It seems this a season for the directors who created Cult instead of pulp to represent themselves in 2011. August 25 the long awaited Lars von Trier film ‘Melancholia’ is to be released. Melancholia premiered at the Cannes film-festival where the female leading role performed by Kirsten Dunst was celebrated with the award for Best Actrice. Other leading characters are played by a.o. Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist), Kiefer Sutherland (24), Charlotte Rampling and John hurt.

written by Nils Thorsen

Let’s get it over with right away. The end of Lars von Trier’s film ‘Melancholia’: everybody dies. Not just the guests at the grand wedding held in the first part of the film at an ever-so-romantic castle surrounded by a golf course. And not just all life on Earth. For in the world evoked by the Danish film maker this time, we are absolutely alone in the universe. So what ends in our planet’s cosmic embrace with the ten times bigger planet, Melancholia, is life as such and our recollection of it. No ending could be more final. And, as Trier remarks with a black humor germane to him: “In a way, the film does have a happy ending.”

 
THE GERM OF ‘MELANCHOLIA’
We follow two sisters till the bitter end. Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst. A melancholic by the grace of God, she has a hard time finding her place in the world and assuming all its empty rituals, but feels more at home when the world draws near its end. And then her sensible big sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who thrives in the world and consequently finds it hard to say goodbye to it. “I think that Justine is very much me. She is based a lot on my person and my experiences with doomsday prophecies and depression. Whereas Claire is meant to be a… normal person,” laughs Lars von Trier, who has been haunted by anxieties all through his life and believed that the Third World War was breaking out every time he heard an airplane as a boy.

 
ON THE EDGE OF PLASTIC
Throughout most of the year when I interviewed the director, his mood gradually improved as the work progressed. And as he is lying there on the couch in his black hooded sweatshirt and his grey beard, he seems even more cheerful.

“I had more fun making this film, and I’ve been far more present. But then again, I was going through a bad time during ‘Antichrist’,” he says.

The title was inspired by his own depression. Later, presumably in a TV documentary, he saw that Saturn is the planet for melancholia, and, searching the internet, he suddenly came across a web page about cosmic collisions. As in ‘Antichrist’, ‘Melancholia’ opens with an overture – a series of sequences and stills which, to the overture of ‘Tristan and Isolde’, partly shows Justine’s own visions of the wonderful end of the world, partly the most dramatic grand-scale images of the cosmic collision.

“I’ve always liked the idea of the overture. That you strike some themes. And, typically, we would have made an image of special effects of something we found would happen at such a collision, even though the plot itself just hints at the disaster in close ups. I thought it would be fun to take the images out of the context and begin with them instead,” he says and adds with a smile: “That gets rid of the aesthetic side in one full blow”.

 
THE EMPTY RITUALS OF REALITY
After the initial doomsday ballet, the film falls in two parts. the first part is called ‘Justine’ and deals with the melancholic sister and her wedding. The other bears the title ‘Claire’ and covers the countdown to the end. As the director puts it: “If everything has to go to hell, it needs to start off well.”

The melancholic Justine isn’t just longing. She is longing for pathos and drama, Lars von Trier explains. “She is longing for something of true value. And true values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?”

 
THE LAST FILM IN THE WORLD
Before the shooting started, Penélope Cruz cancelled because of other engagements and Kirsten Dunst got the lead instead. And the collaboration, says Lars von Trier, was a pleasant surprise. “I think she’s one hell of an actress. She is much more nuanced than I thought and she has the advantage of having had a depression of her own. All sensible people have,” he says. “She helped me a lot. First and foremost she had taken photos of herself in that situation so I could see how she looked. How she was present and smiling, but with a completely blank stare. She really pulls that off rather well.”

 
THE NYMPHOMANIAC
“I’m researching on nymphomania. And Marquis de Sade. I’ve found that 40 per cent of all nymphomaniacs are also cutters, in the sense that they cut themselves. But then again, it’s politically incorrect to speak of nymphomania, because the concept in itself is seen to indicate that we cannot relate to female sexuality. As I understand, many of them cannot obtain satisfaction, so they use sex like cutting because it is something within their control. I suppose they carry around a fear or pain that they conceal beneath that.”

He looks ahead for a while without speaking. “But it’s no fun if they’re just humping away all the time”, He ponders. “Then it’ll just be a porn flick.” He does not seem all alone in the universe, the director, as he lies there on his big couch and turns the details of a new film over in his head, but I wonder whether it is really the next film from Lars von Trier that he is outlining to me.

 
ARE we alone in the universe?, I ask instead.
“We are”, he says. “But no one wants to realize it. They keep wanting to push limits and fly wherever,” he laughs. “Forget it! Look inward.”

More about this in journalist Nils Thorsen’s exciting new book, Geniet – Lars von Triers liv, film og fobier (‘Genius – Lars von Trier’s life, films and phobias’)