It’s got colliding planets, women in peril and an angry phone-in host … we explore a show inspired by the director’s themes that refuses to shy away from his problematic side
I am not even inside the building but a creeping sense of foreboding has already set in. As I try to find the entrance to Nikolaj Kunsthal, a gothic-style former church in Copenhagen, I hear the lamenting strings of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – the soundtrack to Lars von Trier’s 2011 end-of-the-world film Melancholia. Inside, I take a seat in a tent-like structure, similar to the one in the film, and watch as a planet hurtles towards Earth, Wagner still blasting away. Nearby lies a long table, covered in white linen and laid out for the celebration of a lifetime – but clearly abandoned midway, and now adorned with dead flowers and burnt-out candelabras.
Upstairs, black and white projections – a ticking clock, trains moving through postwar Germany, scenes of sex and drowning – play as the ominous male voice that features in Von Trier’s 1991 film Europa does a countdown. “On every breath you take, you go deeper,” he says. “On the mental count of 10, you will be in Europa.”
