Melancholia

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 207 critic reviews are positive, and the average rating is 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Melancholia's dramatic tricks are more obvious than they should be, but this is otherwise a showcase for Kirsten Dunst's acting and for Lars von Trier's profound, visceral vision of depression and destruction."[37] According to Metacritic, the film received "universal acclaim", based on an average score of 81 out of 100 from 40 critics.[38] A 2017 data analysis of Metacritic reviews by Gizmodo UK found the film to be the most critically divisive film of recent years.[39]

Kim Skotte of Politiken compared the film with the director's previous work:

"There are images—many images—in Melancholia which underline that Lars von Trier is a unique film storyteller... The choice of material and treatment of it underlines Lars von Trier's originality... Through its material and look, Melancholia creates rifts, but unlike Antichrist I don't feel that there is a fence pole in the rift which is smashed directly down into the meat. You sit on your seat in the cinema and mildly marveled go along in the end of the world."[40]

Berlingske's Ebbe Iversen wrote about the film:

"It is big, it is enigmatic, and now and then rather irritating. But it is also a visionary work, which makes a gigantic impression. From time to time the film moves on the edge of kitsch, but with Justine played by Kirsten Dunst and Claire played by Charlotte Gainsbourg as the leading characters, Melancholia is a bold, uneven, unruly and completely unforgettable film."[41]

Steven Loeb of Southampton Patch wrote:

"This film has brought the best out of von Trier, as well as his star. Dunst is so good in this film, playing a character unlike any other she has ever attempted, that she won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. Even if the film itself were not the incredible work of art that it is, Dunst's performance alone would be incentive enough to recommend it."[42]

Sukhdev Sandhu wrote from Cannes in The Daily Telegraph that the film "at times comes close to being a tragi-comic opera about the end of the world," and that, "the apocalypse, when it comes, is so beautifully rendered that the film cements the quality of fairy tale that its palatial setting suggests." About the actors' performances, Sandhu wrote: "all of them are excellent here, but Dunst is exceptional, so utterly convincing in the lead role—troubled, serene, a fierce savant—that it feels like a career breakthrough. Meanwhile, Gainsbourg, for whom the end of the world must seem positively pastoral after the horrors she went through in Antichrist, locates in Claire a fragility that ensures she's more than a whipping girl for social satire." Sandhu brought up one reservation in the review, in which he gave the film the highest possible rating of five stars: "there is, as always with Von Trier's work, a degree of intellectual determinism that can be off-putting; he illustrates rather than truly explore ideas."[43] Peter Bradshaw, writing for The Guardian, stated "Windup merchant Lars von Trier is back with a film about the end of the world – but it's not to be taken entirely seriously", and gave it three stars out of a possible five.[44]

In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an Atlantic culture writer found "the perspective of a catastrophe-minded person thrust into a state of actual catastrophe finds perhaps no better creative expression" than in the film.[45] BBC Culture stated that "arguably no film has been more profoundly compassionate in its depiction of a mental crisis" and the title questions if it is "the greatest film about depression ever made."[46]

Accolades

Dunst received the Best Actress Award at the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival.[47] The film won three awards at the European Film Awards for Best Film, Best Cinematographer (Manuel Alberto Claro), and Best Designer (Jette Lehmann).[48]

The U.S. National Society of Film Critics selected Melancholia as the best picture of 2011 and named Kirsten Dunst best actress.[49] The film was also nominated for four Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards: Best Film – International; Best Direction – International for von Trier, Best Screenplay – International also for von Trier, and Best Actress – International for Dunst.[50]

Film Comment magazine listed Melancholia third on its Best Films of 2011 list.[51] The film also received 12 votes—seven from critics and five from directors—in the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest movies ever made, making it one of the few films of the 21st century to appear within the top 250.[8] In 2016, the film was named as the 43rd best film of the 21st century, from a poll of 177 film critics from around the world.[52] In 2019, Time listed it as one of the best films of the 2010s decade,[53] while Cahiers du cinéma named it the eighth best film of the 2010s.[54] That same year, Vulture named Melancholia the best film of the 2010s.[55]


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