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Friday, December 09, 2011

Last Year at Marienbad meets On the Beach

             “Melancholia,” now playing at the Palm, is a powerful, haunting, beautiful, spectacular failure of a film.  A perfect example of the Auteur in need of a sharp-elbowed minder at his side to constantly hiss at him, “Very nice, Lars, now let’s move along.”  Well, director/writer Lars von Trier’s Danish, so maybe many of the film’s problems are that Scandinavian thing.

            Or maybe Lars just got so entranced by his new camera he started falling in love with all his images, like a kid who goes through a whole role of film shooting the same flower from every angle, then pastes them all into his album.  Lars forgot that images in a film are carriers of the story and require a certain pace to work properly; get too many repetitive shots and the audience starts wool gathering and you’ve lost them.

            Which is a shame for this movie has some beautifully realized use of image-as-conveyor of story.  And Trier uses slo-mo, dream-like images at the opening of the film that beautifully foreshadow both the story and what is coming at the end – a pair of  fantastic cinematic book ends that will stay with you long after the film’s over.

            Basically, the story is an end-of-the-world tale and/or (take your pick) an outward representation of the inner condition of profound depression – the hopeless, helpless, relentless coming apart of the sufferer’s inner world. (von Tries suffered from severe depression, so is familiar with that state.)  In this world,  (Kirsten Dunst) is at the estate of her wealthy brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) who’s paid big bucks for her elaborate wedding, which her sister, Clair, has planned.  After endless wedding party shots, with no explanation, Dunst dumps hubby and with a scene change, she’s deep into a helpless depression and returning to the estate so her sister can care for her.  While Dunst recuperates with her little isolated family (sister, brother-in-law, their young son, the sister’s much beloved horses) the audience is further informed that the little new star seen in the sky during the wedding is, in reality, a planet headed our way.

             At first, Sutherland bustles about all scientific and engaged, convincing his frightened wife that the planet will fly by.  Before long (after endless more scenes of everyone mooning around staring at one another in that artysy European art film way), the wife learns the truth – it won’t be a fly-by, her husband was lying to them.  By that time, he’s committed suicide, leaving his family to their fate alone, the sister grabs her son and attempts to flee but there is nowhere to escape to, and it finally falls to Dunst to remind her little, terrified nephew that he’s not to be afraid, that she’s Aunty Steel-breaker (at least that’s what it sounded like) and she has powers to protect them all in a “magic cave,”  which she proceeds to build, a teepee frame into which she brings her sister and nephew to wait until the planet crashes into them.

            Certainly a fair enough story to tell.  Which Triers does tell in those brilliant opening foreshadowing images; eerie, haunting shots of this giant planet glowing in the night sky; a super slo-mo shot of Dunst in her elaborate wedding dress fleeing through a thick forest filled with entangling vines clinging to her legs as she flees their clutches; a black horse suddenly falling, falling, falling to the ground; the sister clutching her son as she runs across what looks like a soft stretch of  grass that horrifyingly turns to soft mud, sinking her up to her knees with each step, incapable of moving forward, and finally, Dunst, shot in such a way that she resembled a colossus while behind her lightning was streaking out of the dark clouds as she slowly raised her hands, her face as serene as a powerful and terrifying goddess, and watched with calm interest as lightning started flowing out of her fingers.

            With those symbolic images, von Triers retells them in the film itself in more realistic fashion – the husband dumped at the wedding party, the killer planet approaching, the estate’s beloved horses which the audience knows are doomed, the mother fleeing in a golf cart in a futile attempt to save her son, and finally, Dunst remaining the only character left with the power, grace and courage to shield her loved ones from the final horror hurtling out of the sky.

            Unfortunately, too much of the stuff in between these amazing book ends was so repetitive, self-indulgent, distracting and annoying that I suspect most of the audience was praying – praying – that that killer planet would just hurry up and arrive and get it over with.

            Which is hardly the frame of mind a filmmaker should want his audience to have while watching his Masterpiece.  And which is a shame as well, since clearly von Trier has in his artistic paint box some pretty spectacular movie-making skills and the understanding that film and dreams and poetry all operate on a far different level in our brains than other art forms.  It’s too bad he lacked the hard, focused, disciplined eye that would have allowed him to winnow his rich assortment of “moving pictures” in order to tell his story in a far better fashion.

            So, is this a film worth seeing?  As painful as so much of it was to sit through, I’m actually glad I went because I’m glad I now have those amazing images firmly planted in my head.  And the memory of how cleverly the film-maker book-ended that film. So, if you love movies, those things may well be worth the price of admission. And since there’s no such thing as a free lunch, I guess all the self-indulgent crap in the middle was the price I had to pay for the good stuff. 

4 comments:

M said...

Hi Ann. This is off topic, but I didn't know who else to ask or another venue better suited. In yesterdays Telegram Tribune LTE, Bo Cooper published a letter about the new property tax burden due on the 12th. Of course the comments started about at one time we could have had the sewer for free. One commentator stated that a grant had been issued while Bill Coy was Supervisor, but that he had surveyed community members and we were dead set against a sewer, so the Board voted against taking the grant. I guess my question is, who did Bill Coy survey, and how do you find the record of this? I looked at the County website, and I have no idea of how to look into it. Would the Supervisors indeed have voted against a grant with no out of pocket cost to community members for a sewer? Sounds pretty farfetched to me. Thanks Ann and I apologize for going off topic.
Sincerely, M

Churadogs said...

Hmmm, good question. This happen before I came here, but that's similar to the story I heard. But if memory serves, I thought a vote was taken whether or not to form an assessment district way back in the late 70's, early 80's and the property owners said, Nope, no assessment, likely because they feared a huge growth explosion once a sewer was put in. Also, if memory serves, the early planned build-out population was going to be waaaayyy higher than at present, likely because very few knew how much in danger the aquifer was in since few studies had been done on that.Which means, had that assessment passed and a sewer was built and huge numbers of houses added, the aquifer would have been overdrafted already and we'd be importing state water at a huge price. Which still may come to pass if this present plan doesn't recharge effectively and/or if the County doesn't get off the dime for a full water conservation push.)

I wonder if Julie Rodewald's office would know if there was an assessment vote taken in the late 70's early 80's on that issue. At that time, there were grants and federal funds available to build such projects. When Reagan came in, everything started "privitizing" so by the time the sewer was again on deck, the federal monies had dried up so there was no federal money for any Supervisors to "vote down."

Wonder if, perhaps Al Barrow knows. Or, is Bill Coy alive? Could track him down. May be in the phone book.

Alon Perlman said...

Al? Speaking of lying to protect the innocent, and other things that happen, when a dysfunctional family gathers together. Why not Ron at S'Watch? -http://sewerwatch.blogspot.com/2010/09/end-celebrate-pandora-nash-karner.html has his experience on the Election (I'd rather have a Bud)
What was the topic? Don't have the old history about the first supervisor to touch the sewer with an under-ten foot septic tank solids measuring pole, sorry.
But... A director who is an unfocused cinematographer is still better at making a story live longer than two hours, than the product of the Hollywood marketing focus machine. As for the self-indulgent stuff in the middle, well, as long as it happens before dessert, or aren’t we talking about Thanksgiving Dinner's overstuffed maudlin speeches anymore?
To the topic; Thanks for another Movie review as interesting and illuminating on its own merits as the media experience it covers. It's the least to say-Grateful.

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

History is best left to actual documents. I suspect to find what is mentioned here, one would have to go to the County Recorder's office and sort through the microfiche files and try not to become seasick in doing so. It is a daunting task having done it on some drainage issue I was researching, but in the end it is worth it and they will make a copy for you off the film at a nominal price.

Thanks for the movie review. Not sure if I can sit through that one - you were brave I think! We decided to see The Descendants, which was a very rewarding experience, so much so that we want to see it again.