So I was going to write about Brazil but then I decided to watch Melancholia late last night, and now I want to write about that instead. (I did enjoy Brazil, but it did not resonate with me enough in any way to write anything worthwhile about it.) Watching it was not necessarily a good choice on my part but my choice was also not surprising considering I do a lot of things in the late hours of the night that impair my already fragile sleep. For example, I often give in to the urge to watch a slasher at eleven pm before a morning exam. In high school, I binged so hard on Lost that I couldn't sleep for days because my poor brain was overdosed with adrenaline, and was trying to figure out how to time travel and escape smoke monsters when all I wanted it to do was to count sheep. The real low point came only a few months ago, however, when, after a night out drinking I crawled into bed and, just before shutting off my computer, caved and clicked the link that advertised "THE TOP TEN MOST DISTURBING SCENES IN CINEMATIC HISTORY!" Not only did I scroll through the entire list, reading each grisly description with a gleeful shudder, but I proceeded to actually find one of the movies on Netflix and watch it. ALL of it. By then, it was three in the morning and I wanted to throw up from what I had seen, but more from the fact that I had seen it. It was so bad that I didn't even want to describe the scene to my friends when they inquired about my sleep-deprived, near-hysterical state the next day.
Anyway. Melancholia wasn't grisly. It was poetic. It was gorgeous, sumptuous, and moving. It was a very thoughtful meditation on the depths of depression and a study on what it means to be in such a state. When asked about his film which is, roughly, about the end of the world, director Lars Von Trier responded that he wanted to show people that a deep depression drastically changes perception. In the film, Kirsten Dunst masterfully (really, guys!) plays Justine, just-married and successful, but slowly overcome by a powerful melancholic depression. Why? It is not entirely clear, but if I had her family I would probably be listless and dead inside, too. Melancholia chronicles Justine's wedding reception and the days and weeks immediately after. Let's just say her groom becomes obsolete before the reception is even over, and a study of Justine and her sister, Claire, and their strained relationship as they face the imminent end of the world ensues.
Anyway. The film is split into two parts (and masterfully organized, I might add), each named for each sister. Before Part 1 begins, the viewer experiences several minutes of a dark and dreamy sequence of character and setting quite reminiscent of the lengthy creation scene in The Tree of Life. The entire sequence is set to Wagner's Prelude to his opera Tristan and Isolde which haunts the viewer throughout the film's length and is a perfect, perhaps not-so-subtle emphasis of Justine's suffering, as the Prelude's minor key and 'Tristan chord' were employed to prolong the feeling of grief and sorrow.
Critics have said that Von Trier's metaphor here--the end of the world and Justine's melancholic depression--is a bit heavy-handed. If they mean to say that it doesn't take a professor of film to understand the connection between the two plots, then they are right. But this 'heavy-handedness' is in no way, shape, or form superfluous. It works. Everything about Melancholia works exquisitely. The cinematography absolutely blew me away. Just look at these images...
I won't write much more about the film because, from the bottom of my at-times melancholic heart, I recommend you see it for yourself.
I've been thinking about death a lot lately. I mean I think about death pretty frequently I guess, and I don't think I'm the only one for whom questions of mortality appear on a near-daily basis. But for some reason lately there has been some drive within me to spend a more-than-average amount of my days meditating on death. Much of it has taken the form of weeping over facebook posts on a deceased person's wall. And not in one case have I actually known the person in question, but I read the posts their friends and family and strangers leave, even years after the event, and it is as if I am reading bits of my own eulogy. Because it hurts everyone the same way and fucks with all of our heads.
Yesterday I spent a few hours with my grandmother. My grandmother is 85 years old, although she appears to be older still. I think this has more than a little to do with the fact that she has been through more than most 85-year-old women, on average. That is a silly generalization to make, but I do believe it is true. Anyway, over tea that I succumbed to in order to avoid eating spoiled dairy products she offered me, she told me, once again, stories of the war. This woman cannot remember the most simple words on a day-to-day basis but as she recalled the scenes of death and annihilation she witnessed as a 13-year-old, as she described how, as a hospital worker at 13, she was responsible for removing the maggots that infested soldiers' wounds due to the ever-growing summer heat, she grimaced and raised a knobby arm upwards, as if to shield her eyes from the sun. It was such a dramatic gesture, and she was committing to it completely unconsciously. Because death is scary!
Not to Justine it isn't. Von Trier's point was to show that in her state, Justine welcomes certain death. She bathes nude in Melancholia's blue, fast-approaching light and scoffs at her sister's wish for some sort of last-minute closure. While everyone else is flitting about, running off in golf carts with their children as if getting a mile south of their current location would save them from a planetary collision, Justine has long since waved her white flag. This is depression. Death as an invitation. Complete surrender. And to anyone who has ever as much as flirted with melancholy, this fate is far, far scarier than death.
If you made it this far in the post, I'm flattered and surprised. Sorry for being so scattered.
