The Angel's Melancholia (2009)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Awesome cinematography. Interesting characters. Fantastic soundtrack. A piece of art. PS: The cat was not killed. It's SFX.

This is "Melancholie der Engel" or "The Angels' Melancholia", a German film from 2009 and before watching this one (again), I read that some people consider this the most shocking and disturbing film they have ever seen. Well, it certainly is shocking and disturbing, that much is safe. The director and one of the writers is Marian Dora and here we have a contender for his most known work. It's probably either this one or "Cannibal". But lets talk a bit more about this one. It runs for a massive 2 hours and 40 minutes almost, which is really really long and you feel it during the watch. It drags so much and it is never an achievement in terms of convincing story-telling. No matter how much Dora or anybody else tries to convince me about the cinematic value of this movie, I will never say that there is any. Several of the actors are extremely untalented and their line delivery sounded wooden beyond belief. Kinda expected though, why would a seriously talented actor destroy his career with something like this. The title sounds like a Wim Wenders film and reading the storyline here on the title's IMDb page, one could think that this could really be a cinematic achievement actually. It is no such thing. It is violence (against humans and animals), cheap thrills, obscenities, naked people being physically and emotionally tortured. I mean I am perfectly fine with this as long as it fits in and adds to a creative approach and outcome. Haneke and Tarantino have shown this many times how violence can turn a good story into a great one. But Marian Dora is obviously not a gifted filmmaker looking at this one. It is all for the gore, for the violence for the abuse (also the one of the audience) in here. There is absolutely nothing beyond that and that's why I think that this project has become a massive failure. I highly recommend to stay away.

Marian Dova's film was indeed a step up from Cannibal. It's a dream like visual art-house film that turns the graphic and grotesque into a beautiful piece of film making. I have to say the uncut version I'm reviewing was in German language with no subtitles but that was not a major issue as there is no real narrative. The film appears to be about death and decay. We see old dolls, dead birds, insects, pigs, cats, fish, insects, and copses in coffins, cigars burning down, and old bones. The scenes involve sexual violence towards women, mutilation, urine, the smearing of excrement and general extreme horror that would normally shock. However, this is no exploitation movie; all the scenes have a dream like quality and an unsettling atmosphere which leave for an emotional experience. Good cinematography and a score by David Hess make this better than it really should be. Lots of sex, nudity and masturbation which is in no way erotic and scenes that would be controversial if in a different picture. At over two and a half hours long it's best to watch in two or three sittings as this is not a movie to grip or even shock you, just a decent piece of extreme horror art-house.

Melancholie der Engel's length is close to 3 hours and that already says a lot about it. It's almost a miracle to watch a movie with 3 hours and find yourself interested till the end (or till half of it). To be sincere, most of the times 1 hour and a half is enough and this one is no exception. I think that if this movie had 1 hour length it would be so much better. Well, there is a lot of gore, guts, torture, sex, rape, pissing, shitting and violence to women. But there's also a lot of animal cruelty and killing and that's just sad. Cats, pigs, birds, insects and other animals couldn't escape from this one. I almost give up watching "Melancholie der Engel" because of it. I read somewhere that the director tried to make a connection between animals and humans, but I don't think the killing and torturing scenes were needed at all. I watched the movie without subtitles (and I don't speak German), so I didn't understood the story, if there's something to understand. To finish my review I would say that it's pretty shocking, disgusting and boring. See it for your self.