'Melancholia' by Lars Von Trier - Page 2

Guess I'm in the minority here, I found almost nothing to like about this film beyond the opening sequence. KD did an ok job but she was such a pos in the movie I had trouble appreciating it. Kiefer and Gainsborough almost phoned in these rolls with the exception of the last 15 min.

This fell very short of the expectations I had after seeing antichrist.

That's an interesting POV...
I couldn't get thru Antichrist.

Yeah, the KD character was very unlikeable, but I think that was deliberate on the part of LvT.

Yeah, I get that it just made it that much harder to identify or connect to anyone in the film. And what was up with the wedding scene... good grief it just wouldn't end.

It was a bit long-in-the-tooth.
I believe the reason for this may be that there are very few instances or things happen to our lives which is MORE about hope and a bright future than a wedding.

I think those guys in the Dexter thread are getting to you

All kidding aside, I also appreciated the metaphors, symbolism, etc. but I thought CG's hope was far more intriguing. Just my 2 bits

I won't let those guys influence me...I promise.



For me, the "wedding" wasn't a REAL wedding, per se.
It was a symbol...a metaphor for what I posted above.

CG's character (as were the others) was a counter-balance to KD: The Light, The Dark.

Technically, it was a wedding reception. Being as it was in the home of a relative there wouldn't necessarily be a time limit. If I were attending at that location they'd have to push me out the door. Actually, I'd be so drunk they'd have to wheel me out.

As always...

Ahhhh... ok, that works much better.

When I worked as a professional musician I played a lot of wedding receptions. There were some where things would go wrong. At the more expensive ones there were "wedding planners" running around to make sure things were "just so." Robert Altman's "A Wedding" always reminded me of many wedding receptions I played and I have it in my NF WI queue to watch again.

Finally saw this and it's times like this where I wonder if some of you guys saw the same film I did.

Stunning cinematography?

It was two and half hours of hand-held camera work with Michael J. Fox as the camera operator and apparently they wouldn't let him take his meds because his Parkisons was completely out of control. And he must be starting to go blind too because he was constantly missing the focus.

Yeah all those fast jerky pans to a mis-framed out of focus shot someone's nose and mouth before getting properly framed on the full face and getting the focus pulled were stunning all right. Stunningly bad.

If I hired a videographer for a wedding and he tried to pawn this level of crappy work off on me, I'd refuse to pay.

The first ten minutes at least looked pretty. But since they were just a bunch of out-of-context snippets with no backstory, I found myself obsessing on how badly they screwed up the physics of the ejecta from the collision.

FWIW:
http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/2...wards-winners/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/awards

Just goes to prove that all those awards are political in nature and not really for merit.

Or did Jethro Tull really deserve a Grammy for "Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album" for Crest Of a Knave over Metallica's And Justice For All too?

The trailer scenes look carefully shot with a steadycam.

Why is the movie supposedly all shaky looking?

I guess I'll wait till Netflix streams it.

Because the trailer doesn't show any of the wedding reception, which is the biggest chunk of the movie.

The film is filled with non stop hand held camera work that is annoying and at times, nausea inducing. There are these things called tripods and steadicams. I wish they had used them from time to time. The motion sick camera made it hard for me to get into the film, which did use some interesting lighting setups.

Try Von Trier's award winning "Breaking the Waves". The original hand held Oscar winner.

For once, the shakey cam didn't pull me of a movie.

The shakey cam thing gave the illusion of someone (a guest?) shooting the wedding itself.
For example, Uncle Dick or Aunt Jane or whomever....
Hence, all of the out-of-focus amatuerish shots.
It makes sense within the context of the audience being voyeurs into these people's lives.

Good point

Well, I've shot weddings and if I delivered footage like that, I wouldn't get any more work shooting weddings.

I'm just saying.

No doubt.
However, this is an illusion....deliberately staged by Von Trier.
In other words, an attempt to pull the audience into the weird world of Melancholia.

And another great movie from Von Trier!

And it did the exactly the opposite to me. Completely took me out of the story and put me into videographer critic mode.

BTW, just out of curiosity, how many people actually saw this at an actual theater or on a really big (120" or bigger FP).

Personally, I saw it at Harkin's Camelview seated in the front half because the back half was full. The hand-held stuff probably wouldn't be too bad sitting ten feet away from a 50" flat panel, but on a big screen it was really bad.

I watched on a 120" screen at a seating distance of 10' and love it. The shaky cam stuff was annoying at times but not anywhere near as annoying as Transformers, ect.

I watched a recording from HDNET at approx. 10ft. on a 73" Mits. RPTV at 1080p.

Well, at least some agree with me:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8060LL20120107

I agree with you.

Note the vote for BP was 29 to 28 for Melancholia over The Tree of Life.

45 minutes into it and I'm bored as hell.

Hoping it gets better.

EDIT: Well, i finished it up and don't really know what to think. Kirsten does a decent job, if staring and moving in slow motion and occasionally wrapping a wool sweater around herself constitutes doing a good job of acting depressed. There's no backstory to her or her condition, so she's not sympathetic or anything and there's no emotional investment in her at all. The kid actor is horrible in the couple of lines of dialog he has, so I'm glad he wasn't in it any more than he was. And my wife and I both cracked up in the nude scene, since the score ramped up for the big "reveal" and it came off as comical...as in "Wake up! Kirsten is naked! Pay attention!" That was laughable. Dialog was so low I had to turn on subtitles since everyone muttered or whispered everything that if I turned it up so I could hear, the score was too loud.

However....I think if you cut out the entire wedding reception and just kept the first 10 minutes and picked it up immediately at Part 2:

• The movie would be a more reasonable 90-100 minutes.
• I wouldn't have felt like I wasted 45 minutes watching a home movie of someone's wedding reception being introduced to characters that serve no purpose whatsoever and completely disappear at the end of that act.
• You wouldn't have missed anything, other than a 30 second scene about the red star in the sky, a short conversation between the sisters, and setting up for why Kiefer is so unsympathetic towards Kirsten's character during the second half, all of which would have been accomplished in other ways.

I am sure there was all kinds of "symbolism" and "artistic intent" to the wedding reception that I probably just don't appreciate, but whatever....I thought it was boring and unnecessary for the movie as a whole.

I will say the movie was good....in the "mproper's cut" version I'm making in my memory banks as I try to forget I wasted 45 minutes watching a bad wedding video But ignore that and I liked the rest of the movie and am glad I just didn't turn it off.

One thing I was hoping maybe someone could help me with: what was the deal with the bridge that the horses wouldn't cross and the golf cart's battery died on? Since it came up three times, I'm sure there's some deep meaning to that I'm not getting since, other than as an implement to have Kirsten snap at the horse and to keep the sister on the estate.

Melancholia was amazing,Tree of Life was one pretentious bore.