Melancholia

2011 • 135 minutes

About this movie

Kirsten Dunst plays a bride whose lavish wedding descends into chaos as a new planet called Melancholia gets dangerously close to Earth. Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgard and John Hurt also star.

Ratings and reviews

If slow, thoughtful films are not your cup of tea then skip this one because it will pull on your heartstrings and truly make you feel the anguish of the actors as they fulfill their roles. Depression and anxiety are personified in each of the two sisters who not only must navigate rocky relationships but must also face the possible catastrophic destruction of the entire world via planetary collision. A beautiful disaster on so many levels.

This was a good enough movie to continue watching to the end but only with a couple of pauses in between. The wedding and dysfunctional family scenes were certainly drawn out to the point where I had to pause the film, step away and take a break. There were to many scenes which disrupted the flow. Also, I realize this is not a Nova documentary but a rouge planet passing close to Earth would cause devastating gravitational and tidal forces long before it crashed into us.

While I will agree this movie is shot beautifully, I will not be watching it ever again. All but the last 5-10 minutes are very boring, just leading up to the inevitable end. the opening 'sequence' made me think the entire movie was going to be in slow-motion. Thank god that wasn't the case, but then, maybe I could find a way to appreciate it more if it had been. Oh and unnecessary nudity can not be appreciated by me, unless you're talking about statues and paintings. Not some movie... Don't get me wrong, I love art. But I guess this form of art is lost on me.