middle cyclones and other references

Procrastination Theatre: January 25, 2012

So, because we’re weird, we definitely chose to watch this on our three-year anniversary. I can neither explain nor condone this. But it was mainly difficult to watch because we both really love Alexander Skarsgard and seeing him rejected is just terrible. But we were both very impressed by Kiefer Sutherland, who was memorable and remarkable. Give the man better work, everyone!

Serious stuff: I had prepared myself for violence, but instead what I got was operatic melancholy, and a slow build of fragmented awareness and terror. I was actually terrified near the end, because the helpless enormity of what was about to happen was actually conveyed, not because Lars Von Trier shows us screaming masses and cities in turmoil, but because that isolated castle and those few people have to confront the end of the world without any distraction. 

And as someone who has encountered depression, I can say thatthis was a frustratingly accurate cinematic representation of it - to do it as much through cinematography as through acting. It is a breathtakingly beautiful movie. 

One last thing: I think it is remarkable that Melancholia and Another Earth both came out this year and both use that powerful, dream-haunting image of another planet made monstrously large and sublime in the sky. The two movies don’t do the same thing with the image at all, but what an example of how ideas and concepts float around the cultural ethos in the same historical moment.