It was like waking from a dream: my producer showed me a suggestion for a poster. “What is that?” I ask. ”It’s a film you’ve made!” she replies. ”I hope not,” I stammer. Trailers are shown ... stills ... it looks like shit. I’m shaken.
Don’t get me wrong ... I’ve worked on the film for two years. With great pleasure. But perhaps I’ve deceived myself. Let myself be tempted. Not that anyone has done anything wrong ... on the contrary, everybody has worked loyally and with talent toward the goal defined by me alone. But when my producer presents me with the cold facts, a shiver runs down my spine.
This is cream on cream. A woman’s film! I feel ready to reject the film like a wrongly transplanted organ.
But what was it I wanted? With a state of mind as my starting point, I desired to dive headlong into the abyss of German romanticism. Wagner in spades. That much I know. But is that not just another way of expressing defeat? Defeat to the lowest of cinematic common denominators? Romance is abused in all sorts of endlessly dull ways in mainstream products.
And then, I must admit, I have had happy love relationships with romantic cinema ... to name the obvious: Visconti!
German romance that leaves you breathless. But in Visconti, there was always something to elevate matters beyond the trivial ... elevate it to masterpieces!
I am confused now and feel guilty. What have I done?
Is it ’exit Trier?’ I cling to the hope that there may be a bone splinter amid all the cream that may, after all, crack a fragile tooth ... I close my eyes and hope!
Lars von Trier, Copenhagen, April 13, 2011.
Journalist Nils Thorsen, author of last year’s ’The Genius – Lars von Trier’s Life, Films and Phobias’, has spoken with the director in March, while Lars von Trier was putting the last touches on ’Melancholia’.
Let us 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 humour germane to him:
»In a way, the film does have a happy ending.«
It is no coincidence that we begin at the end with a sunny day in spring, when everything seems to start all over again in lush green, and I visit the director in his mix of an office and a living room on the outskirts of the Film Town in Avedøre near Copenhagen. Indeed the ending was what was in place from the outset when he started to work on the idea of 'Melancholia', just as he immediately knew that the audience needed to know it from the first images of the film.
»It was the same thing with 'Titanic',« he says as he assumes his favourite interview pose, lying on the faded green cushions on his exuberant couch, arms flung over his head. »When they board the ship, you just know: aw, something with an iceberg will probably turn up. And it is my thesis that most films are like that, really.«
»In a James Bond movie we expect the hero to survive. It can get exciting nonetheless. And some things may be thrilling precisely because we know what's going to happen, but not how they will happen. In 'Melancholia' it's interesting to see how the characters we follow react as the planet approaches Earth.«
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.
The first time I called on Lars von Trier in connection with our book, he was looking for an idea for his next film. He sought inspiration at museums, listened to music and mentioned snippets of thoughts in bits and bobs, images and plot segments which I now find have reached the screen. But the film was not the main objective. The main objective was his emotional well-being.
The work consisted of scheduled walks and office hours with the aim of gradually pulling himself out of the depression that struck him some years earlier. For Lars von Trier is a melancholiac incarnate. He drags himself through the times when he is not making films and could actually just enjoy life, but is at his best when the shit hits the fan and everything depends on him. Film crews and investors, actors, lines and plots. Not to mentions the cinematic language itself, which at best must be supplied with a few neologisms along the way while he is looking for some sore toes of culture, politics or ethics that he can step on, as he will do.
»My analyst told me that melancholiacs will usually be more level-headed than ordinary people in a disastrous situation, partly because they can say: 'What did I tell you?« he laughs. »But also because they have nothing to lose.« And that was the germ of 'Melancholia'. From then on, things were speeding up. Less than a year later, the script was written, the actors found and the crew in the process of shooting.
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.
In 'Melancholia' he grapples with melancholia itself. More than cataclysms. But even though his take-off is his own depression, the idea developed during a conversation and a letter exchange with actress Penélope Cruz who wanted to make a film with him. She spoke of her fascination with the play 'The Maids' by the French dramatist Jean Genet, in which two maids kill their mistress.
»But I don't do anything that's not born by me, I said. So I tried to write something for her. The film is actually based on the two maids whom I turned into sisters in the film. Penélope can ride. So I used that, too.«
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 melancholy Justine is determined to become normal, he explains. So now she wants to get married.
»She wants to end all the silliness and anxiety and doubt. That's why she wants a real wedding. And everything goes well until she cannot meet her own demands. There is a recurring line: 'Are you happy?' She has to be. Otherwise, the wedding is silly. You must be happy now! And they all try to bring her ashore, but she doesn't really want to be part of it.«
Longing for reality
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?«
Alone in the Universe
Lars von Trier gets up, goes to his computer on the desk and starts searching the internet.
»In the film, the sisters talk about being alone. And I believe I came upon that by listening to this number with Nephew, 'Allein, Alene',« he says from his desk.
»And then I found it interesting if we actually are alone in space. In fact, it's completely irrelevant. But it makes a big difference to me. One thing is that the Earth is cleared of all life, but if there are some cells somewhere, there's something to build upon. If there's no other life anywhere, well, that's the end of that.«
I perceive the sisters' relationship as very loving.
»Yes, in the end, for instance. I think they get together there. That is also what hints at a happy end. That the two opposites melt together. They have different reaction patterns, of course. But they have been two, and they become one.«
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.«
If you ask Trier what he thinks of the film, it is more difficult to get an answer. »When I see it, I feel good about it. But I've seen it so many times that I can't see it anymore,« he says and hesitates for a moment or two. »Charlotte Gainsbourg said something that pleased me very much. It was: It's a weird film, « he laughs. »That was lovely, because I was worried that 'weird' was somehow lacking a bit.«
The nymphomaniac
In Lars von Trier's case, the answer is simple. You get up in the morning, go for your walks, go to work and search the world for new flashes of interest to be unfolded in images that may even add to the cinematic vocabulary. It has the considerable side effect that the director can keep his melancholy somehow at bay. That is why his films come at short intervals these days, and a new idea is already taking shape in his mind, as far as I understand. Even though the unveiling comes jerk wise. At first when he reveals that he has started to read books; Thomas Mann's 'Buddenbrooks', Fjodor Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' and 'The Brothers Karamazov'.
»And it is an interesting point why the hell films have to be so stupid! « He erupts.
»Why do all lines have to be about something? A plot. When books have a red thread, they only brush it momentarily!« he says and lets his index finger touch the table for a while, before it again pops up. »And then again in a flash much later.«
»Whereas a film is completely tied to the plot. Even a Tarkovsky film has nowhere near the same depth as a novel. It could be fun to take some of the novel's qualities – even that they talk nineteen to the dozen, which is what I like in Dostoyevsky - and include that.«