Hacker Cinema
Melancholia
2011 · Film · 136 min
Directed by Lars von Trier
Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.
10 positive1 negative2 mixed7 neutralfrom 20 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
egh, as much as I enjoyed his Dogme 95 fayre when I was young and far more self-important, I find his later 'big cinema' output turgid twaddle.
Melancholia was just about bareable but from Mandalay onwards I could barely struggle through to the end of his flicks.
Nymphomaniac made me almost literally angry at its denouement. Just.. shit.
Melancholia. I don't think I've seen a movie that depicts depression and disaster so brutally. It's a film I keep thinking about every now and again.
Sounds like the movies "Don't look up" and "Melancholia"
Not much really happens, all everybody knows is that doom is imminent. The movies are mainly about how the different characters handle this situation.
That said, I am still waiting for a movie that just suddenly ends with a car crash where the main protagonist dies, fully unrelated to the story.
It's always nice to see a list which includes movies I haven't watched or heard of. Alas I suspect many are hard to find now, the streaming services don't show much interest in picking up the classics.
My sub-list:
Film I'm pleasantly surprised to see in the top 10: Mulholland Dr.
Film I'm not going to complain about: 2001. It's impact can't be denied even if the last bit drags
Film I'm happy to see recognized: Yi Yi
Films I found underwhelming:
-- Melancholia
-- Tree of Life
Films I'd forgotten about that I now have to watch again:
-- Dr. Strangelove
-- Playtime
-- Yi Yi
-- 8 1/2
Film I would have ranked higher: The Third Man
I first saw this painting in the intro to Melancholia, by Lars von Trier. I’ve had it as my desktop background for years. It reminds me a lot of the feeling of watching all your neighbors shovel after a snowstorm. Funny that the movie communicates an unsettling and existential story that is the opposite of cosy.
> Melancholia (may not qualify for some sci-fi fans,
how about there is no fictitious science in that movie?
The 2010s in sci-fi gaves us:
- Dredd
- Melancholia (may not qualify for some sci-fi fans, I suppose, and I can understand why—it's so very allegorical)
- High Life
- Under the Skin
- Annihilation
- Ex Machina
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Looper
- Blade Runner 2049
- Sorry to Bother You
- Arrival
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Last Jedi (I know lots of people hated it—I think it's the only more-or-less good Star Wars movie since the original trilogy, and was shocked at the broadly-negative reaction, having come out of the theater thinking "finally, we got a good one, even if it did play the ending way too safe; everyone's going to be so happy!". We're not gonna change each other's minds in HN comments. Agree to disagree.)
And that's just the ones I've seen and thought were somewhere between good and great. And that I could remember or quickly find a reminder of with a quick search. I hear very good things about the new Planet of the Apes series (like, "each entry is better than the last" good) but have only seen the first one. Lots of people liked Rogue One, Snowpiercer, Ad Astra, and Interstellar (I didn't, or at least didn't think they were notably good, but hey, lots of people did). Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and Kong were OK romps. Heard good things about Upgrade and Attack the Block, but haven't seen them. The Martian was OK (some loved it). Inception was alright (again, lots of others like it way more than I do).
How many really good sci-fi movies did the 70s produce? The 80s? I think we're doing fine.
Melancholia the 2011 movie is exactly about this. A clinically severely depressed woman is the best one a dealing with the upcoming end of the world.
Great movie btw. Highly recommend if you have struggled with clinical depression.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/
I do like science fiction, particularly of the Star Trek style. I'm less into the Aliens (action/horror) stuff and more into fantasy/exploration stuff. Adventure in general is nice. Conflict is expected (as that's part of any plot), but I don't enjoy shows of inevitable doom usually (although Melancholia was good).
I also like comedy - British, American, southern American. I'm rewatching My Name Is Earl now. I enjoyed Trailer Park Boys for a while. Blackadder was fantastic.
I don't mind some violence, but that shouldn't be the focus. Likewise I don't mind sex (explicit or not) as long as that isn't the point of the show.
Gratuitous, over-the-top violence (modern Tarantino films) are very much not my interest.
>> Depression is not something with upsides and downsides.
> Not sure if this is true.
The remarkable film "Melancholia" (Lars von Trier, 2011) was inspired by the director's depression, and one particular upside: that when things get bad, like really bad, the depressive can function better than normal folks because the outside now matches their inside. Kirsten Dunst plays a young woman with utterly crippling depression, I've never seen anything like it in real life or on film, like unable to move or eat. But when the Earth is about to be destroyed, she's sanguine, unlike everyone else.
Not sure if this is true to life, but it makes some sort of sense.
Only tangentially related, but Melancholia is a beautiful (and uh melancholic) movie about a rogue planet that perfectly captures a prevailing mood about our present moment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)
Not that we ever actually have to worry about a collision with a rogue planet.
This makes me of Melancholia[0] although the outcome may or may not be different (#nospoilers)
[0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/
I remember that was also the plot of the movie melancholia. It does seem potentially plausible. Plenty of other traits exist that are terrible in normal times but key to survive abnormal times.
Anything from Zal Batmanglij is out of this world. You should check his early films. I've watched "Another Earth" back in the day for instance and while maybe right now, there is more popular stuff that followed, it was very different back when it appeared.
I guess it was before things like "Melancholia" and "Interstellar".
This guys is a genius.
I was about to suggest this movie, but since someone else suggested it, I might as well note that Melancholia has more to do with other things than "a planet crashing into earth". It's more of an existential catastrophe than a terrestrial catastrophe.
Watch the film “Melancholia” for a dark take on the effect of a rogue planet.
Reminds me of the movie Melancholia.
The challenging thing about Melancholia isn't "boredom" but the shaky camera work in the first half of the movie. I turned it off in disgust after 30 minutes or so. No idea why I went back and watched the rest of it, but I'm glad I did. One of those films that sticks with you.
Melancholia by Lars von Trier is another great movie about the earth colliding with another planet.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/
For something one might imagine as a coda to Dying of the Light -- and even more depressing -- try the 2011 Lars von Trier movie Melancholia.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/
That Jupiter one scared the crap out of me. Having watched Melancholia just recently might have helped as well: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/