and then of course the line:
“no, no, the one with the limp is kaiser soze… oh im not going through it again”

I never knew why he bothered with so much minutiae, though, given that he created Yoowhoo to take the rap for all the impurities in Scripture. Oh well.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy it in spite of its problems, but where Children of Earth managed to be taut, bleak and interesting Miracle Day was a completely wasted premise, and was the worse for following something worthwhile done with the same property.

I find it interesting what you say about Gainsbourg (I recall her being similar in 21 Grams) and you are right on about Kiefer (and I would give the same regard to A. Skarsgard).

I found it interesting how Von Trier projected parts of himself not only onto the two sisters, but also Kiefer’s character and Cameron Spurr’s character as well. At least that’s how I read into it. There was a little bit of him everywhere I guess…maybe even in the horse Abraham (ha!)

With all that in mind I’d like to say that I think Charlotte Gainsbourg had the harder role, or at least the more thankless, since her transition was from fussing sister and de facto matriarch to that of a neurotic forcing down the clearly consanguineous trend to illness in order to protect both her son and her sister and so as not to fail a husband who so completely fails her. It’s hard to judge as a performance since I’ve yet to see anything in which I’d say Gainsbourg acts rather than inhabits a character, if you’ll excuse a perilous lean towards pretension. Kirsten Dunst plays Justine extremely well, but she will always, to some extent, be Kirsten Dunst. Charlotte Gainsbourg *is* Claire, for the duration of the film, though I’d love to see her in some more overt genre-roles to find out if that would hold true for more outré characters. (I can’t bring myself to watch ‘Antichrist’, I’ve tried but my internal cringe set in right at the start, knowing what was to come.)

Even Kiefer Sutherland, with whom I found there was something of a hump in terms of disconnecting him from his gruff ’24′ persona, was genuinely impressive, walking quite a fine line between threatening and ineffectual, which I think was needed to sell both his dismissive certainty about Melancholia and his eventual reaction to their fate. He was also much funnier than I might have expected, his reaction to Justine reflecting on the patterns of his relationship with his mother-in-law being a particular gem.

Sorry, I seem to have digressed into essay, so let it suffice that I couldn’t think more highly of the supporting cast, and was sorry that there wasn’t more done with them… many thanks for your kind comments.

Thom