Plot
A man named Katze meets with his old friend, Brauth. Together, they go to a carnival where they meet two sixteen-year-old girls, Melanie and Bianca. At a bar, a woman named Anja joins them. Katze and Brauth take the group to an old house where the two men have a dark past. On the way, Katze shows signs of illness.
On their second night in the house, Heinrich, an elderly artist who claims to be a dead man, arrives, accompanied by a young woman named Clarissa, who is in a wheelchair and has a colostomy. The group consumes alcohol, opium and cocaine while discussing their different philosophies on life. Katze, Brauth and Anja reveal their nihilistic nature to the two girls, claiming they wish for there to be no life after this one. Katze cuts Anja's breast with a scalpel, to which she reacts with pleasure.
The following morning, the group travels to a pond near a factory, where Brauth reveals that Katze does not have much time to live. Katze meets a nun near a farm who leads him to a neighboring church. The nun begins to pray and then undresses and masturbates while Katze enters the crypts, watching the tombs with morbid curiosity; at the same time, Melanie assists in hunting and slaughtering a pig, and Brauth rapes Anja.
That night, Brauth, tired of Clarissa's laments, drags her into a basement. He tortures her by ripping out her ostomy bag, jamming his fingers into the stoma, then throwing her from her wheelchair and abandoning her. During the night, Bianca awakens and claims that she "heard the voice of the dead." Katze checks and finds nothing but a rabbit that had been hanged by Heinrich. Katze beheads the rabbit and takes the head to bed with him. He has a dream in which he frolics naked in a field with the dead rabbit before burying it.
Brauth walks with Melanie and Bianca the next day, and he tells them that even after knowing Katze for many years, they struggle to understand each other due to their philosophical differences. Meanwhile, Katze and Anja embrace sexually and Katze reveals his final hours are upon him.
Brauth locks Melanie and Bianca in a stable while they are drugged and tied together, before sending Heinrich to abuse them. However, the two girls escape. Heinrich later abuses Clarissa and Katze has a breakdown and falls asleep naked in a corner. The next morning, Heinrich takes Clarissa out to a cliff side which she proceeds to throw herself off of. Anja finds the remains of the butchered pig and is sexually excited by touching them. Melanie digs up the remains of a fetus.
Anja finds Katze in a visibly upset state. In a flashback sequence, Katze reflects on his life, loneliness, loss and misery. When Katze snaps back to reality, Anja begins comforting him before he throws her onto the ground, proceeding to urinate and defecate onto her.
Katze begins attacking Bianca by ripping her pants off, wiping his anus with them and forcing them into her mouth, then forcing her to vomit by shoving his finger into her throat. Heinrich starts beating Melanie, but this upsets Katze who, along with Anja, pulls Heinrich off of her.
Katze states his conflicts with Heinrich have gone too far as Heinrich turns his violence on Bianca which sparks no reaction from Melanie. Brauth urinates on Bianca and she flees. Brauth, Katze, Anja and Heinrich follow her outside where they proceed to beat her. Brauth removes her ovaries with a knife. Simultaneously, Melanie masturbates while watching a videotape of Katze and Brauth mutilating a pregnant woman and killing the fetus.
Brauth and Katze take Heinrich onto a river, where they disembowel him. That night, they burn his remains on a pyre and the group rejoices at his death. Melanie cuts off the eyes of a snail and Katze is blinded by a spark.
The next morning, the group attempts to comfort Katze. Anja escorts him to his grave where he dies and is buried along with his belongings. Brauth embraces a distraught Melanie and the two stay at the house while Anja and the nun leave together.
Release
The Angels' Melancholia premiered at Weekend of Fear Festival in Erlangen and Nuremberg, Middle Franconia, Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, on 1 May 2009. It was also screened at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in New York City on 27 October 2009, where it won Best International Feature Film – Arthouse Genre. [2] It was later screened at BUT (B-Movies, Underground, and Trash) Film Festival in the Netherlands on 7 June 2013. The DVD was released on 30 July 2010 in Austria.
An extended version, running 165 minutes, was released in 2015 by XT Video, marking its Blu-Ray debut. Subsequently, the film made its home video debut in the US in 2020 with a Blu-Ray edition by PCM media, featuring the extended cut as well as the documentary “Revisiting Melancholie der Engel” from 2017. In 2021, a mediabook edition from Italian distributor Tetro Video was also released. [3]
