Melancholia

‘We are […] bad by nature, bad by kinde, but farre worse by art’ Robert Burton - Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

Melancholia, a film directed by Lars von Trier, is a beautiful movie about the ultimate meaning of life. It tells the story of two sisters, who find their relationship challenged as a nearby planet threatens to collide into the Earth. It has a three-fold structure: the first part of the film is an introduction made up of a series of images, unbound by any real narrative unity. Together with their striking dream-like quality, these images move at an extremely slow pace. Some of them take place in outer space, some on Earth. Their protagonists are Justine (Kirsten Dunst) in a classical wedding dress, a second woman, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and a child, Leo (Cameron Spurr). Some of these images are shown again at the end of the film at normal speed and seen through the quality of a waking consciousness. These images are alternated with scenes taking place in outer space, in which a huge blue planet (Melancholia) appears to be on a collision course to absorb earth. The immensely powerful Prologue to Tristan und Isolde by Wagner is the music that contains this introduction.

The beginning of the second part is visually very abrupt, focusing on a wedding reception where various characters are introduced, and the ill-fated marriage between Justine and her groom begins to disintegrate. Also Justine's dark, melancholic side begins to emerge. A striking gift is made to Justine from her new husband of an apple orchard, which he tells her is his wedding present, as it represents the dream of his life - clearly a regressive wish fulfillment of marriage as a fusional, pre-ambivalent union into the Garden of Eden. The third part is entitled Claire, after Justine's sister. Claire is an active and rational character, who, in spite of her husband's opposition, keeps taking care of her sister, now severely depressed. It is at this point that the presence in the sky