Alternate Trailer for “Melancholia”
Following the first trailer I posted earlier, this is a second trailer for Lars von Trier’s upcoming movie Melancholia. I am so excited for this! It promises to be so, so big, and visually stunning.
Melancholia will be released in New York and LA on Nov. 11, and in other cities across the US starting Nov. 18, but it will be available On Demand on Oct. 7, so you can watch it at home a month before its theatrical release. I feel like this is something that should be seen in the theater, but I will probably be too tempted to resist; and of course it’s great for those who don’t live in one of the cities where it will be playing.
Tags: hauntingly beautiful, lars von trier, sci-fi, surreal, trailers
4 Most Highly Anticipated Movies
+ Melancholia
{I love Lars von Trier’s work, he’s one of my favorite contemporary directors, and his last film Antichrist (from 2009) was amazing. This movie looks to be potentially amazing as well. Starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with a role by Charlotte Rampling also, Melancholia can be described as a surreal psychological sci-fi film; the word “Melancholia” being both the name of the planet that’s imminently colliding with the Earth, and an apt term for the feeling and atmosphere of the movie. It promises to be intense, provocative, over-the-top emotional as Von Trier is known for; with a theatrical, sometimes even overly sentimental soundtrack. I love the surreal, beautiful image of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floating down the river in her wedding gown holding her bouquet. It doesn’t currently have a U.S. release date, but I hope to see it sometime in 2011.}
+ The Tree of Life
{This Terrence Malick-directed movie, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, will be released on May 27. It’s one of the most beautiful movie trailers I’ve ever, ever seen. Vague and mystical, it doesn’t show us much of the story, but it’s incredible and moving. It splices together stunning images of outer space, nature on Earth, man-made structures like the ceiling of a church, and scenes from the childhood of the protagonist, Jack (from really interesting camera perspectives, too), in a kind of visual poetry. It seems to be about a man who’s grown up to be an astronaut (Sean Penn) and who’s reflecting on his upbringing and the lessons he learned from his parents, one of whom (the mother) represents the way of love and mercy, and the other of whom represents pragmatism and the way of the world. There’s a line whispered by the young Jack which expresses this tension, “Father…Mother…always you wrestle inside me. Always you will”; and his mother at the end saying, “If you don’t love, your life will flash by.”}
+ Sleeping Beauty
{This movie is written and directed by Julia Leigh and stars Emily Browning, whom I loved in Sucker Punch. It’s a surreal, visually elegant, and classy piece with an oblique fairy tale reference, described as a “haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious world of hidden desires.” It reminds me of both Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour from 1967 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I like its air of mystery, anticipation, and stillness, and its almost-retro sense of elegance and preciseness. It looks like a rare gem. It’s released in Australia on June 23, but doesn’t yet have a U.S. release date.}
+ Martha Marcy May Marlene
{Described as “a thriller that shifts nearly imperceptibly between dream, memory, and reality,” with a bravura performance by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, the younger sister of the Olsen twins), this movie looks really interesting and like one of those near-perfect movies that come along once in a while. It’s about a young woman, Martha, who’s “haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia” after escaping from a cult. It gets a wide release on July 10.}
Tags: emotive, experimental, hauntingly beautiful, lars von trier, madness, nature, sci-fi, surreal, trailers
Film Review: Antichrist
One of the best movies I’ve seen that came out in the last couple of years is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist from 2009, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It’s almost impossible to describe what this film is like, or “about.” It’s like a slow-moving, beautiful, irresistible nightmare. I would describe it as psychological/surreal arty horror.
The movie is divided into four chapters, titled “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” and “The Three Beggars.”
It tells the story of this nameless couple whose child dies accidentally and who go to a cabin in the woods to cope with the mother’s subsequent trauma. For me, it’s kind of divided into two parts, and it’s weird because these two parts are so different, in terms of what they give away about what the movie is “about.” In the first part, it seems very psychological, as if the movie is really about her psychiatrist-cum-boyfriend trying to help her overcome her anxiety and panic attacks. Nothing that happens in the first part isn’t within the realm of reality. Once they move to the cabin, strange things begin happening, and the movie shifts into an even more surreal, creepy, nightmarish atmosphere. But it never ceases being psychological.
Like I said, the movie is very vague, ambiguous, and doesn’t have a traditional narrative. It takes on this very mystical and surreal bent in the cabin, and gradually builds in horror. It has nothing to do with a literal Antichrist, except for the sort of archaic, cryptic mental atmosphere where such ideas come from.
What I sort of think it’s about is…primal evil. Deep, dark, obscure evil, like the horrific atmosphere surrounding medieval demons. The kind of evil that the woman (a Lilith-like figure) takes on, which seems to originate externally and just exists as evil. Similarly, nature and animals reflect the human happenings and aberrations, like in Macbeth. The bizarre stuff going on with the man and woman is manifested in the outside world, but external forces are also driving her and seeping into her psyche.
The cinematography is absolutely beautiful. It’s so interesting and a breath of fresh air, and even if you’re not that into the subject matter, you should probably check it out just for its visual effect. It’s surreal, eerie, highly atmospheric, and erotic. It has these lovely scenes of surreal, disturbing beauty, like the piles of pale limbs and naked bodies entwined with the tree roots in the promotional image above. Willem Dafoe is great in it, and so is Charlotte Gainsbourg, whom I love. Her character is so crazy and emotional in a very intense, visceral way.
This movie is definitely bizarre, and not for the squeamish, because it has quite graphic sex and some gruesome occurrences (the gore is not visually that over-the-top, just the idea of it is kind of squirmy).
A title like “Antichrist” evokes cheesy ’70s horror films like The Omen, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Antichrist is a gem of subtle, surreal horror, and of artistic, intellectual, and creative filmmaking.
Tags: film reviews, horror movies, lars von trier, religious symbolism, surreal
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