With a nod to narrative symmetry, he returns to it in the final scene. In between, emotional hell breaks loose as the narrative presents an accessible, intense focus on two sisters and their dysfunctional family. Justine embodies that enervating, melancholic mood. Her wedding reception at her sister Claire's luxurious, ostentatious estate takes the first half of the film with the focus shifting to the wayward planet's approach for the second half.
As the reception progresses, Justine becomes increasingly distraught and depressed as her divorced parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) carp at each other, Justine's brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland) tries to throw her mother out of the house, and Justine's employer wants her to come up with advertising slogans. Individuals' actions strip away the veneer of good behavior. Claire's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) half of the film follows her barely subdued panic over the dire predictions and her attention to her son.
In essence, Justine's story explores pomp and ceremony, the wedding rituals that really don't provide the stability or the help a melancholic person hopes for. Characteristic von Trier technical touches define the style: close-ups shifting in and out of focus, reframing within shots as the camera alters its placement, and probing of characters' antisocial behavior. There are also haunting, nightmarish images in slow motion and some breathtaking compositions.
For Justine's part, von Trier said he sought a romantic, soft focus look reminiscent of the influence of "classical painting of different kinds, Pre-Raphaelites." Cinematically, he credits Tarkovsky, Antonioni, even Bergman, as he dives headlong into German romanticism. The music reinforces this with the overture of Tristan and Isolde interpreting the prelude. For Claire, the camera observes more, intrudes less. At 2¼ hours Melancholia demands patience that is rewarded with a powerful immersion in, as von Trier has said, "A film not so much about the end of the world as about a state of mind." At Landmark Theatres.
