My experience seeing Melancholia was at a 9PM screening on New Year's Eve as 2012 approached. With all the Mayan Calendar-based chatter of the impending end of the world around that time, it was quite a strange feeling to be walking out of the theater right after such a powerful and apocalyptic climax with just minutes left in the year.
Love love LOVE this film. However I haven't seen any other Trier. My wife saw some in college that completely put her off, so it was a surprise to her how much she liked this one. However because we watch movies together that means I haven't seen any other ones.
So what do y'all think would be the place to go if we liked this, but other LvT has been off-putting.
LvT is definitely a provocateur, which makes it hard to know where to tell you to go from here, because Melancholia is a bit anomalous in that respect. LOL, I'm searching through his filmography, and it's loaded with movies I admire, but... Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Dancer in the Dark... all the big LvT titles are massively divisive. Breaking the Waves and Dogville are my favorite films of his, but I'm going to guess that one or both of them put your wife off in college.
In some ways, I think the "minor" ones might be best? The Five Obstructions and The Boss Of It All are both interesting films that are massively overlooked in Von Trier's filmography, and I think in many ways help frame his project. Also, Zentropa is from his early formalist days and is super striking. I find the more Von Trier you watch, the more you see it all - for better and for worse - as one giant conversation about filmmaking.
Wonderful piece! It feels weird to say this because the movie is only 10 years old, but it's my favorite film of all time. I remember being so shaken by it the first time I watched it, and though rewatches have dulled that raw feeling a little bit, the viewing experience never stops being engrossing any. People mainly focus on it as a film about depression, but I've always found the Claire section to be such a great depiction of anxiety. In general, I love the way the two halves of the film almost talk to each other. The role reversal that the sisters undergo of who is the caretaker and who is being cared for by the end is just so incredibly moving.
This is a one timer for me, I learned a great deal about my own depression through seeing someone else suffer through the symptoms on film and for that I will always appreciate it (from a distance).
"Turning up on many best of the decade lists at the end of the ’10s, it now looks likely to be remembered as von Trier’s signature work.
Interesting. Do you think it even surpasses Dogville? That showed up on a lot of best-of-decade lists as well.
My experience seeing Melancholia was at a 9PM screening on New Year's Eve as 2012 approached. With all the Mayan Calendar-based chatter of the impending end of the world around that time, it was quite a strange feeling to be walking out of the theater right after such a powerful and apocalyptic climax with just minutes left in the year.
Love love LOVE this film. However I haven't seen any other Trier. My wife saw some in college that completely put her off, so it was a surprise to her how much she liked this one. However because we watch movies together that means I haven't seen any other ones.
So what do y'all think would be the place to go if we liked this, but other LvT has been off-putting.
LvT is definitely a provocateur, which makes it hard to know where to tell you to go from here, because Melancholia is a bit anomalous in that respect. LOL, I'm searching through his filmography, and it's loaded with movies I admire, but... Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Dancer in the Dark... all the big LvT titles are massively divisive. Breaking the Waves and Dogville are my favorite films of his, but I'm going to guess that one or both of them put your wife off in college.
Yeah I think it was those. Strangely, kind of thinking maybe Nymphomaniac...
Nymphomaniac is definitely provocative, but it's also wildly entertaining in a way a lot of his others aren't necessarily.
In some ways, I think the "minor" ones might be best? The Five Obstructions and The Boss Of It All are both interesting films that are massively overlooked in Von Trier's filmography, and I think in many ways help frame his project. Also, Zentropa is from his early formalist days and is super striking. I find the more Von Trier you watch, the more you see it all - for better and for worse - as one giant conversation about filmmaking.
Wonderful piece! It feels weird to say this because the movie is only 10 years old, but it's my favorite film of all time. I remember being so shaken by it the first time I watched it, and though rewatches have dulled that raw feeling a little bit, the viewing experience never stops being engrossing any. People mainly focus on it as a film about depression, but I've always found the Claire section to be such a great depiction of anxiety. In general, I love the way the two halves of the film almost talk to each other. The role reversal that the sisters undergo of who is the caretaker and who is being cared for by the end is just so incredibly moving.
This is a one timer for me, I learned a great deal about my own depression through seeing someone else suffer through the symptoms on film and for that I will always appreciate it (from a distance).