I’ve compared nearly half of the great movies this year to “The Tree of Life,” and this review will be no different, but the comparisons should really go the other way to Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia.” Arguably a better film than Terrence Malick’s and the polar opposite in tone, von Trier’s elegantly bleak way of defining life is to end it.
Rather than witnessing the birth of the Earth, “Melancholia” reveals to us in all its destructive glory the end of the world as another planet collides with Earth. Perhaps only the dour Dane von Trier could truly show the absolute majesty of oblivion. His opening sequence of operatic surrealism recalls Fellini and Kubrick. Time literally slows watching it. Nature, death and sci-fi as a genre are re-imagined in this picturesque procession of painterly beauty and celestial wonder. Continue reading “Melancholia”