A Not-Summer Post

Oh my holy goblin, it's been so long since I wrote a 'personal' blog post I've kinda forgotten how to do it O_O.

I did have another version of this all typed up and ready to go, but it felt a little too personal, plus it was long  and largely incoherent (I'm just as shocked as you), so it's been absorbed into my diary instead. It was my first day back at uni today, and I was in for a total of forty minutes, which was sufficient enough time to completely freak out, Lose All Faith in Self, and feel defeated before I'd even begun. I suppose it didn't help that I'd had very little sleep, no breakfast, it was raining, I was cold, a guy in a lilac hoody practically walked through me, and etc. A couple of days ago, on the other side of summer, I had this kind of affected superstition that if I didn't do a 'My Summer' post then summer wouldn't officially end and everything in it would kind of bleed into the next chapter, like this:

But like I said, the intended post was too personal, maybe because I was panicking and when I panic I tend to spill my guts a little too messily all over the keyboard (ew), and I was super tired and just really not in the mood to do anything except watch The Horse Whisperer and go to bed early. And you know what? On the other side of summer, it is so obvious that bookending that period of time doesn't change things one iota. A few days ago my friend and I were browsing through some old photographs and we kept noticing how the seasons were very well established. The summers were hot and sunny, the autumns were rich and gold, and the winters were icy blue and mystical. Of course, retrospect is a deceptive thing, and probably those pictures were taken on days when the weather was particularly paradigmatic, but still. The weather has definitely changed over the past couple of years; the seasons kind of blend and smudge together. And I guess that's the way life is too. No matter how many little traditions or exorcisms I perform, like chopping off my hair at the start of term, or setting goals by the expiration dates of bus passes, I cannot compartmentalise the things that happen and how I feel about them. As much as I am resistant to the let things flow/come what may philosophy, it is probably healthier and more natural than to stanch and divide and suppress. I think. I can't force myself to jumpstart the getting over it process if I'm not quite there yet; that would be deleterious in the long-run. The restless part of me is impatient and eager for it to begin, but for the wrong reasons. Since I seem to express myself better in images, I suppose what I have to do right now is wade out into the water, and let my heels sink into the sand, and let the waves flow over and around me, and keep standing up. I'm not sure why these images are always to do with the ocean. I'm also not sure why in my head it is night time and I'm near an old harbour and I'm wearing torn raggedy scraps for clothes. Must be the Victorian Lit course seeping into my brain already. But yeah, I guess not actually being ready to move on.org is why I've been having these conflicting thoughts of "I want to move on because I don't want to still be here when I'm 21" (prescriptive) and "but I also don't want to move on, because that means it's really over and I can't...hope about it anymore, and I'm not quite ready to let go of that yet" (descriptive). I guess I'll be ready when I'm ready and the impatient part of me is just going to have to deal with that, because better this than dragging all that crap around and dumping it on someone else's lap. Or something. I think I'm still in the shell-shocked stage, but I've grown accustomed to being shell-shocked...does that make sense? 

And now I'm going to devolve into bullet points recounting life over the past few months cause I'm a waster:

·         The summer was begun by returning to North Berwick, this time with Meejin's little sister who I kind of want to adopt because we both love movies, she makes organised dance cool, and has the common sense that neither me nor Meejin possess. Which is an asset when you're going to stay in a demonically possessed house for five days. Except she was leaving after three. When we arrived at said house, the attic was lying open with the pulley stairs kind of hanging down into the hall. On the last night Meejin and I discovered that not only can we run for twenty minutes straight along a beach, we can also do it again five minutes later when we think we are being stalked. Seriously, that town is just Wickerman creepy at night. And here's a tip from me to you: 'zinc', when placed appropriately, is a v. good word in Scrabble. Thank me later ;).

·         I went to the cinema six times to see five different films; I spied Kevin Bridges in an ice cream parlour; Limmy came into my work and I bought his copy of Se7en; I took many driving lessons and clipped off one hubcap; I went on four ostensible not-dates; and read exactly eight books. I also did so little that I had time to enumerate what little I did do. Neat, huh?

·         Meejin spontaneously appeared at my door one evening and we ended up gutting my room until two thirty in the morning. It is frightening how much crap I had unknowingly accumulated. I can now see my desk once more, and my floor is no longer the site of the Two Towers (of DVDs).

·         I am embroiled, or partaking, or something, in A Situation. It is an indication of my lack of self-esteem that it took me most of the summer to recognise this fact, and from the outside I could justifiably be accused of being a bitch for appearing to allow it to go as far as it has. But I had to really know it before I knew, you know? Anyways, I never would have thought I'd be involved in something like this and while I'm surprised at myself, I feel intrigue rather than guilt. I'm not quite sure what that says about me but if I scrutinize anymore I will be struck permamently cross-eyed. If nothing else, it is interesting research for a book that I never could have gotten second-hand. Which got me to thinking, how far are writers willing to go in the name of research?

·         Speaking of writing, I done practically none, and I think I might expand on this later because I rarely talk about it to anyone, in reality or virtuality (is it bad that I totally smiled at that word?). To cut a long story short, I reckon this dearth of creativity was due in large part to...

·         ...my experiencing something of an identity crisis. In fact, crisis is the wrong word because it implies immediacy, and this is a sprawling languorous thing which is still going on. (This would be one of the things I was attempting to contain in summer.) The only way I can explain it is that I really really wanted to write, and I knew what I wanted to write because I'd planned it all out, but when it came to actually writing I just couldn't. There were other niggling little things like setting, format, the overwhelming choice of words in the English language, but the centrifugal problem seems to be that I have forgotten how to write like me. And I'm not quite sure how to fix that.

·         The Eglish teacher I had for four years in high school moved to Thailand with his family in August, and I'm feeling increasingly...not sad, just kind of oh about it. I kind of can't begin to describe the nebulous significance of his presence in my life, and how he always believed in and supported me even after I'd left school and I was no longer his responsibility. In a selfish way, because so many aspects of this summer have felt unfamiliar, and I'm embarking on something now even more unfamiliar, it kind of feels like I've lost an ally or a pillar of support. But mostly I'm just happy he's getting this amazing opportunity, and I hope his new students appreciate him as much as we all did.

·         And then this is the really frilly bit of news at the end of the bulletin: I'm taking on a couple of students to tutor them in English for Reasons which are mostly but not all to do with money. Also: there are some weird fuckers on Gumtree.

And here are some pictures to commemorate:

(This is what a not-date looks like.)

And this signifies making time for friends around busy schedules, 

not the fact that we are Total Losers.

I may have had a total slo-mo writing summer, but I was the co-creator of this.

Also, this is the sound of life right now:

Thanks for reading :) x

So I saw The Bourne Legacy, now with less suck

When I wrote the original Bourne Legacy review I was in a rush and my brain had been mushified by a cold and the fact I've been getting steadily dumber over the summer. This should account for its massive suck quotient, which has hopefully now been removed. Also, spoiler alert, cause I may talk about What Happens. Cheers Emad.

Before I start, may I just commend my fellow audience members during the 2.30pm showing of the film on being Splendid, despite some of the elderly women behind me thinking it was a comedy, and the person whose phone kept going off, and the guy in front whose head was the size of Jupiter. I also apologize for accidentally wiping my nose on a teabag and then announcing it to all of you, and for my mother's subsequent fit of laughter, and my occasional bouts of audible indignation.

So, like, what's The Bourne Legacy all about? Well, it's not about Jason Bourne for a start, but it is about the legacy (read: shit creek) he's left behind for the CIA to deal with following the events of Ultimatum when he and Landy totally blew the whistle on the CIA's secret shenanigans which included, among other horrid and completely illegal things, rendition. Parallel illicit programmes within the CIA are therefore being covertly shut down. The easiest way to accomplish this is to cull the operating agents of these programmes by either blowing them to smithereens in the Alaskan wilderness or by ingesting a little blue pill concealed as one of those the agents are all pumped up on anyway (this part totally reminded me of the Alice in Wonderland connotations of Neo's choice in The Matrix). Our man, Aaron Cross, manages to not-die through various plot contrivances including a CGI wolf (yes, you read that right, continue) and leaping out of women's cupboards, apparently. He teams up with the bio-scientist who is part of a team which designs the Superman pills, and demands to be taken to Manila because he's totally jonesing for his next fix. Basically, this is the story of a junkie travelling half way across the world and occasionally kicking some butt.

Is it better than the original trilogy? In the words of the Vicar of Dibley: Would you like the long or the short answer? Both please. Okay, well, the short answer is no, and the long answer is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. However, it is much better than it had any right to be and I didn't feel insulted by it, as I expected to be. The mercenary agenda driving this movie is nicely hidden by something which appears to be a decent tribute to what went before it.

Is Aaron Cross/Jeremy Renner better than Jason Bourne/Matt Damon? I would direct you to the above answer. Of course not! Are you a lunatic? Jeremy Renner turns in a great performance, but he talks too much and he's more 'Blockbuster' than 'Bourne'. He almost had too much conscience left to be a believable trained sociopathic killer. And his plight is a little less compelling than Bourne's so the film ends up lacking suspence and a truly sympathetic protagonist. However, the brief flashback sequences in which he is shown to be extremely emotionally vulnerable were affecting. All of the main performances are wonderful, espesh Ed Norton (nasty little boy) and Rachel Weisz (shouts a lot), but the characterization is a lot less subtle than the original trilogy. The protagonists are Good and the antagonists are Bad and that's kind of it. There's no internal fragmentation and mindfuckery like with Conklin, Abbott, Landy, Vosen. And the single LARX agent they introduce at the end to assassinate our heroes? By the end he looks more like a zombie than a human, and I always feel uneasy with things which enter the picture only in the third act. Oh, also, a fellow agent who is blown to smithereens and also talks way too much apparently is in the CIA's Bad Books because *gasp* he fell in love. I'm not the only one who rolled my eyes, am I?

Were the fight scenes edge-of-your-arse or edge-of-Bond? Erh, the second one. I think there was a total of ONE hand-to-hand combat scene, and of course it had nothing on Bourne because Paul Greengrass wasn't there to direct it. There were big planes, motorbikes, a chase through a house which was pretty thrilling, and a fantastic scene involving a basement laboratory, a lone gunman, and his Crazy. That felt relevant. But no, there was no killing anyone with towels, ball point pens, toasters, rolled up newspapers, or any of the above. The violence was simultaneously unengaging and borderline nonsensical killing spree a la Big Bry Mills in Taken. It is a sad day when that sentence exists in relation to a Bourne film.

Did it pack a punch? Somewhere in the solar plexus? Or the heart? Or the head? Nah, not really. Essentially the crux of the film is Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz running away from really unthreatening Villains. And before you say anything, I KNOW Jason did a fair amount of running away, but I always got the sense he was also running towards his antagonists because he wanted answers and they had them. Even in Identity with all its naive idealism, Jason makes a huge effort to confront his assailants in order to draw a line under his past. Also, you know in the original movies how the scenes in the CIA hubs were just as exciting as the chase scenes because there was an equal amount of cerebral intensity being pitted against kinetic intensity? That does not exist here, possibly because the first third is clunky due to them having to tie up a lot of loose threads before The Plot can actually get going, but also cause you know... Paul Greengrass et al... Sigh. They do try to introduce an ethical point with the whole behavioural modification thing, but it's more of a plot device than an issue, unlike the ethics in the originals.

Did 'Extreme Ways' appear on the end credits? Yes. Yes it did. A new version, which sounded like they had Moby strapped to the bottom of the boat. A few strains of John Powell's original score was also discernible at the beginning, but I actually kind of liked that as an acknowledgement of the place this film owed its roots to.

So what's the final verdict? Well, The Bourne Legacy was never going to be anywhere near as good as the original trilogy, and honestly, I didn't want it to be. Neither did I want it to be a bad film, because I do actually have a heart and respect the fact that even though this exists PURELY FOR THE MONEY, people did put a lot of work into it. As I mentioned above, it was a better film than it had any right to be and a very competent action/thriller, though it lacks the intelligence and emotional complexity of the first three. It also doesn't feel like a Bourne film, kind of the way the first two Harry Potters don't really feel like the later Harry Potter films. I did enjoy it and would happily watch it again if it came my way, but yes, it did perform oral sex on the Bond movies. Just a little bit.

So I'm going to see The Bourne Legacy

Tomorrow, with the mother, Maz. Come on, don't tell me you weren't expecting this.

Before I go, however, I am posting some predictions because I want to see how my prehatred preconception matches up with the real thing:


1. This film should have been called The Bourne Superfluous/Redundancy because, you know, it is totally redundant and mercenary, which is just really depressing and undermines what went before it.

2. Although the absence of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass will be sorely felt, I am much happier that they had the integrity to stay true to the story and walk away at the right time. You know like, when the STORY WAS FINISHED. Ahem.

3. Aaron Cross is a really shit name for a protagonist, though not quite as bad as Big Bad Bry Mills. There will possibly be some symbolism about air instead of water (the Bond-esque helicopter scene glimpsed in the trailer?) and/or being caught in the crosshairs. Deep.

4. Jeremy Renner will give a really great performance but his character will talk too much and I will spend the whole movie internally admonishing 'Oh Bourne wouldn't have done that...'

5. Rachel Weisz, while wonderful, is too recognizable a movie star to blend in and will demolish my suspension of disbelief. I will also find it weird that she is married to Daniel Craig and is therefore fraternizing/franchising (fraterchising?) with the enemy.

6. At 135 mins (!!!) the movie is too long. None of the original trilogy were over two hours. KEEP IT LEAN PEOPLE. I know, I can talk, right?

7. No one will ever be as awesome as Joan Allen/Pam Landy, not even the clips of her from previous movies they shoehorn in, and the missing rivalry between her and Vosen will be like a big black hole at the centre of the movie. Also: special mentions to Nicky Parsons and Marie Kreutz who are/were also awesome.

8. I will be extremely vexed and indignant when if they so much as suggest this new guy is a bigger threat than Jason Bourne, because not only is that BULLSHIT, it's also shitting on the franchise that gave this movie the means to exist in the first place. I may even be so angry I will shout vociferously at the screen and shake my fist.

9. This movie will essentially give the Bond movies a blowjob and hand over the baton of Most Influential Action Movies of the 21st Century, instead of the other way around. This may also open up a wormhole in the space-time continuum, I'm not quite sure yet.

10. Aaron Cross will be a superhuman pumped up on steroids and consequently won't be as involving or sympathetic as Bourne who was a perfect conflict of highly trained assassin/sociopath and very emotionally vulnerable human.

11. If they use John Powell's score or Moby's Extreme Ways I will have a hissy fit right there in my seat.

12. I will be mildly entertained but not moved to produce fervent outpourings and/or rants of epic proportion ("yayyy!"). This will please me because although I don't want this movie to be awful (contrary to popular belief, I do actually have a heart), I also don't want it to be elevated to massive resounding success by standing on the shoulders of one of the most well-realized trilogies in movie history...in my humble opinion.

13. Since it wasn't part of Robert Ludlum's original trilogy of books which I believe provided the integral spine and heart of the films, The Bourne Legacy will have none of the political/international depth, intelligence or resonance. This will also make me happy because in my mind the original trilogy will remain untouched by the new spin-off and I can say 'Ahhhh :)' which is always nice.



Hopefully I'll have time to post my actual thoughts tomorrow before life gets busy again at night.

Peace n jam and an open mind, x

Second Star to the Right and Straight On Till Morning

I kind of couldn't let the Olympics go by without contributing my own response and letting it live here forever on the interwebs. Okay, who am I kidding, I don't know a thing about sports: I'm here to gush about the Olympic Ceremony!

Can I just say two words?

DANNY BOYLE

JAMES BOND

THE QUEEN

MR BEAN

KEN BRANAGH (yeah, that's right, I get to call him Ken)

JO ROWLING

(Sir) CHRIS HOY

LOTR REFERENCES

DANNY BOYLE

DANNY BOYLE

DANNY BOYLE!!!!!!!!!!!


I'm going to say something that may be shocking and unpatriotic, but until I heard Danny Boyle was designing (directing? producing? I don't know) the opening ceremony I really wasn't that interested in the Games. Not even from a very very bad Classics student perspective (but yay for Greece parading out first!). I'd never watched an Olympic Games before, and certainly not the opening ceremony, because at the last one I was 16 and... had much more self-involved things to do. That ego won't inflate itself you know. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is it takes a big performance and a guy like Danny Boyle, who already holds my greatest respect, for me to take an interest in international, historic and patriotic affairs. Shameful, right?

But OMFG was it incredible!!!!!! I mean, I have nothing to compare it to so the Beijing comparisons went right over my head, but from the raw response of my mother and from basically the rest of the world, I'm pretty confident in my opinion. Danny Boyle deserves a knighthood. People (bitter, bitter people) have complained that the ceremony was horrendous, an obscene waste of money and totally missed 'the point' of a British-hosted Games.

Well, those people are entitled to their opinion but they are wrong but that sucks for them cause enjoying is a lot more fun than criticizing. Anybody who took on this job was going to have a different interpretation of what makes Britain Britain and how best to portray that. There are so many ways this could have been done, and no way is the correct way, but Danny Boyle's way was an absolute triumph. Anyone who's seen his films knows he has a great command of not only the performance and the spectacle but also the point at which that overlaps with music. We know he's good at dark things, at exploring the bleaker sides of humanity, but we also know he's an incredibly optimistic filmmaker and person (Slumdog anyone? 127 Hours even?). He knows how to stand back and look at the big picture, see it for what it is, and be true to it. This might sound odd, but I never feel I'm being lied to when watching one of his films. Everything feels genuine and completely in context. I think he is an incredibly unprejudiced man, and that rare quality combined with his compassion, his artistic talent, his unflagging faith in humanity as well as his ability to accept its flaws and still root for us all—I think that's why he was the best choice for the job, and I think that's why he pulled it off so spectacularly.

And how fucking beautiful and moving was that Olympic torch made out of all the petals? What a symbol, and kind of exactly what the world needs right now. I get why the Games are such an important tradition now; they're not just a sporting event, they're a world event. And you cannot put a price on that. (I mean, you can, but don't be a Pernicity Percy and stamp on my point here.)

By the end of it, I thought I'd never felt so proud, and so happy, to be British. Even beyond that, though, I'd never felt quite so unified with every other person on the planet. And if I ever see Danny Boyle walking along the street, my squealing will be eternal.

Now me and my unashamed love for the whole thing are off to iTunes to download the official album!

Good luck team GB!

x

Melancholia

This is my first Von Trier film. I think. I wanted to see Antichrist a while ago but would have had to break the law to do so, and I had no friends who wanted to do said lawbreaking with me. Apparently Melancholia is the companion piece to Antrichrist so I may go back and watch it and report back! Anyway.

When I mentioned to one of my friends that I was going to watch Melancholia his response was 'Ooooh that sounds way too depressing' and after I watched it I thought my God that’s such a pity because this film is wonderful.

It’s a divisive film; you either choose to go with it or you don’t. If you do you're rewarded with a communication of what it feels like to be depressed and how it affects those within the blast radius. (YAY!!! Just what we wanted on a Friday night Rosie!) (I know, but have patience grasshopper.) If you don’t go with it the result is probably something that induces boredom, bewilderment, anger, motion sickness and is pretentious into the bargain. I went with this film, and it kind of took my breath away.

So the film is divided into two parts, ‘Justine’ and ‘Claire’, with an eight minute opus at the beginning. This is comprised of a series of shots moving at an almost imperceptible slowness while Wagner’s ‘Tristan & Isolde’ plays over them. I liked this better in retrospect because I was anxious there wouldn't be a coherent narrative (remember: Von Trier virgin). Interspersed between the images of a bride floating in water and a mother and child falling to the ground in a violent hail storm we see a rogue planet gradually moving toward the Earth before finally colliding. From the outset we know what the denouement will entail, and that is central to the film’s thesis.

So, like, if this film is so depressing why isn't it called Depression? Well, I dunno, maybe partly it's because that is a genuinely off-putting and lecture-dull sounding title. But maybe also because the film is an artistic expression of depression, and 'melancholia' is a word that while it does its work portraying Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix type thoughts, it also evokes something beautiful, and delicate, and somehow elegant. Tragic, elegiac, call it what you want, it's emotive. It's a term distinct from depression in that it is not a clinical state but rather a personality trait which often leads to depression. I guess it's kind of like having a cumulus nimbus eternally hovering above your head. Melancholic people are characterized as tending to expect the worst in any given situation, and they feel vindicated when that worst scenario comes true. That is kind of the only happiness they can enjoy and tolerate because it is the only kind they feel they can trust. In a way, they almost want the worst scenario to come true, and perhaps there is a sense in the solipsism and extreme megalomania that go hand in hand with depression that their despair is so deep and all-consuming that it is actually having an external influence. Justine’s descent into depression indeed seems to be actually pulling the rogue planet toward Earth and incurring the end of the world. A synergistic, telepathic serenity appears to exist between Justine and Melancholia, as though a part of each resides in the other and the meeting of the two, the completion of each, is enough to destroy the world. The film opines that people who suffer from depression are able to cope under pressure better because they expect the worst anyway, but could it also be that Justine’s only hope for self-completion or self-happiness is self-destruction?

The first part is the view from within depression, focusing on Justine and her gradual slide from (ostensible?) euphoria to despairing isolation at her lavish wedding reception. The palette during this section is quite soft, muted, with overtones of yellow suggesting both an insularity from reality the way you might get in a nest, and possibly the jaundiced and unhealthy spectre of depression lurking below the surface. The palatial setting and Justine’s wedding dress effuse an element of fairytale girded by operatic tent-pole moments in which the music crescendos and the shot is stunningly, melodramatically poised. This surreality is countered by the almost intrusive reality of the cinematography. I know a lot of people get really frustrated and/or ill when a film is shot hand-held, but personally I’m a fan and it’s used to impressive effect here in portraying the cloying, restless presence of Justine’s depression. The claustrophobia builds in the packed house while the lens swings around searching in vain for space to breathe, and when Justine finally breaks out into the sparse landscape of the golf course and the sky the contrast is even starker. There’s one scene in particular between Justine and Michael that felt so authentic I actually almost blushed and looked away because I was convinced I was intruding upon a real couple’s intimacy. For me the cinematography emphasises a strange conflict of depression; the hand-held sections express the wry, distant, omniscient aspect while the operatic sections indulge the manic melodrama. And the former seems to almost sneer at the latter in the way that I think a lot of people who experience depression do sneer at themselves or the perceived histrionics of others. I think the film needs that portrayal of reality to maintain its credibility. One part is the reality of depression, and the other is the artistic glamour of melancholia. Do we turn our depression into poetry because it’s easier to deal with or because we feel that is the reality of it, that there’s something beautiful and artistically elevated about it?

Part 2 is a switch in perspectives (and palette) to that of Claire who officiously arms herself as Justine’s nurse. Sometime after the failed marriage, Justine travels to her sister’s home where the reception was held, arriving almost paralysed by depression. Claire seems solely fixated on ‘fixing’ Justine but her fear of confronting her sister’s illness leads to a lack of understanding. The film doesn’t bother affecting subtlety in its metaphorical representations of Justine as Melancholia, a brazenness in keeping with depression, giving Claire a rational fear of the planet colliding with Earth and destroying everything she knows and loves. As scientists debate the certainty of Melancholia’s collision with Earth, Claire completely unravels while Justine remains calm and unperturbed by the impending apocalypse. At first disparaging Claire’s vain attempts to escape what she cannot accept, Justine ultimately becomes a pillar, a sanctuary to her sister and nephew, drawing strength from expectations met and the love she feels for her family. In the end the sisters’ roles are reversed, mimicking the ‘Dance of Death’ which Melancholia and Earth engage in.

The fact that Melancholia does collide with Earth and incites the end of the world? I didn’t take anything pessimistic away from that, because when the end does come it is a relief, and strangely moving, and kind of almost uplifting – if you don’t look too hard at Claire. Although I wouldn’t label this a ‘disaster movie’, amongst the plethora of other contenders being churned out by big studios at the mo, I loved this as an exceptionally contemplative and conceptual twist on the genre that kind of creeps along the inside lane and takes the lead. It’s the film Rachel Getting Married wants to be, and tons of people find it completely unlikeable and art house without value. But I think everyone at some point does experience that kind of despair where you just wish the world would end—and this is a cathartic expression of that wish. Is Justine likeable? I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s the point. I think she is just painfully human, as all of the characters are, and that is the most sympathetic thing of all. Maybe you don’t like some of the things she and the others do, but if you open yourself up a little you can understand why they do them.

Every single performance in this film is astounding, with Kiefer Sutherland probably being lumbered with the most objectionable role. (Seriously, what a (fantastically performed) two-faced asshole.) (And nice to see a more sensitive, less bitey side to Alexander Skarsgard.) (With his dad, aw.) (Also, I want to marry Charlotte Gainsbourg.)  But if I was Kirsten Dunst I’d be like, man, this is my Hamlet ‘To be or not to be’ moment. She is in-cred-ible, morphing seamlessly from unstably euphoric to psychosomatically spent. One of the most affecting scenes is one in which Claire tries to coax a very fragile and vulnerable Justine into having a bath. Justine is so incapacitated by her depression she cannot hold herself up and can only manage dipping her fingers in the water. It is such a brave and unrelenting performance, one I could relate to because it reminded me of times when I was so overwhelmed by life I literally could not move or eat or lift my toothbrush. Von Trier himself said that his own experience with depression inspired this film, so it is in every sense a film about depression by depression, and I can understand why that puts some people off. Maybe also the fact it's made by Von Trier, but that aside: I went with it, and it more than paid off.