Her green materials: Mourning, ‘Melancholia’, and not-so-vital materialisms

‘I’m trudging through a grey woolly yarn. It’s clinging to my legs. It’s really heavy to drag along’, says Justine (Kirsten Dunst) to her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourgh). Draped like a corpse in the whiteness of her wedding dress, Justine is immobile in a state of acute depression – that is, melancholia. The colour palette of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) with its opening sequence of slow motion sensuality establishes the thesis statement of the film’s narrative. The green and vital life of Earth, its cultural traditions and weddings, will be obliterated for eternity by an incoming rogue planet called Melancholia. This narrative premise allows the spectator to witness cinema at its most painterly, as tableaux vivant with compositions that illuminate Justine’s wedding in many shades of green. Grey and blue insert shots set in space foreshadow the film’s denouement: the grey and ashy blue absorption of Earth by Melancholia.