DVD reviews: Red State | Melancholia
Red State
E1, £15.99
KEVIN Smith makes a surprising – and surprisingly good – left-turn into horror with his tenth, and by all accounts, penultimate film (he’s said he’s retiring after his next one). Eschewing the bawdy comedy of his earlier movies, not to mention the that’ll-do approach to direction that made his post-Dogma output especially frustrating, he’s turned in a gnarly little genre film with Red State that dials down his verbose dialogue to a more natural level and expresses many of his usual preoccupations in a much more cinematic way. It revolves around a homophobic religious cult led by a gun-toting zealot called Aben Cooper (the magnificent Michael Parks) whose murderous hatred of gays results in a Waco-style stand-off with government agents after he lures three high school students into his compound. What’s fascinating about this premise, though, is that Smith executes it in interesting and fresh ways, frequently pulling the rug from under us with effective plot twists. He’s aided in this by a top-drawer cast (which includes Melissa Leo and John Goodman), all of whom do sterling work to ensure their characters never devolve into caricatures, especially as the film builds towards its strange, end-of-days finale.
Melancholia
Artificial Eye, £15.99
STICKING with the end-of-days theme, Lars von Trier’s latest puts an artfully operatic spin on the kind of disaster movies we’re more used to seeing 2012 director Roland Emmerich serve up. Von Trier, however, chooses to start Melancholia with the world ending, depicting the destruction of the Earth in the most rapturous way imaginable to imbue the remainder of the film with a fatalistic energy and smirking sense of cosmic significance. Safe in the knowledge that everyone is going to die, the ensuing story is split into two chapters named for their sibling protagonists, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). In the first first chapter, “Justine”, we drop in on her disastrous wedding reception, with von Trier using the presence of the titular planet’s collision course with Earth as metaphor for the bride’s manic-depressive nature. In “Claire”, apocalyptic fear is externalised as the more rational sister starts to fall apart when confronted by the increasing certainty that life on Earth is going to end. Goofy and overblown, it’s von Trier at his excessive best.
• To order these DVDs, call The Scotsman on 01634 832789