Summary:

Split into two parts after a dream-like prelude, Melancholia tells the story of a pair of sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), as they await the end of the earth.  The first half, titled 'Justine', shows us Justine's wedding party at her sister's mansion, a halting, uncomfortable affair marked by bitter family tensions, awkward reticence, abrupt proclamations of spite, and moments of tenderness and forgiveness, not necessarily entirely unlike typical weddings, although perhaps, in Lars Von Triers' hands, the unhappiness and hopelessness is nearer the surface.  The second half, 'Claire', revisits the mansion some time later as Claire, her husband John, and her young son Leo, ponder what John assures them will be the near-miss of the planet Melancholia.  According to John, an amateur astronomer, Melancholia will not hit the earth but which will swoop around it, although Claire is not so sure.  Justine, ragged and exhausted with depression, comes to stay with them to recuperate, and they watch Melancholia and await their fate.

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Summary:

To escape accusations of plagiarism, Swedish neurosurgeon Stig Helmer (Ernst Hugo Jaregard) has come to work at The Kingdom, a large Copenhagen hospital. He is a surgical butcher with lamentable bedside manners and utter contempt for Denmark, but he resembles his colleagues in his medical positivism and abhorrence of spiritualism. His inadequacies are easily perceived by the hospital staff and resident Dr. Hook (Soren Pilmark), but his fellow consultants celebrate his arrival and make him a member of their lodge.

The malingering spiritualist Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes), admitted for a variety of fictitious ailments, discovers The Kingdom is haunted by a little girl murdered there a century ago by her scientist stepfather. Drusse engages the help of her son, who is an orderly, to trace the child's secret.

Tangents to the main plot involve a pathologist, who is so obsessed with obtaining research tissue that he has a cancerous liver transplanted into himself, and the psychopathic medical student son of the hospital director, whose sick sense of humor leads him to mutilate corpses in the hospital morgue. The ending is pure horror.

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