Beguiling and beyond bleak – but not without its moments of comedy – Lars von Trier’s 2011 masterpiece tracks the waning days before a rogue planet, the title’s Melancholia, is anticipated to collide with Earth. That’s not a spoiler. The unnerving prelude, set to Wagner’s tone-setting “Tristan und Isolde,” foretells catastrophe by way of birds falling from the sky and electricity crackling from the fingers of a magnificent Kirsten Dunst, playing a new bride struggling with chronic depression. And besides, the sci-fi plot isn’t even the point. What is? For me, at least, it’s the film’s experience – a kind of religious ecstasy – of a depressive being vindicated that her feelings of doom were right all along. – Kimberley Jones
