Top Ten Films of 2011: #9

9

MELANCHOLIA 

Directed by Lars Von Trier 

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling 

It takes a chilly, derisive soul like Lars Von Trier’s to make a film like “Melancholia,” which embodies such a bleak sense of finality through the displacement of its central character Justine, and through her restless perplexion with civilisation. Married in metaphor, the two-part narrative elects to focus on the utmost fears of two sisters, and their contrasting outlook towards the prospect of the earth dying before their very eyes. Von Trier’s dramatic bravura offers an operatic, meditative exploration of existence, shamelessly grandiose and resoundingly bitter in juxtaposing mortality as both a precious commodity and a product of necessary evolution. His ideology dominates this cinematic supernova of provocation, the film’s wrenching, devastating climax otherwise euphoric in its resignation, and committed to rendering its troubled heroine thoroughly victorious.