quote: | Originally posted by Julz
The movie was just really bland, the characters where not complex at all and we barely got to see who they are. The story was also lacking and was very predictable. |
See, that's better! Now I know why you're wrong.
Yes, the story was predictable (you get to see how it ends right in the beginning for god's sake), but that's because von Trier is interested in what happens prior to the apocalypse, not in following genre tropes of disaster movies where they send Bruce Willis on a suicide mission to save the world. The predictability is completely intentional so you don't have to worry how it ends and can focus on other things. You didn't like the story because of your inappropriate expectations, not because it sucked.
The key to watching (and at least partly getting) Melancholia is not to follow the narrative, but to look for symbolic meanings. The basic interpretation is that it's all about the end of the Western world that is based on materialism (the mansion) and science (the Kiefer Sutherland character who coincidentally owns the place). Characters don't have to be complex, they can be archetypal which is what Trier's been working with for a long time, most visibly in Antichrist. Justine (Justice?) is Melancholia, for example, the destructive force that ruins the opulent wedding (western values) and then acts calmly when the actual apocalypse begins.
It's a bit like when people kept saying that Avatar is shit because it's just Pocahontas with smurfs when in fact it was again consciously archetypal and what actually mattered was how the story was told, not what the story was.
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