Melancholia (2011)

The pattern I’ve established for writing about movies is that when I’m writing about my favorite movies, I specify that in the title, and when I’m merely writing about movies that I find interesting for one reason or another, I don’t. This one, Melancholia, released in 2011 and directed by Lars von Trier, I had to think about for a minute. Is this one of my favorite movies? Honestly, no, but it is a movie I refer to a lot, that I think about a lot, and that’s because it deals with a theme that has served as a splinter in my brain for pretty much all of my adulthood, the theme of meaning and the dearth thereof, in an uncaring universe. Not a lot of media straighforwardly deals with that theme.

I don’t necessarily recommend it to anyone, either. Most people are going to dislike it, and I’ll admit that it is a slog. It really is. I can get through just about any movie, but this one requires discipline, but not because it is a poorly-made film. It’s brilliant, actually. It’s hard to watch because the picture is engineered to make the viewer uncomfortable, in the same way, I think, that any serious interrogation of life is uncomfortable, maybe even painful. Elaborate systems, ancient systems, have been engineered to alleviate that discomfort, to enable people to put the crisis of meaninglessness out of their minds. These systems provide us with elaborate fictions and fairy tales, and they seem to work for maybe even the majority of people. Then there’s people like me who are smart enough to see through those systems, but too stupid to envision alternatives. Melancholia, I think, is a film for people like me, that give me at least something I can understand.

Melancholia is the name of the rogue planet that crashes into Earth. We get to see the outcome in the opening sequence of the film:

The little planet on the left, the one that is smashing into the bigger planet? That’s Earth. So, if you’re an astute viewer, von Trier gives it away from the get-go that none of these characters are in for a trip to Cleveland, but this really isn’t a science fiction movie aside from that. No explosions or panics or presidential speeches or anything like that. von Trier keeps it very small and intimate, focusing only on two sisters, Justine and Claire, Played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg respectively, and how they face the end of the world that they very well see coming.

You know, there’s not much really to say about it more than that, now that I’ve sat down to write about it. Ultimately, both sisters have a seat at the final spectacle and face it head on, watch Melancholia as it smashes into Earth and kills every living thing. That’s it. They could hide, or cry, or dance, but when faced with all options that are equally pointless, von Trier seems to be saying, just face it, head on. Just face it.