By Much like a babbling bobble head on a random business channel that spews their confident view on every stock market company in existence, I’m supposed to have opinions on every new film before we know much about it. Not today. Anyone who tells you they know what to expect from Lars von Trier’s next film — that will be competing in the Cannes Film Festival — is lying, but it’s that mystery factor to Trier’s work that makes most of us blindly recommend all of his projects to readers. He proves that a visionary isn’t always someone who has a vision we want to see, but should see. Movies that make you uncomfortable are often the ones most worth seeing.
His last film, Antichrist, had unsimulated sex and genital mutilation, yet it was a pretty damn good film, so when he says his new movie (NSFW trailer here) will have more romanticism in it, it’s kind of like saying Pirates 4 will have less pirates in it; there’s almost no comparison to be made. Nevertheless, here’s what he revealed about his film:
“As you can see in the trailer … Melancholia, the planet, is kind of ten times bigger than the Earth, and I liked the idea of being swallowed by Melancholia. I thought that was quite nice. And then I read today that that’s actually one of the virtues of romanticism – willingly being purified by dying. In fact, the film contains maybe more of the original idea of romanticism. I’m just saying that a lot of films today, their interpretation of romanticism is… quite boring, I think.”
The fact that he’s going slightly sci-fi and adding a planet that may or may not Majora’s Mask style slam into Earth makes it even more baffling. All of this confusion is eclipsed by the surprising fact that Kirsten Dunst will be the lead role despite having an acting career that’s had various highs and lows. So far this film seems capable of anything, but convincing of nothing. In other words, knowing what to expect from Melancholia is like playing pin the tooth on the Dunst donkey grin. Okay, that was mean, but probably not as mean as what Lars von Trier is going to put her through.
[Via EmpireOnline]