I can't say I had my usual high hopes for Melancholia; I spoke to Lars Von Trier via Skype just a few weeks ago, and, while he was on fantastic form, he seemed to have a few doubts about his latest (“I'm just afraid that I've made a film that's far too nice,” he laughed). And he has; though there's no mutilation or hardcore sex, Melancholia is mostly disappointing because it just doesn't demand enough of you. Kirsten Dunst stars as Justine, a depressive woman who's just got married, and the first half of the movie deals with her wedding, which threatens to end in disaster. The second half focuses on her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is somewhat concerned by the huge planet, the Melancholia of the title, which, although scientists say otherwise, seems to be on a collision course with Earth.
The first ten minutes are breathtaking, offering the whole movie in mini-bites to the operatic strains of music from Wagner's Tristan And...
I'm posting this picture, taken at the rooftop reception for the London Film Festival and the BFI, not simply because jury member JudeLaw came along but because it turned out the guy I kept looking at and chuckling because he looked remarkably like Crash director Paul Haggis actually WAS Paul Haggis. D'oh! Also in the picture are the LFF's Sandra Hebron and the BFI's Amanda Neville. I'm somewhere to the right, standing by the pool and getting sunburned... ...
OK, so the question remains: how good was it ever going to be? Ironically, with every postponement, Terrence Malick's fifth film simply gained more and more momentum. For any other movie, an 18-month delay would be cinematic equivalent of the perfume of a tainted cheese, but with Malick the delay was somehow further proof of his seniority: his films aren't released, they're bestowed. But try telling the audiences here that. Unusually for Cannes, the Palais was besieged a full 45 minutes before the film even started. There were scrummages, raised voices, and the story goes that even the police were called. All this for a film that would be released to the whole of France the very next day. Yep. By the time you read this, it's probably playing in Paris right now.
I must admit that I knew quite a lot about the film going in, and those that liked it tended not to, so if you don't want to know anything about it, stop reading now. This is a film that benefits from ignorance but it's cert...
A full blog is to follow, but in the meantime here is Damon Wise' immediate reaction to Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life.
"There were loud boos and some muted applause at the premiere of Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life, a year after it was first mooted to show here. The critical opinion was just as divided; some saw a poetic meditation on life as filtered through the prism of childhood, while others simply saw one of the great arhouse duds of all time, a sprawling mess of disgressions so convoluted it even pauses to consider the beginnings of life itself.
Personally, I thought an interesting, impressionistic and almost certainly autobiographical film was sunk by its ambition. Malick takes his elliptical style to new, almost incomprehensible levels, but the real problem is Sean Penn as Jack, a Wall Street trader (perhaps) reflecting on his fraught relationship with his father. These modern scenes, laced with surrealism and bombarded with choral music (as we a...
Cannes Videblogisode #4 "Aha. Sam informs me that he had to cross the line as his original shooting angle would have ended up" Chris Hewitt Read comment
