&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/44895?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Melancholia+*+review%3AArticle%3A1639891&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=Guardian&amp;c4=Lars+von+Trier%2CCharlotte+Gainsbourg%2CWorld+cinema+%28Film+genre%29%2CDrama+%28Film+genre%29%2CScience+fiction+and+fantasy+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CCulture&amp;c5=Film+Awards%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=Peter+Bradshaw&amp;c7=11-Sep-29&amp;c8=1639891&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Review&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2FLars+von+Trier&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;Windup merchant Lars von Trier is back with a film about the end of the world &ndash; but it&#039;s not to be taken entirely seriously&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lars von Trier, that great maestro of facetious event cinema, is back with another instrument of torture. It&#039;s a disaster movie about an enormous blue&amp;nbsp;planet called Melancholia &ndash; 20 times the size of Earth, but only half as big as the grain of salt you&#039;re going to need &ndash; which crashes into planet Earth. The film is entirely ridiculous, often quite boring, with a script showing worrying signs of being cobbled together. But even as a longtime Von Trier doubter, I now have to admit it grows on you; there&#039;s a mawkish fascination and some flashes of real visual brilliance, especially in the mysterious series of dream-tableaux that begin the film, which take something from both Millais&#039;s Ophelia and Resnais&#039;s Last Year at Marienbad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can never sit down to a new Von Trier movie without thinking of Czech Dream, a cheeky work from 2004, which was a factual record of two young Czech film-makers&#039; anti-capitalist stunt. They took out ads for a non-existent new supermarket, and set up a phoney and completely flat storefront in the middle of an empty meadow. On the supposed &quot;day of opening&quot;, thousands of bargain-hunters galloped across the field towards it and the directors filmed their reactions as these poor dupes realised there was nothing behind the piece of painted plywood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every time, millions of arthouse film-fans run frantically towards the latest new idea that Von Trier has set up. A movie about slavery, perhaps, or a movie about a girl getting hanged or one about people pretending to have cerebral palsy. And when we get up close, we find &hellip; well, what? For me, the&amp;nbsp;contents are somehow less important than the windup, and I do really think Von Trier has something approaching a situationist genius for making the audience&#039;s discomfiture part of the show itself. In a way, the inevitable baffling let-down is an important final swoop in the Von Trier rollercoaster ride.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Melancholia is billed as a &quot;beautiful film about the end of the world&quot;: both the description and the film itself are as intriguing and exasperating as anything he has ever done. In his Cannes press conference, in response to a question about German Romanticism and the use of Wagner in the film, twinkle-eyed Von Trier said he sympathised with Hitler, then retracted the remark and has now retracted the retraction: none of these comments are any more serious or unserious than the action of the film itself. The anarchic publicity is part of the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kirsten Dunst plays Justine, a troubled young woman who is getting married, and Charlotte Gainsbourg is her sister Claire, whose millionaire blowhard husband, played by Kiefer Sutherland, has paid for a grand and expensive wedding reception at a fancy country-house hotel. There is a nice cameo from Udo Kier as the queeny wedding planner. But Dunst&#039;s perfect day is marred by emotional tensions, not least between her estranged parents, formidably but all-too-briefly played by Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt, and these tensions catastrophically unlock Justine&#039;s own tendency towards depression or indeed melancholia. Perhaps the marriage was, in Shakespearian terms, &quot;ill-starred&quot;, and they, like the rest of humanity, are affected by the gigantic planet supposedly on a course for imminent collision with Earth. It is Claire, supposedly the calm one, who succumbs to hyperventilating panic; for depressive Justine, the apocalypse is an ecstatic relief.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The entire wedding scene, effectively&amp;nbsp;the film&#039;s second act, looks suspiciously like something Von Trier might well have sketched out ages ago, inspired by Thomas Vinterberg&#039;s Festen, and crammed in here to bulk out the film. The third act is the world&#039;s end itself: a woozy, dreamy, freaky event which is brilliant in its preposterous way, though it is odd that no one considers it&amp;nbsp;necessary to turn on the TV news. The&amp;nbsp;best of the film is the brief opening act: a weird, hallucinatory montage of moonlit or Melancholia-lit images, which are an exposition of themes and distorted premonition of narrative: they are an echo of some of the most disquieting images in Von Trier&#039;s Antichrist.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dunst&#039;s performance has been much admired and was indeed a prizewinner at Cannes. Her descent into an almost zombie-like catatonic depression is forceful and very sincere, but it is impossible not to remember that the stunned, glassy-eyed look is something Von Trier has elicited from other leading ladies, including Bj&ouml;rk and Nicole Kidman: a Meg-Ryan-on-Parky look. For my money, Gainsbourg gives a far more interesting performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Melancholia is an absurd film in many&amp;nbsp;ways, and yet it would be obtuse not to acknowledge those lightning bolts of visual inspiration. When Justine&amp;nbsp;goes out into the fields to look at the awesome blue planet, and then takes her clothes off to bathe in its light &ndash; that really is powerfully erotic and strange. In some ways, for all its silliness and self-consciousness, this is the happiest experience I&#039;ve had with Von Trier for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;rating&quot;&gt;Rating: 3/5&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/lars-von-trier&quot;&gt;Lars von Trier&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlotte-gainsbourg&quot;&gt;Charlotte Gainsbourg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/world-cinema&quot;&gt;World cinema&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/drama&quot;&gt;Drama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/sciencefictionandfantasy&quot;&gt;Science fiction and fantasy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peterbradshaw&quot;&gt;Peter Bradshaw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html&quot;&gt;Terms &amp; Conditions&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds&quot;&gt;More Feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;clear:both&quot; /&gt;