A Ghoul Versus Melancholia (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1!

The screen fades to black and is replaced with a title card reading “Part Two: Claire”. It's been an undetermined amount of time since the wedding, I would guess a few weeks at most. Justine has come to stay with John and Claire, and we see she's regressed to an almost catatonic state as she can't do ANYTHING by herself. As they wait for Justine's taxi to arrive, John and Claire discuss Melancholia: a rogue planet that is due to fly by the Earth in five days. Claire worries it'll hit the Earth, but John assures her it's completely safe and it'll pass them by.

Justine can barely even walk, Claire forced to guide her to the bathroom and bathe her. John is just DISGUSTED by all this, and again I say: GET HER SOME FUCKING HELP! A few days later Justine is beginning to get more functional, Claire taking her riding again. Just like last time, Abraham will not cross the bridge so Justine begins to SAVAGELY beat him with her riding crop until Claire intervenes. Mmm, there goes all that sympathy I had for Justine. Will that damn planet get here already? That same night Claire sees Justine walking outside, almost in a trance. She follows her, finding her lying naked on the ground and basking in the moonlit grow of the approaching Melancholia.

A Ghoul Versus Melancholia (Part 1)

"Dueling Movies: Another Earth Vs. Melancholia!"

Click here for the Another Earth review!

To say that Lars Von Trier is a polarizing director is like saying smoking cigarettes are bad for you: it's a fundamental fact. An experimental Danish filmmaker that LOVES to push buttons in both his films and his endlessly entertaining interviews, Von Trier has been creating critically divisive films since the late 1970s. You can always tell you're reading a review of a Von Trier film because critics will break out their biggest and fanciest words to either praise him or decry him, a lot of these reviews often turning into miniature theses that you just might need a dictionary to decipher.

After several little known releases, Von Trier really put himself on the map with 1996's Breaking The Waves, which served as his introduction to a larger portion of the film viewing world, including myself. Personally, I was spellbound by his SHARPLY unique visual style and deep storytelling, while at the same time finding the film very accessible compared to a lot of the foreign films I'd seen up to that point. Really, Breaking The Waves is solely responsible for opening my tastes up and getting me interested in films deeper than ones such as Star Wars or Horror Franchise #8,409.

Von Trier likes to make his films into trilogies, but based about themes instead of a continuing storyline. He started with his “Europe” trilogy detailing Europe's dark history, then followed it up with the “Golden Heart” trilogy, which was launched by Breaking The Waves and showed us three women with kind hearts being put into awful circumstances. His next trilogy, “USA: Land of Opportunities” remains unfinished as the third film, Wasington, will likely not get made at this point but one can always hope.