Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland, Cameron Spurr, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgard, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier. Screenplay: Lars von Trier. Cinematography: Manuel Alberto Claro. Production design: Jette Lehmann. Film editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard. 

This is the way the world ends in Lars von Trier's Melancholia: with a bang, as a rogue planet collides with Earth, and a whimper from the terrified Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) as she and her small son, Leo (Cameron Spurr), and more resigned sister, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), await the cataclysm. What this eschatological moment has to do with the dysfunctional wedding reception that constitutes the first half of the film is something for us to ponder. Or not, because there are many who dismiss the film as yet another of von Trier's perverse and enigmatic fables that have something to do with human passion and cruelty but defy explication. Is von Trier just playing around with the science fiction genre, the way he played around with the horror movie genre in Antichrist (2009) and the skin flick in Nymphomaniac (2013), the other two films that constitute his trilogy about depression? Or is it art for expiation's sake, a work that by existing defies its own nihilism? The debate continues. 

Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024)

Kirsten Dunst in Civil War

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Nelson Lee, Evan Lai, Jesse Plemons. Screenplay: Alex Garland. Cinematography: Rob Hardy. Production design: Caty Maxey. Film editing: Jake Roberts. Music: Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury. 

Alex Garland's Civil War grows out of our current political tensions, which means that it's either too timely or not timely enough to be entirely successful. At least Garland has the wisdom not to give his his fable too much direct correspondence to political actuality: There's no way, of course, that Texas and California would be allied secessionist states. What it does have is a kind of physical actuality, meaning a lot of bloody conflict. It also has some terrific performances, starting with Kirsten Dunst's tough photojournalist, Lee, a long way from Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) or the title role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006). She's matched well by Wagner Moura as her reporter partner, Joel. I knew I had seen Moura before but I couldn't quite place him until I was reminded that, 40 pounds heavier, he was Pablo Escobar in the series Narcos. Aside from unlikely alliances, the story stretches credulity that the intensely focused Joel would choose to bring along on a perilous journey an aging, overweight reporter like Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and a callow young photographer like Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). But as I said, it's a fable, a story meant to make a point -- or rather several points. One of them is that journalism depends on a sometimes cold-hearted pursuit of the truth. Another is that political stability is a fragile thing. And that both are in perpetual danger. If Civil War fails in making those points effectively, and I think it does, it's because the medium, an action movie, is inadequate to deliver the message. 

Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)

Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Steve Coogan, Rose Byrne, Asia Argento, Molly Shannon, Shirley Henderson, Danny Huston, Marianne Faithfull, Jamie Dornan, Aurore Clément, Tom Hardy. Screenplay: Sofia Coppola. Cinematography: Lance Acord. Production design: K.K. Barrett. Film editing: Sarah Flack. Costume design: Milena Canonero. Music: Dustin O'Halloran.

I fear that Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite (2018) has spoiled the historical costume drama for me, even the ones that like Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette take an irreverent, somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to the material. Lanthimos deconstructed the genre in his film, while Coppola merely mocks it behind its back, lavishing the resources of costume and setting while setting up a few cognitive dissonances by using contemporary pop music in the background. Her courtiers sometimes behave more like spoiled rich kids than like 18th-century aristocrats, which is very much to the point she's making. I just wish she'd had the nerve to take it further, the way Lanthimos did. Still, it's full of grand eye candy with its luxurious scenes set at Versailles, and Kirsten Dunst is a charming performer. It's slightly overlong, even though it crams the fall of the aristos into a scant quarter of the film, never letting us glimpse a tumbril or a guillotine but instead mostly having the news of the revolution brought to us by messengers and summed up in a final shot of Marie's ruined bedroom après le déluge.

The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)

Cast: James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Michael Paré, Scott Glenn, Danny DeVito, A.J. Cook, Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain, Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, Robert Schwartzman, Noah Shebib, Jonathan Tucker. Screenplay: Sofia Coppola, based on a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Cinematography: Edward Lachman. Production design: Jasna Stefanovic. Film editing: Melissa Kent, James Lyons. Music: Air.

Sofia Coppola's first feature is a well-crafted and reasonably faithful adaptation of a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides that takes a retrospective view of the suicides of five teenage girls in an affluent American suburb. Kirsten Dunst is, as so often, a standout as the sister who rebels against her overprotective parents and eventually promotes the suicide pact.

Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, 2016)

Ron Clinton Smith, Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, and Janelle Monáe in Hidden Figures

Katherine G. Johnson: Taraji P. Henson
Dorothy Vaughan: Octavia Spencer
Mary Jackson: Janelle Monáe
Al Harrison: Kevin Costner
Vivian Mitchell: Kirsten Dunst
Paul Stafford: Jim Parsons
Jim Johnson: Mahershala Ali
Levi Jackson: Aldis Hodge
John Glenn: Glen Powell

Director: Theodore Melfi
Screenplay: Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi
Based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly
Cinematography: Mandy Walker
Production design: Wynn Thomas
Music: Benjamin Wallfisch, Pharrell Williams, Hans Zimmer

What's so bad about feeling good? Hidden Figures was 2016's sleeper hit, a feel-good movie that's almost critic-proof because of its good intentions: to tell the stirring, long-neglected story of how black women mathematicians made a significant contribution to the 1960s American space program. It has some terrific performances from Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe as three of the women, and they get strong support from Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst as slightly uptight white folks who can't quite believe that these black women are up to the task they have to set for them. But one place that the film falters is in casting the likes of Costner and Dunst, well-known Hollywood stars, in those roles: They introduce a note of imbalance in the film, evoking not only the "white savior" figure but also suggesting that the struggle of whites to accept black people as equals is on a par with the struggle of African Americans to gain that equality. The film also tries to evoke the horrors of Jim Crow by departing from actuality: Katherine Johnson didn't have to sprint across the NASA complex to find a "colored" restroom -- she simply used the one available -- and the scene in which Costner's character smashes the sign outside the segregated restroom is fictional. The early scene in which a white cop comes upon the three women whose car has broken down is meant to create tension, but it too quickly dissipates into feel-goodism when he learns that they're working at NASA and patriotically gives them an escort to work -- doing his part to thwart the commies. A black director and screenwriters -- Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder are white -- might have kept these suggestions that "white folks were really good at heart" more in balance with the depictions of not only the real pain caused by segregation but also the actual work done by the women.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Joel Barish: Jim Carrey
Clementine Kruczynski: Kate Winslet
Patrick: Elijah Wood
Stan: Mark Ruffalo
Mary: Kirsten Dunst
Dr. Mierzwiak: Tom Wilkinson

Director: Michel Gondry
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth
Cinematography: Ellen Kuras
Production design: Dan Leigh
Film editing: Valdís Óskarsdóttir
Music: Jon Brion

I have a sneaky feeling that there's less to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind than meets the eye. That it is nothing more than a romantic drama tricked out with intricate storytelling devices like misleading cuts and deceptive flashbacks and an overlay of sci-fi. The story of the affair of two misfits, the morose Joel Barish and the eccentric Clementine Kruczynski, has been told before. How far, for example, are Joel and Clementine from C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960)? The course of true love never did run smooth, but Eternal Sunshine doubles down on that premise, putting Joel and Clementine through the bumpy paces twice, leaving us to ponder if Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, et al. are telling us that their mismatched couple were meant to be together no matter what. Did Joel and Clementine split prematurely, rushing into the radical solution of erasing themselves from each other's memories, when instead if they had stuck it out they could have resolved their differences less drastically? No matter, because Eternal Sunshine is so efficiently and originally accomplished that we can overlook the conventional situation that is masked by so much cleverness. It is certainly the peak of Jim Carrey's boom-or-bust career, Kate Winslet demonstrates once again how invaluable she is as an actress, and the supporting cast is made up of top-caliber actors. I suspect that the film owes more to the fertile imagination of Charlie Kaufman, who won an Oscar for it (along with Gondry and Pierre Bismuth), and film editor Valdís Oskarsdóttir than to Gondry's direction -- he has yet to make another film as impressive as this one.

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