A Provocateur Steals Cannes Spotlight

„Lars von Trier kept going, digging himself deeper and deeper as he went on, sometimes with a faint smile, about Jews, Israel, Nazis, Hitler and the Nazi architect Albert Speer. An embarrassed-looking Ms. Dunst began shaking her head. I am of course very much for Jews, he tossed in. But he would not or perhaps could not shut up, even though he also seemed to know he should: How can I get out of this sentence? he asked. He finally ended this unbearable interval with a resigned little laugh and the disastrous words, O.K., I’m a Nazi.

I don’t believe Mr. von Trier is a Nazi; he’s just stupid and unthinking. Mr. von Trier, who apologized for his comments later on Wednesday, is an extremely awkward man who has always enjoyed playing the provocateur, riling up audiences and journalists who bait him. At the press conference here last year after the premiere of Antichrist, another calculated outrage, the first questioner demanded that Mr. von Trier justify why he had made that movie. This year, instead of supplying a provocation on screen, he turned his news conference into a sideshow, a freakishly self-destructive move. Anti-Semitic speech is illegal in France, and the board of directors at Cannes clearly felt it had no alternative but to ban Mr. von Trier.

Melancholia has no overt political content, unlike some of Mr. von Trier’s earlier films, including Dogville, which includes a crude critique of the United States (if one no more bluntly critical than that in, say, Michael Moore’s nonfiction movie Bowling for Columbine). Divided into several acts, including an overture that foreshadows the ensuing events, Melancholia centers on two sisters, Justine (Ms. Dunst) and Claire (Ms. Gainsbourg), who are facing the literal or perhaps metaphoric end of the world. Shot in digital, the movie’s initial, eerily beautiful images of a bride and several other figures, photographed in darkly contrasting color, strongly recall the dreamscapes of the American photographer Gregory Crewdson, who, in turn, has been influenced by David Lynch and Steven Spielberg.”