Lars Von
Trier’s latest movie Melancholia (2011)
looks like a painting and reads like a poem. It is, however, blurring
boundaries not only of cinematic genres, but also presenting alternative tools
for their delivery. The image of an apocalypse in a post 9/11 cinema appears
marked by destruction and melancholy, and although the title of Von Trier’s
film suggests sheer sadness, it is also a (fascinatingly) beautiful apocalyptic
tale balancing between life and death. Melancholia
starts and ends with the ultimate culmination - fin de
siècle while its border is drawn by the notion of acceptance. This paper will
therefore explore apocalyptic boundaries highlighted in the film and look at
their significance within a rather unique context produced by a Danish director
and screenwriter Von Trier.
Melancholia begins with an 8min slow-motion
prologue where the opening close-up shot of Justine reveals birds falling from
the sunset stricken sky and moves on to illustrate a descending painting of a village, eventually coming to
an image of a red star approaching the
Earth – all to Richard Wagner’s prelude to “Tristan and Isolde”. A woman
holding a child runs through a golf course seemingly drowning in its marshy
grass, a horse stumbles to the ground and Justine appears again – this time in
a long shot surrounded by butterflies and snow-flakes. But this dreamy
cinematography is not an overture for a happy ending – Justine examines her
hands shedding light in a medium shot and is afterwards seen running through
the forest trying to avoid its ensnaring branches. Another planet is shortly
seen coming into view and we know the Earth is about to end. We see the
collision and a dark screen before the narrative resumes back to the start.
Von Trier has divided his film into
two segments: “Justine” and “Claire”, thus placing sisters as binary
oppositions alongside contrasting issues of life & death, happiness &
sadness, The Earth & Melancholia. Film’s tone consequently often shifts
between science fiction, disaster and drama. Sukhdev Sandhu’s review in the Telegraph
describes the overall feel of Melancholia
best:
The film seethes with ideas, darkness,
bruising soulfulness, visual invention. Its monstrous conceit, its excess and
complexity, its sheer unreasonableness: this is cinema that refuses to know its
place, that doesn’t cater to an instant-response. But make no mistake: this is
cinema as scar.
Most of it is
filmed with a handheld camera in a way that we see the events unfold through character’s
point-of-view. This adds a familiar, almost documentary feel to the picture
while shots produced by a steady positioned camera take us to the dreadful, yet
beautiful unknown. In “The sense of an ending” author Stephen Keane reminds
readers that ‘it is important to remember that the disaster genre has always
been based around familiarity and novelty (2001:76). Death is therefore a
novelty in a form of impending doom which suddenly casts a shadow upon family’s
familiar surroundings. But what makes Melancholia
different from other disaster/ sci-fi films?
As pointed
out by film critic Roger Ebert, ‘Von Trier limits himself entirely to the
meandering conversations at the house party. He avoids all the usual sci-fi
clichés; there are no TV news updates, no Cabinet meetings, no nuclear rockets
fired at it, no surging mobs in the streets. It looms larger. It "appeared
from behind the sun (www.rogerebert.suntimes.com).”’ This portrayal of an apocalyptic
dread is not only Von Trier’s autheuristic statement but also his critique of
the traditional Hollywood cinema dealing with existential fear and life in the future.
Firstly, he avoids the ‘terror in the big city’ scenario
where panic spreads amongst the population, buildings collapse as people try to
run or hide and more importantly – fight. Altogether, he avoids mass
destruction and unfamiliar casualties. Instead, he offers a quiet countryside
villa to focus viewer’s attention on a few characters inhibiting it as a result.
We do not know about the outside world and its reaction towards the approaching
event since the off-screen space is guarded by carefully chosen dialogues
between those characters. No one makes hysteric good-bye calls or invites
loved-ones for a last get-together. It is obvious that the apocalypse happens
globally but we are told about it through a closeted cinematic space.
Moreover and secondly, the absence of media plays with the
portrayal of scopic dread – the dread of looking. Von Trier masterfully unites
estranged family members as oppose to creating global solidarity via universally
panic-ridden television broadcasts (which would only boast anxiety and fear).
According to Thompson,
Scopic dread is concerned with what is unseen, but which [...] metonymically points out to something which
is already there (2007:138).
They know it’s coming. In fact, they can see it coming, but
they decide not to almost till the very end – and the only response to the
unseen derives from human emotions, not news stories or collective fright (e.g.
2012, Day After Tomorrow). This style
of filmmaking is thus empathizing not only on isolation between characters and
the outside world, but also segregates cinemagoers so as they become somewhat
intimately bond to the scenery in return.
Regardless, it comes as a surprise when Claire enters
dreading words “melancholia” and “death” in a search engine, simply seeking a confirmation
of what she already knows. This proves that Von Trier is not denying the role
media and technology may play should the worst happen– yet he’s showing it can
be used differently...if not more privately. All in all, by doing so he
succeeds in telling the story of apocalypse without conventional mise-en-scene (‘terror
in the big city’ )and violence of the mass media.
Thirdly, the director keeps away from typecasting a hero
who’s going to save the world, which in a classical Hollywood narrative would
have been a well-known white male (e.g. Bruce Willis in Surrogates, Fifth Element and Armageddon,
Keanu Reeves in The Matrix trilogy
or Tom Cruise in Minority Report and War of the Worlds). In contrast, Von Trier favours complicated female
protagonists who are so distressed from within that they embrace danger when it
comes. Yet again, these women do not fight aliens, robots or Mother Nature –
they excel in an inner fight with the inevitable. Male characters are, however,
present for a while and leave the narrative in almost comic way: Justine’s new
husband Michael departs unable to cope with the odd behaviour of his wife on
their wedding night whereas Claire’s scientist husband John commits suicide
realizing that the end is near. If men are meant to be strong and powerful and
women – helpless and weak – then Von Trier swiftly changes the order of these
oppositions in a way only a few filmmakers can.
Furthermore,
since women are driving the narrative it is worth looking at leading
martyr-heroine characters closer. The first segment shows Justine (played by Kirsten Dunst) as a beautiful bride approaching
wedding reception with her newly wed husband Michael. Her striking exterior,
however, hides a troubled and alienated individual who, as the night proves,
finds transcendence in masochism along with some other weird choices – such as
disappearing to urinate in the garden, taking a bath midway through reception or
spontaneously raping a new colleague. Nevertheless, Justine is the only one to
notice a red star in the sky and so her depression only grows deeper as it
approaches. She doesn’t seem to care about the pricey wedding or her new
husband, and descends into a memory of the forthcoming future as if she had
envisioned a previously mentioned prologue before. Justine mourns the loss of
life before it even happens and thus alienates herself from the crowd while her
tradition-hating mother Gaby ironically proclaims: “enjoy it while it lasts!”
And she will, in the most masochistic way possible.
In mourning it is the world
which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself (Freud,
1957:246).
Indeed, melancholia
is not only the name of a planet hurtling towards the Earth to destroy it; it
is also a state of mind which Freud talks about in "Mourning and Melancholia".
Ironically, we do not know which truly destroys Justine. But while the lost
object in Freudian terms is another life, our protagonist narcissistically
mourns her own. She claims to “know things”...and she knows that “life is only on Earth” and that it is “evil.”
In fact, mourning and self-torture are her answers to anxiety and fear, converting
into acceptance when she finally gets out of bed to witness the end instead of
hiding away.
Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), on the other hand, initially
appears as Justine’s opposite: she is calm, optimistic and organized. She oozes
balance during the chaotic wedding and takes care of her fading sister, only to
fall into despair when coming to understand the darker recess of her own
humanity. Claire was blindfolded believing her husband when rumours of the two
planets colliding started to spread. “Trust me, I’m a scientist” he said,
before cowardly committing an act of taking his own life. Seeing is believing –
and Claire’s denial was overshadowed by evidence. As said by Sigmund Freud,
The interdependence of the
complicated problems of the mind forces us to break off every enquiry before it
is completed—till the outcome of some other enquiry can come to its assistance (1957:285).
She
also mourns her loss, but her previously serene persona will have a longer
journey towards acceptance. Subsequently, the two sisters exchange
personalities and it is now Justine who’s holding Claire’s trembling hand in
the ‘magic cave’ whilst Melancholia enters the planetary boundary
layer.
Lars Von
Trier adds another twist to the narrative – as he is usually known to do (e.g.
talking self-destructive foxes in the Antichrist)
in order to confuse the spectator. John confronts irritable Justine during the
party, concluding with a seemingly random question:
“How many holes are on the golf course?”
-
“18”,
she answers.
Nevertheless, one of the final shots produces an image of
Claire and her son Leo falling to the ground on a golf course – next to the 19th
hole. On one hand, golfers speak about the nineteenth hole when the game is
finished and they gather for a drink at the clubhouse. Another explanation is
found in the 80ies TV series Knight Rider
where it is used as a slang term - meaning
the place where they bury people who get in the way. With Von Trier, though,
this idea has to be explored further. Does he refer to life as a game which
eventually finishes? Or is he comparing Melancholia’s arrival to the golf ball
which, having reached the final hole, plummets into nothingness? And finally,
is the nineteenth hole the end or, possibly, a new beginning? This scene toys
with the viewer as much as film’s revealing prologue which discloses its finale
before the main body of work, and presents life & death in a different
light yet again.
Two planets.
Two sisters. Life and death. Von Trier succeeds in delivering his vision of
apocalypse through contrasts and binary oppositions. He avoids cinematic
clichés of the genre and focuses on the inner journey towards acceptance. It’s
a dark, yet visually enriched and therefore beautiful poem about The End of the
World, the magnitude of which eventually blurs all boundaries. All the more, Melancholia does not rule out that death
might be only the end of a poem before the new chapter begins; hitherto we are
left with a black screen and a scar...for now, at least.
Bibliography:
Ebert, R. (2011) “Melancholia: by Roger Ebert”, Chicago Sunday Times online, 9th
Nov, viewed 7th December 2011,
Freud, S. (1957) "Mourning and Melancholia",
Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
vol. 14. London, England: Hogarth Press
Keane, S. (2001) “The sense of an ending”, Disaster Movies: The Cinema of Catastrophe,
London: Wallflower
Sandhu S. (2011) Melancholia review, The
Telegraph, 29th Sept, viewed 7th December 2011,
Thompson, K. M. (2007) Apocalyptic
Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium, Albany: State
University of New York Press
TheGiO (user) (2011), Melancholia Prologue video, YouTube, 2nd Oct, viewed 8th
December 2011,
Filmography:
Melancholia (Von Trier, 2011,
Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany)
