Melancholia ****

Graced with a mercurial, incandescent performance by Kirsten Dunst, Lars von Trier's lyrical, beautiful "Melancholia" examines both the clinical depression of Justine, Miss Dunst's character, and the harried panic of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) as both face the end of the world. The end is coming from the imminent collision of a rogue planet, called Melancholia, with Earth.

Isolated on their seaside estate, surrounded by golf links with riding horses at hand, the sisters, along with Claire's husband and young son face the end, each in their own way. The atmosphere of this disaster movie is low tech and poetic, with nothing more than a telescope and a loop of wire for scientific props. The science seems quite solid, once you accept the existence of such a planet as Melancholia, but the subject is the damaged people on screen.

The first half of the film concerns the disastrous wedding reception that Claire has organized for Justine, and hand held camerawork, as throughout the movie, infuses the scenes with a verisimilitude that is mesmerizing. The second half hurtles toward the termination of life and mankind in an operatic and almost mystical progression, accompanied by the ecstatically tragic and accepting strains of the Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde."

You may choose to interpret "Melancholia" as a metaphor for depression and suicide, or a judgement against the cancer of life on an insignificant planet, or a film tone poem about disconnection and isolation, or an unusually subtle science fiction movie, but it will most certainly make an impression.