Hold my hand. Close your eyes.

A review of Melancholia

“When the Real rushes in, everything feels like a film: not a film you’re watching, but a film you’re in.” - Mark Fisher ‘Autonomy in the UK’

I smile and smile and smile.

Richard Wagner’s instrumental of Liebestod from the opera Tristan and Isolde soundtracks the opening of Melancholia, a film from 2011 directed by Lars von Trier. Leibestod, which means ‘love-death’, recurs throughout the production as a sort of, well, Wagnerian leitmotiv. At the climax of the opera Isolde sings the aria after Tristan's death and expresses her desire to join him; it is a peaceful acceptance of a desired end. As the film rolls, two spheres are shown, one moving imperceptibly towards the other; the wandering giant planet Melancholia which, having missed the Sun and other celestial bodies, is now drifting inexorably towards Earth. The film begins at the end. We see, in exquisite slow motion, a garden sundial with two shadows, a bride running through the woods trailing tendrils, a woman with a child running across a golf course, birds falling from the sky, a horse collapsing, the planets revolving, moving closer and closer as Melancholia advances through the darkness of space. Shades of Tarkovsky and Antonioni. It then cuts to a bourgeois marriage celebration in a Danish chateau which, we are told, has cost “an arm and a leg”. Shades of von Trier’s compatriot Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film Festen. It seems a precondition of postmodern cinema that influences are alluded to and acknowledged like the Droste effect, a mise en abyme.

Justine and Michael are newly-married but arrive late to their reception. No expense has been spared on the lavish celebration as the cinematography switches from almost-matte sci-fi to Dogme 95 swirling hand-held camera documentary aesthetic; a deliberate throwback. At the reception are Justine’s sister Claire and her estranged parents Dexter and Gaby together with Claire’s rich husband John, a comfortable conformist who trusts the scientists reassuring an anxious world that, of course, Planet Melancholia will not collide with Earth. Justine’s boss at the advertising agency where she works is also present; he almost-orders her to finish her work detail. The job bleeding into the prescribed leisure time, the reminder that they own your arse even if off duty as if she’s in the army.

We get an inkling of concern when Justine and Claire’s mother Gaby pronounces in an impromtu toast "Enjoy it while it lasts. I myself hate marriages. Especially when they involve some of my closest family members.” The viewer realises, as in the Mexican Telenovela, The Rich Also Cry, that these people, with all the money they could possibly need, are not happy, not satisfied, not at ease. They are, effectively but undiagnosed, unhappy and mildly depressed. Justine is not mildly depressed. She is deep deep down. At first Justine is presented as ditzy, bubbly, a bit silly, a game girl up for the game, playing the game, then the realisation hits that she’s playing a role, acting, the bubbly bride a persona she’s adopted. She is so deeply depressed, so low, no joy, no expectation except that somehow this will all end. The wedding reception has been organised with the best of intentions by Claire and John, a strange empty pantomine with the intention of almost making, forcing, Justine to be happy. It doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t work.

In “Mourning and Melancholia” Freud described the state: “profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love.”

Justine’s gormless husband Michael leaves instead of supporting his new wife in the throes of a condition of which he seems to be oblivious.

Michael: This could have been a lot different.

Justine: Yes. But, Michael... what did you expect?

“We used very yellow lights for the wedding. The idea was to create an environment that was somehow too happy — happy to the point that it becomes disturbing. The yellowness of the lighting is too much; it starts to seem nauseating.

— Interview with Manuel Alberto Claro, Cinematographer for Melancholia.

The depressive, unless an extreme shut-in, goes through the expected motions, says the expected words, acts conventional/normal, utters the emotional responses required, whilst deep inside the totality is lack; a pain response and rejection of falsity, triviality, the social lies, the kindly lies, the “buck up, it’s not that bad, just think positive”.

Justine can’t do this but Melancholia can provide the sign pointing to the exit.

In discourse with her sister she insists: “the earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it. […] when I say we're alone, we're alone. Life is only on earth, and not for long.” Justine views her depression as objective rather than subjective and as such, an exterior force, as if everyone is naturally subject to the downer forces, as if hers is the rational response to the evil of existence and the correct response to the world, to the place in time and space wherein she unsteadily stands. As a depressive can Justine cope better in a crisis than regular folk because of the place she’s in, a zone of hopelessness, of stasis? Von Trier once said “my analyst told me that melancholiacs will usually be more level-headed than ordinary people in a disastrous situation, partly because they can say: ‘What did I tell you?’ But also because they have nothing to lose”

The second half of the film has Justine with Claire, John, and their small son Leo in the same chateau, reminicent of that strange film Last Year at Marienbad. Justine has arrived by taxi having finally split with Michael; she evinces a near-catatonic state and is now in deep depression. They are awaiting the arrival of Melancholia; John with his telescope and trust in science, Leo with his childhood fears assuaged with the promise of a magic protective tent, and, slowly, Claire and Justine’s roles reverse. Justine finds a sense of peace as Melancholia advances whilst Claire is increasingly subject to a terrible anxiety. John is excited and seeks to calm apprehensions using pure rationality as conveyed by the all-knowing experts: “Melancholia is just gonna pass right in front of us. And it's gonna be the most beautiful sight ever.”

Justine doesn’t have any greater insight into whether or not Melancholia will collide with earth anymore than the optimist John. She simply accepts the inevitability of destruction whether it be her own or the entire planet; oblivion will come for everyone and every place as entropy and decay, rust and moth, advance and knock on the door of time.

The Liebenstod strings swirl and whirl, the Western harmonic order strains and breaks as Wagner’s ‘Tristan’ chord chimes, worlds collide, the absent ghostly diva sings:

Are these billows

of delightful fragrances?

How they swell,

how they sough around me,

shall I breathe,

Shall I listen?

Shall I drink,

immerse?

Sweetly in fragrances

melt away?

In the billowing torrent,

in the resonating sound,

in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath —

drown,

be engulfed —

unconscious —

supreme delight!

The synopsis of Melancholia is slight; it doesn’t invite exploration and view. A mere metaphor. Two planets clashing and the destruction of one as the other glides further into the darkness of space where no north or south, no comforting signs or symbols born of human culture, exist. It’s just about how depression spreads and effects and the affect, right?

It’s a clunky metaphor but not untrue. Those who struggle under melancholia and her cousin depression cast a dark gloomy shadow over all; the immediate family, friends, work colleagues, brief encounters on the street. The shadow occudes all and the idea of sharing this sensibility is a comfort.”So I’m not out of kilter; everyone is down just like me”. Melancholia casts her shadow.

I’m reading - and rereading - the writings of Mark Fisher who departed this plane of existence in 2017 by his own hand after years of depression. Serious depression. I am subject to bouts of melancholia - rather than depression - and perhaps this is why the film resonates. As the world is changed before our astonished eyes and those who don’t intuit and feel the same discombobulation, the same sense of alarm, continue as if all is as it ever was and ever will be. I pick myself up and trudge to work everyday and wonder.

A simplistic metaphor for depression; if I am laid low so is everyone. The pathetic fallacy regarding mere weather. This is not about mere weather. Melancholia shows depression as an affect which spreads and strips the positive all around the depressive. I read it as subjective, a darker and deeper response than a parable or a metaphor.

‘I try to distinguish this kind of melancholia from standard depression, which is another important issue to me. Because you know, standard depression is fairly spread: it’s not very acknowledged, at least not as a political and cultural problem; instead, it’s treated as a chemical problem, or as the result of people’s family history. In other words, it’s highly privatized.

I think depression is manifesting itself in terms of low self-expectations. Depressive people don’t expect much from life. Things are getting worse and they are changing only to stay the same in a more intense form — and that’s what capitalism is. So you have this kind of sadness or depression that is basically a consequence of adjusting to such things.

But the melancholia I’m describing is a completely different thing. That’s why I’m opposing it to depression: it’s a much more conscious articulation, an aestheticized process. I would actually say that if depression is taken for a granted state, as a form of adjustment to what is now taken for reality, then melancholia is the refusal — or even the inability — to adjust to it. It’s holding on to an object that should officially be lost. So instead of saying, “Well, Public Service Broadcasting was like that, but now things have changed,” you simply refuse to accept the loss of the object.’

— Mark Fisher interviewed by V. Mannucci & V. Mattioli on my-blackout.co

The depressive experiences himself as walled off from the lifeworld, so that his own frozen inner life – or inner death – overwhelms everything; at the same time, he experiences himself as evacuated, totally denuded, a shell: there is nothing except the inside, but the inside is empty. For the depressive, the habits of the former lifeworld now seem to be, precisely, a mode of playacting, a series of pantomime gestures […], which they are both no longer capable of performing and which they no longer wish to perform – there’s no point, everything is a sham.”

― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures

Is Justine vindicated? She knew and she knows. Does her gnostic knowing finally make her happy?

And now, finally, the voice, absent from the film. It’s revealing that Melancholia uses the instrumental version. It fits to perfection because Justine has lost her voice, her true voice. Only the armature remains.

Jessye Norman sings the close of Wagner’s opera. [Please people, install an adblocker app as the accretions of consumerism spread strange damaging messages like margarine on Chorleywood bread process slices.]

Norman’s human presence is almost supernatural, superhuman. We see the raw soprano, the mouth and the tongue and the lips and the jaw articulating the words, word in motion, the emotion, the howl, the throat contracting, the lyrics flowing forth, the passion and the control. No animal could do this and, sometimes, in certain moments of the film, Justine seems like a caged animal, prodded and provoked.

Isolde almost melts away in the hot sun of her love for Tristan but Justine could not, cannot, do this. It would not be enough; for Justine; everything must burn, everything.

Jessye Norman, Wiener Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan performing "Mild und leise wie er lächelt" (Isoldes Liebestod)

Melancholia is related to Antichrist, a terrifying film on the same subject. Please be very careful with this one: