Click here for the review of Melancholia

SPOILERS must be tagged with the "SPOILER" tag!

Love you, James, but gotta disagree about this one. Melancholia is the best film I've seen in 2011 thus far. It was a 2-hour-long punch in the face. Perhaps my own (albeit minimal compared to some) experiences with depression made the first act more interesting, and made it painfully clear to me that the film worked primarily as a metaphor. Scientific it is not. Logical yes, but not scientific.



I wouldn't say that. I would say this film is exploring (1) the nature of depression and (2) how the human mind interacts with reality. Minor spoilers:




I can see that, and perhaps you are right. Perhaps the science could have checked out and all of the ideas remained intact. But for me, the scientific accuracy of the movie is largely irrelevant. It's not a disaster flick to me. It's a fable, perhaps, or the cinematic equivalent of a painting. And I'm not the type to like overly-artsy stuff. (Disliked The Tree of Life.)

Apologies for the passionate tirade. Viva la movies.

A great deal of what passes for 'Sci-Fi' has little or no bearing in reality, even proper Sci-Fi like 'Minority Report' bears little resemblance to 'real life'.

It bothers me greatly that a well shot movie with bad writing is considered bad when a well written film that is shot poorly (Richie and Tarrentino take note) is considered good. We are talking about cinema here... does anybody see how this makes no sense?



And the definite exception of 'Sucker Punch'.

James,

You've often argued in the past that films don't need to adhere to historical accuracy in order to be good. However, with this review, you talk a great deal about the poor science used by Lars Von Trier, and based upon what you said here, seem to be using it against the film. I could also point out that many sci fi films you've liked, such as Minority Report and Sunshine also use arguably poor science as the premise for their plots.

I'm therefore curious as to why you hold the scientific accuracy of Melancholia against it, but not for even a "hard" sci-fi film like Sunshine. Also, and more importantly, why historical innaccuracy isn't important at all (at least from what I remember from what I've read in other reviews) but scientific accuracy is so important to Melancholia.

Thanks,
-Jeremy

Here's what I wrote on the General Discussion thread. -


I've gotta say I was impressed with this film. Every so often a picture touches you and makes you think about your own life. For this, I think most of us can ask if we are a Justine or a Claire. I'm no Marxist, but this film serves up an excellent fable for the emptiness of our overly grasping, materialistic existence and subsequent guilt and/or self-pity we may feel about this fact. It actually reminded me of Fight Club and how Tyler talks about us being the middle-children of history with no great purpose, and how this can wreck havoc with our psyche.



Good movie!

Just a side note; I don't feel guilty or empty about being materialistic. Don't really get why people get so militant about this issue!

It sounds very much like this film could have worked better had the source of the end of the world wasn't actually revealed, at least for JB. I understand that films may focus on a theme (re: how people cope with the end of the world), but sometimes my immersion can be broken if the basic premise is too faulty or full of bullshit to allow me the suspension of disbelief. I will check out this film to see exactly how I feel about it, however.

Sounds like this film suffers from the same problem as Knowing(I.E. the central premise is too asinine to be very believable)

I am also wondering exactly why scientific accuracy is so important to this film. It doesn't seem like Von Trier is trying to accurately portray an end-of-the world scenario. We have the National Geographic channel for that.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. An amorphous, unexplained end of the word scenario would have worked. But something so obviously fraudulent, so utterly full of shit impedes my ability to take the film seriously. For me, it's not a minor irritant - it's so laughable that it creates a barrier I find difficult to overcome. But that may just be me.

The deadly planet is just a McGuffin it would appear-there are literally dozens of ways that the universe could off us and our planet-I probably wouldn't obsess too much over the exact means (and astronomers have estimated that there are likely billions of rogue planets wandering the galaxy-heck it's highly likely that some have been ejected from our own solar system early on).

There's something wonderfully poignant about another planet offing us though. It speaks more to humanity's insignificance than if a rogue asteroid did it.

Not that I believe humanity is insignificant (quite the contrary), but Lars Von Trier has that whole "nature is evil" bent.

Yeah, I've never understood that either... especially when film is first and foremost a visual medium (after all, why did the earliest films not have sound? ). Yet, at the same time, people ripped the Star Wars prequels (which were deliberately written in that static, stilted '30s style) to shreds but nonetheless gave "Titanic" and "Avatar" free passes for equally questionable dialogue choices. Go figure.

At least no one here (YET) has said they'll only see this film because Kirsten Dunst is naked in it .

I was watching the news earlier; apparently there was a huge asteroid that was moving really close to the earth. The newscaster was joking that NASA should gets its "Armageddon team" together.

Whether the science is sound or not misses the point. I bet most of the people complaining about this don't moan about Star Wars or Alien. Both clearly ludicrous beyond anyhting Melancholia offers.

The fact is this is a poignant drama about the decedent, affluent classes and their empty, life-hating existences.

I don't see how a planet colliding with Earth is so outside science.

I'll have to wait until it comes out on DVD to see this, so I can't comment on JB's issues until then. But I'll be interested to see if I have the same reaction. In my non-work life, I'm an avid amateur astronomer; last night, I was out with my 18-inch telescope using JPL ephemerides to locate the near-Earth asteroid 2005-YU55 as it passed inside the orbit of the moon. So I'm constantly disappointed by the so-called science in science fiction movies. Armageddon was bad for a lot of reasons, but the science was especially laughable. I'm always bothered by the sound of loud explosions in space, and I wince whenever I see Superman's cape flapping in the wind as he flies through the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I could potentially accept this colliding planet concept if the idea is clearly presented as a fantasy, with no techno mumbo-jumbo to try to trick the audience that it's real. Whether it bothers me or not will depend on how it's presented in the film.

All objects in space, where a speck of dust or a gas giant planet, must obey Newton's laws of motions, which we've understood very well for over four hundred years. If a large planet were present within the solar system in an orbit that would intersect with Earth, we would have known about it for decades, if not hundreds of years. If a rogue planet were to enter the solar system from outside, it would almost certainly be captured by the sun's gravity in a distant orbit that would never approach the inner planets.

The only way to get around this would be some supernatural force that powers the rogue planet in some way that ignores Newton's Laws. Perhaps a race of Yodas are out there using the Force to move an entire planet towards us.

An asteroid colliding with Earth is not out of the realm of possibility. A gas giant, on the other hand, is ludicrous. To begin with, the gravitational forces associated with the entrance of such a body into the inner solar system would be cataclysmic. As it got closer, Earth's orbit around the sun would be impacted, as would the moon's orbit around earth. The end would not be sudden; it would be gradual and ugly.

If there is one area in which Star Wars is a winner, it's visuals. Dialouge wise, I was never particularly bothered that Han and Chewy didn't discuss Chewy's recent trip to Amsterdam or how he has been asked to 'take out' Mia Wallace. It didn't excactly need to be told. Avatar also looked amazing (definitely prefer it in 2D) but it's lack of subtlety in the 'Fern Gully'/'Pochahontis' parallel just spoiled it a little (good message, bad presentation).



First of all, I'm relived to hear that you are NOT Hugh Grant. Now we can abuse him openly again

Star Wars didn't need to be believable to be enjoyed. It's pretty much a given that anything can happen, thus the reason it fits more neatly into 'Fantasy' than 'Sci-fi'. The Alien movies were a little harder to swallow admittedly however there was nothing THAT out of the realm of possibility; Faux humans is way out there with Elvish alcohol resistance but other than that, meeting a new species of creature that doesn't conform to anything we know about is pretty acceptable.