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( October 21st, 2011 )
“Are you happy?”
Lars von Trier explained that he had been going through an extended period of depression while making some of his previous films, Antichrist included. Now, having stopped drinking, he has rebounded with this apocalyptic vision and anxious world view, which he cheerfully described as “my most optimistic film.” Melancholia, a title then inspired by the Danish film maker’s own depression, opens with an overture - a series of slow moving stills which, to Wagner, partly shows poetic visions of a wonderful end of the world as Earth collides with a vast planet named, yes, Melancholia.
The world ends. Then the film begins. The first part is called “Justine” and deals with a melancholic sister and her wedding. The other bears the title “Claire” and covers the countdown to the end. As the director puts it: “If everything has to go to hell, it needs to start off well.” We follow two sisters till the bitter end. Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, is innately melancholic. She has a hard time finding her place in the material world and assuming all of its empty rituals, but feels more at home when the world draws near its end. Her ‘normal’ and sensible big sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, thrives in the world and consequently finds it hard to say goodbye to it.
For a film whose subject is no less than the end of the world, there are refreshingly no typical catastrophe shots. No widespread panic, no tidal waves, no monuments falling. In fact it’s unclear in the first part how much the characters know about the phenomenon that is spotted as a bright evening star. Instead the characters are isolated, as they would be in a play, and we are left to follow their reactions as the planet approaches Earth. In this way the film is a clash between romanticism and reality, between beauty and drama.
Despite Justine’s best efforts to fight her way back into life instead of longing her way out of it, melancholia descends like a curtain between her and all the things she has set in motion. It’s as if the attempt to tame her nature unleashes a power that is simultaneously destructive and beautiful. As the director notes: “In a way she succeeds in pulling this planet from behind the sun and she surrenders to it.” She is longing for something of true value. And true value entails suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we? In her depressed state Justine reports to her sister Claire that “The Earth is evil - all life is evil,” that there is no God and “Life is on Earth - and not for very long.” Yet as the planet Melancholia advances the end of life on Earth, Justine looks transformed - electrified and powerful - by her need for pathos, drama and, as the poet Tom Kristensen wrote, “her longing for shipwrecks and sudden death.”
The final scene alone is worth the price of admission. It lays bare characters under a frail pyramid (that symbol of ascension and transcendence but which we know also represents a tomb…) made of felled branches staring straight at the violent and terrifying doom until their very last breaths. It evokes doubt about the meaning of existence for in the end everyone dies. Not just the guests at the wedding held in a chateau in the country. And not just all life on Earth. For in Lars von Trier’s world, we are absolutely alone in the universe. So what ends is life and our recollection of it. Posted by Shawn Dogimont
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