Lars von Trier ("Manderlay," "Dancer in the Dark") is just as famed for his works as for his strange statements to the press (such as a recent expression of sympathy for Adolf Hitler). He's also frank about having been diagnosed with acute depression, disclosed in numerous interviews since 2006. Since then, von Trier has come out with two films that plumb the abyss of his turmoil: "Antichrist" (2009) and last year's "Melancholia." Both test the limits of filmmaking on the part of the director, and the capacity to hang on to sanity on the part of the audience.
It's said that von Trier was strongly recommended by the producers to release these films in 3-D but he refused. Thank God for that. To behold these images in an extra dimension may have shattered the senses beyond repair.
"Melancholia" marries the highly personal (for von Trier) topic of clinical depression to the more universal concept of the end of the world. That the story compares depression with a huge rogue planet — the titular Melancholia — making a sudden appearance in our solar system and threatening to collide with Earth is both the film's conceit and its defining factor.