Melancholia (2011)

As a rogue planet called Melancholia races on a collusion course with Earth, a bride (Kirsten Dunst) falls into a great depression on her wedding day. Her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) tries to maintain a semblance of normalcy but it isn't long before she begins to unravel too. The director Lars von Trier has a history of putting his female protagonists through the most horrible circumstances imaginable. Think Nicole Kidman in DOGVILLE, Bjork in DANCER IN THE DARK and Emily Watson in BREAKING THE WAVES. von Trier doesn't degrade Dunst or Gainsbourg the way he did those three "heroines" but he does push them through a dark and emotional nightmare which, of course, isn't a nightmare at all, it's real. It's a bold, fearless film with a killer performance by Dunst at its core. It has its flaws but von Trier is so daring in what he is trying to accomplish that it would seem churlish to dredge up its minor blemishes. That being said, I could have done without those blasts of Wagner on the soundtrack which in the context of the film sound as slurpy as some of those scores Max Steiner churned out at Warners in the 30s and 40s. With Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling, Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard and Udo Kier.