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In April of 2012, Diane Borden and Sue Saperstein were invited to deliver papers on the film Melancholia for a program sponsored by the Lacan School and the Lacan Society, at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Cynthia Sailers, who in part organized the program, introduced the film and the speakers. After the screening and the presentation, a lively, informed, rich discussion followed with 60 audience members. Catherine Mallouh and Eric Essman were active participants in the analysis. In October of 2012, a further analysis of the film was done at the San Francisco Cinema and Psychoanalysis Group, under the leadership of Dr. Borden. For fort da, Jeanne Harasemovitch joined in the ongoing dialogue on the film.
These six members of the psychoanalytic community have written the review essays that follow.
The fantasy of feminine immortality perhaps has its basis in the feminine germinal transmission, capable of parthenogenesis.
The slightly slow-motion shots that open von Trier's Melancholia signal entry into a cosmic, mythic, and psycho-aesthetic sensibility. A montage of images — elegant, mysterious, and metaphoric — meld with the rapturous welling up from the Liebstod in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. A woman, Justine, awakens. A few shots later we see her running in a wedding gown. Toward the end of the montage, her arms stretch upward to the heavens and give off electrical impulses from her fingertips, as if Qi flow links her body