The Angels' Melancholia
The Angels' Melancholia
NC-17 | 01 May 2009 (USA)
The Angels' Melancholia Trailers

A dark secret connects middle-aged Katze and Brauth. The former has the clue that his end is near. The two meet again after years to share their last days in the old house of their past. With three women they met on their way, the atmosphere begins to recur a second time. When artist Heinrich decides to attend, the friends have their last chance to renew and cut with the history and to settle an old score. In the melancholy of the near end, Katze passes again all the situations in his life. In the hour of death, he is not alone anymore. His body is gone and his soul stays back in the same place where his destiny and fulfillment occurred.

Reviews
Horst in Translation ([email protected])

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.

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HumanoidOfFlesh

"Melancholie der Engel" by Marian Dora lasts over 2 hours of length.It's also one of the most extreme horror movies I have ever seen.I saw this vomit-fest without English subs,so the most of the dialogue went beyond me.Still the plot is fairly simple:two closely-bonded nihilists meet two women at a carnival and eventually bring them back to an abandoned house near the woods.The house which is filled with animal bones and decaying dolls.Other characters are introduced like BDSM woman,an old painter pervert and a wheelchair-bound girl.The orgy of drug use,rape,sexual perversion and animal cruelty begins there...Lots of pseudo-intellectual nonsense is spoken and many animals are killed.Even the cat has its throat slit."Melancholie der Engel" literally oozes decay.There is some of the most revolting gore ever captured on screen along with various scenes of sexual perversion bordering on hard-core porn.This is truly unforgiving and deplorable journey into perversion and death.8 extremities out of 10.

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Rico

The horror status this movie has got is pretty high... Possibly, seen as a must for die hard horror fans...I'll start off on a high, Melancholie der Engel has great camera work, & to a large extent, the soundtrack is OK...However... Its just waaay too long...There is some great sick scenes in there, but it just gets boring in between, & the dialogue is terrible... Which for me is the biggest bummer, as regarding the storyline, there is just nothing to grab onto, at all, its basically just random scenes of emptiness...I'm guessing this movie got rated so sick for the animal cruelty in it, which of course is bad... However compare that to the extreme scenes of paedophilia in 'A Serbian Film'... Well... I know which were more disturbing for me...At the end of the day, this movie is only worth a watch to see how it compares to the rest of the so-called sick movies...

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gunslinger861

When i heard about this film i knew i had to see it. Having seen Cannibal, Marian Dora's first film i knew this was gong to be something worth mentioning. Cannibal was such a perverse and visceral film, not to mention realistic in its depiction of what happened so when i found this title there was no real hesitation. Anways i watched this title and i have to say that this easily ranked in my top 10 of the worst films i have watched. The only real time i have ever had to take breaks from a film on the grounds of just being overwhelmed. The story lacks but then again the version i saw was in German and had no subtitles so i can let that go.what i gather is that three men filled with contempt for all humanity and four women gather at an old run down house to basically have on last bang as one of the men clearly is dying. With that said once the everything descends into absolute hell.Most of what you can think of is on display in the almost three hours of film. Rape, murder, necrophilia, bestiality, animal cruelty,fecal matter, urination, graphic nudity, close up shots of both male and female ejaculation, Blasphemy.With all that said i will give credit where it is due . Beyond the fact that this film is very harsh there are some absolutely breath taking scenery, and the score by the late great David Hess adds a haunting beauty that honestly makes this film that much worse. Now don't get me wrong as bad as this is its still doesn't hold to that of a scat or fetish porn film as far as content in fact the films of Otto Muhel are far more graphic. however there is something in this film that is just very hard to watch and even harder to shake off later on. I don't recommend this film at all. Too long, too pretentious, graphic and between shock scenes very boring. I also feel too that the film is on top of all mentioned issues misogynistic and misanthropic. I don't recommend this one way or the other.

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