Melancholia 2011 (spoiler) Review

This is not an attempt at a technical review of Melancholia, but more of a personal reflection on what this movie and Lars von Trier other movie Anti Christ have done to my soul. Of course there are no souls in Trier films, but I find that the impact that they have on me is a testament, at least to me, that I have a soul.

Melancholia succeeds where another epic movie this year, Tree of life, fails. It’s so hard through these two eyes and this little selfish brain, to step out side of myself and really try to comprehend the big picture. To think of our infinite smallness in such a vast universe. To somehow reconcile a wedding and it’s importance to us, and the farthest lonely planet of a seemingly endless emptiness of space. Melancholia does about as good of job as can be done in tossing our little circle of life into the great boiling pot of the void of millions of miles of darkness around us.

Trier’s movies are bad for me. I’m like an alcoholic knowing one drop can send me over the edge, but my drug is meaninglessness. His movies, like Ecclesiastics send me into a bad place. Melancholia, like Anti Christ, are as dark as it gets. And they plunge me into the secret fears that I try hard to hide. That constant refrain in ecclesiastics, “Meaningless, It’s all meaningless.. or vanity, or useless, which ever translation you use, rings in my ears day and night.

Melancholia is a Ecclesiastical view of life. That it is all meaningless. That what we do on this earth and in our little circle of life is laughable compared to the grander of emptiness around us. During the Part one of the film, I turned to my wife and said, I know this man, I know what he feels. He feels evil, and he thinks everyone else is evil, they just don’t know it. He’s saying the crazy one is actually the sane one, and the sane are crazy, because they live as if the world around them makes sense. And, the world is crazy.

I too feel that evil in me, like at Kirsten Dunst‘s wedding, I too am running around in this “sane” dramatic play humping on the golf course, fighting with the void inside me to act normal, because Kiefer Sutherland has invested so much in me. Kiefer makes a deal with Kirsten for him paying for the wedding, “be happy.” “Please just be happy,” I hear all around me chanting. “Don’t be so dark,” they say. Just run around and drink wine on the teras as the world ends. Think of your 18 hole golf course and blind yourself to the infinite darkness around you. Sedate your mind with the riches this world has to offer and turn away from the reality that thousands of Melancholias are crashing into the earth every day (death.)

“this world is evil,” Dunsts says, “life on earth is evil, no one will miss us.” It seems that this is not something that can be derived from just nature, this idea that not only am I evil, but everyone is evil. This smacks of the bible. I can say that I am evil because I know myself very well, but to come up with the idea that the very nice and benevolent Sutherland is evil, takes some kind of philosophy. I learn that not only I am evil, but all are evil from the pages of the bible. That puts me in the predicament Dunst is in. I know I’m evil, because I can’t contain it. But what about these people that do contain it? The answer is they do just that, contain it, with various devices.

In Melancholia, I feel there is several different ways of dealing with the same meaninglessness of life. There is the seemingly blissfully un-aware like Sutherland, then the sentimental dependent like Charlotte Gainsbourg, but the hero (which isn’t revealed until the end) is Dunst’s character. The one who looks at life’s vanity straight on and doesn’t flinch. She is the truly sane one because she doesn’t live in the delusion and she also knows what is more important at the end when Melancholia is about to end all existence. The answer is alleviation of pain.. at least in my eyes. Gainsbourg tries to hold on to the threads of sentimentality in the face of inhalation, which shows that her relationship with her son is really a facade, her love, it’s only a projection of her sentimentality which further proves her evil intent.

Like I said, this movie really fucked me up for a few days. This atheistic worldview is attractive to me for some reason. I think it started from a desire that there would be no God. Because I know, if there is a God, I’m in trouble. Because I’m the evil puzzle that all around me are trying to solve like Gainsbourg in Anti Christ. But in my times of sanity, or insanity, I don’t know which, I know that Trier is wrong. I know that there is a part three after the earth explodes. I think my wife said it best, “that’s it?” When the final scene comes, the earth destroyed, it fades to black, and thats the end. My wife was waiting for one more scene..I honestly don’t know what, but I think we all long for that next scene, and I think, if we’re honest with ourself, know that that is not it. Your soul will never fade to black and the credits role. It’s in this place, in the anticipation of a sequel that I need to live. Melancholia offers only one thing, the same thing Anti Christ offered, a great chasm of emptiness that as nietzsche said, no true atheist can avoid.

One Response to “Melancholia 2011 (spoiler) Review”

1. clint says:

   November 27, 2011 at 7:19 am

   loved it, great review

   chek INCENDIES

   fuckd me up

   but ends in love and won’t fuck u up the same way

   Reply