, my dears. I’m one
right-brained bunny. I know what Pinterest is. I’m crafty. I
like watching Bob Ross. And I couldn’t have gotten into this film if it were
made out of Stretch-Armstrong-inspired spandex. Was this due to my
hangover? PROB.AB.LY. Let’s talk about that.
The
morning of the Melancholia review, LizRo was recovering from the drunken
escapade I’d been roped into the night before. All a hungover schmuck wants is
to do is pop an ibuprofen, put a crazy straw in a bathtub full of water, crawl
into the depths of the black hole, and DIE. In the Valley of the Sun, that’s is
a tall order. At about 10 am that morning, I had gone on the Odyssey of Shame:
I walked about 893 blocks in the blazing sun—sans sunglasses, water, and
dignity—to the nearest bus stop. THE BUS STOP. Where I proceeded to ride public
transportation in my platform heels. ODYSSEY OF SHAME. Never again, friends.
I was
lying on my deathbed when my significant other, Britt, came over to rehash our
previous evenings’ events and watch the ever-so-artistic Melancholia—about
that:
The
first 8 minutes of the movie were this dark, bizzare montage set to
ultra-dramatic music. How can I say this... I DIDN’T FUCKING GET IT. Though
visually stunning and stylistically Annie Leibovitz-esque, these scenes were
moving so fucking slowly—literally—I couldn’t tell if the movie was playing
properly. The music said to me, “Liz, this is DEEP SHIT.” I said to myself,
“Wtf IS this?”
See what I mean?
See what I mean?
I
watched long enough to get the idea that Kirsten Dunst is living my life. She’s
a copywriter getting married to some poor bastard. You can see the parallels.
Then I drifted off in an effort to sleep away my hangover. Britt later
explained that earth was about to be smashed by a planet (Melancholia, waka
waka), and apparently this is why Kirsten was thrust into a state of PMS. Any
other questions about the Melan-artistica should be directed to B.
Kemp, who watched it in its entirety.
Since
my area of expertise is achieving a wicked hangover, I’ll impart some knowledge
on that subject; I leave you with the following article:
 |
| real art |
xoxo,
LizRo
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