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.

brainevildead-756-859639 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.

Kirk E Melancholie Der Engel slipped the radar of sick art-house films back in 2009. Why exactly is not known however it might be to do with the fact the company marketing this just didn't do so way back then. However in 2013 it seems to have appeared on a few websites notorious for censorship and extreme cinema. Interest is suddenly swooning around this weird art-house thriller from Marian Dora, who also directed 2006's Cannibal. For this reviewer, one watch of Melancholie Der Engel was enough. Being a big fan of controversial cinema, namely A Serbian Film and Salo, Dora's monster is almost three hours of complete weirdness and infrequent WTF moments. Zenza Raggi, who stars in an endless list of pornographic movies, leads this "tale" of a group of people who gather to strange house for the weekend to experiment in dark pleasures. Who they are and what they're doing is never fully realised or explained in dialogue or plot. Most of the films duration revolves around some seriously weird and beautiful music combining wonderful landscapes and cinematography. Some of the music sounds almost exactly like Brian Eno. However the flip side is most of the time you'll also see close-ups of skeletons of dead animals, burnt remains, bodily fluids, creepy crawlies, and just about everything imaginable to put you off your next meal. Well done to Dora for creating atmosphere which is truly grotesque and unique but most of all, powerful enough to convincingly unsettle. The characters together with the unsettling atmosphere make you believe Melancholie Der Engel takes place in another time, hundreds of years ago - another world even. Dora has some serious skills for managing to cast a group together who were happy enough to be filmed and act through with the explicit, distasteful visuals which at one time belonged only to the webs darkest. How it attains an atmosphere of depression and dread from the beginning however, is truly cheap and distasteful. Insects and animals are crushed and tortured at intervals; a small lizard is crushed to death, in another moment a snails eyes are cut off with scissors - all real. I didn't see (excuse the pun) any reason for this to happen, considering the movie has enough fictional violence and crazy debauchery on its own. For example, an old man who joins the group early on brings a girl in a wheelchair to the "party" who is openly abused and left lying around like an object. This man is later cut up (also for no reason) and left to crawl home with his guts hanging out. The group burn him on a bonfire, at which point another character is that excited he gets someone to masturbate him to climax in explicit close-up. In addition, the movie contains people being defecated and urinated on, both alive and dead. I can't rate Melancholie Der Engel high on my list simply because it does seem to be a plot-less, direction-less compilation of weirdness and sick fantasies. The general ruthlessness of the animal cruelty also put me off recommending this to anyone, which I think is understandable. Good movies should present fiction and suspend the viewers disbelief without relying on real, unnecessary cruelty. The biggest problem it has going for it though, its length, will make many viewers fast forward through it before they get to the truly puke inducing scenes, in the last forty minutes. Either way, if you're a fan of extreme movies, this one should be on your list. The way it comes together as a whole package though, is not as great as others. If Dora cut the animal cruelty and presented a new condensed cut - Melancholie Der Engel would score more points from me and be easier to recommend.

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.