Melancholia (Denmark, 2011, Lars von Trier)
Then Ben:
Just as NHL
addicts love to pick and choose from the whole league to create their dream
team, film buffs make Top Ten lists. And
just like a hockey fan who wants to see nothing more than a show-down between
his best goalie and his favorite forward, cinema enthusiasts enjoy programing
the ultimate double-bill.
Both films deliver
outstandingly arresting visuals that establish inescapably affecting
atmospheres that speak to the human condition.
And the two films are (almost) equally pretentious. They find it in every way legitimate to fill
up a massive metaphysical frame with the paint of personal psychology. In the shoot-out between The Tree of
Life and Melancholia, however, I am inclined to cheer for
the latter. My reasons are three.
In the first
philosophic place, my supposedly supernatural soul about which believers are so
optimistic is just too supposed for me to take optimistically. You know.
Death and taxes. In that
order. Couple things you can count
on. Death of me, death of you, death of
the planet...eventually. Can't avoid the
void. The first rule of the realist.
Secondly, I
respectfully request a splash of irony from all painters on the cosmic canvas.
Von Trier's picture is somewhat ironic, whereas Malick's painting is dead
serious (not-dead serious, that is, angels-forever serious). This is not to suggest that Melancholia
has a sense of humour. It is
just as un-funny as The Tree of Life. My point is that von Trier's film is somewhat
less pretentious because the depiction of the end of the world is less literal
event and more metaphoric device than the opening of the pearly gates in
Malick's movie.
My final reason
for my preference is positively prosaic, which is to say that I am positive
about prose that makes some goddamn sense.
The narrative in The Tree of Life is incoherent. I suspect that it is intended to be poetic
and I am confident that it is meant to be profound, but it's an ineffectual
parable as far as I can make out that attempts to pass off inept drama as a
glorious aesthetic experience. Melancholia, conversely, is one hell
of a two act play. Not only did it make
perfect sense as a story, the formal construction of the narrative is
remarkably powerful.
Much of this
resides in the control of our cognition von Trier achieves by telling us the
ending at the beginning. But the radical
stylistic juxtaposition of the two acts is equally important. It facilitates the inversion of the binary
represented by the sisters. They
effectively switch places with respect to our sympathies and in so doing
validate von Trier's attitude that existence is just so much
non-existence. Correction. His take is more explicitly negative. The sister that is his stand-in says not just
that life on earth is the only life in the universe. She declares further that life on earth is
evil.
According to what
moral compass this orientation is charted, I notice von Trier declines to
disclose. What is plain is that this is
no "disaster movie" since the end of the world can hardly be
considered a disaster if life on earth is evil.
Guess we just have to accept the opinion of a clinically depressive
film-maker as reliable testimony on this topic.
Or not. Personally, I have put
meatloaf in my mouth many, many times and not once has it tasted to me like
ashes. But I would be a liar if I failed
to confess that Melancholia made me wake up in the middle of the
night, unable to fall back asleep. It's
a very intense trip, the artistic authority of which cannot be denied. I think it is an excellent film.
I propose we adopt
the notion that von Trier has become - if he wasn't already - a master of
horror. In support of this campaign, I
hope I will be forgiven for quoting at length from my review of his Antichrist:
It's title notwithstanding, there is no
moral reference point - period. Call me
a prude but I have to side with the Sunday school types who would no doubt
label it degenerate. I prefer the
term decadent because for me it suggests a less individualistic, more
general sociological decay. At some
point, it behooves us to wonder what a work of art is reflecting about the
culture at large, and this film is universal nihilism posing as a piece of
personal psychosis. The nasty
supernatural trappings are just that; pretentious window dressing, just the
stuff to fool lots of reviewers into thinking the film is philosophically
assertive. But given all the rest of the
uber-grizzly fare, some of the supposedly occult implications about the
natural world were sorta goofy; not full-out funny, but dorky nonetheless and
therefore laughable. The ending is a
head-scratcher, to be sure. But so what?
We've been too badly brutalized to care.
In short, it's just another horror movie folks.
I stand by that
review and I maintain now that Melancholia is another horror
movie. But I do not think it is
"just" another one. Again, I
think it is excellent. This time out the
ending ain't no head-scratcher, that's for sure. And this time out, the individual mental
illness does not "pose" as the apocalypse. This is because the occult implications in Melancholia
are in no way conceptually shabby.
Tracing the etymology of the word "melancholia," Wiki arrives
at Old English terms including "saturine," as in, under the influence
of Saturn. The depressive sister is a
kind of witch, an intuitive astrological seer, Nostradamus in a dress. She looks at the sky and knows - just knows -
it's over. In keeping with a Stephen King
protagonist, this character is made sick by her own power.
Until she isn't.
And forget about
the noble bearing of true love, a mother's love, a sister's love. The earthy woman of social bonds who honestly
cares for her family and thinks it only proper to seek the company of others in
town when confronted by crisis, turns out to be yet another who can't face the
fact. Her personality as the reliable
nurturer decomposes to reveal that her essence is anxiety which manifests as
incapacity. She too is subject to manic
panic, just happens in fits and starts.
Hence, it is only due to her crazy sister that she does not loose her
own mind completely.
So it turns out
that the depressive, the previously incapacitated, is finally calm, cool and
collected. She is the truly brave
person, the sane one in the end, because she has been facing the fact all
along. Only fools and cowards live life
to the fullest, feel any sort of purpose that might bring about some sort of
immortality. These foolish cowards,
these cowardly fools, want to leave a legacy.
But even if they do write their own epitaph, it is no more meaningful
than a commercial copywriter's tag-line.
It is the girl who can't get out of bed in the morning, the gal who is
forever mourning, she is the one who is able to shake off the covers come
Judgment-less Day. For she is under the
sign of Planet Melancholia. She has
always known that this ain't the age of the dawning of Aquarius. Hence, she strips naked to bask in the glow
of death.
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