Melancholia – A Cheerful Film About Depression
This post is nothing to do with Georgia, but is written as a distraction from editing our new translation of The Counting Out Game by Tamta Melashvili ...
Lars von Trier’s new film reminds me of Gwyneth Lewis’ Sunbathing in the Rain – A Cheerful Book About Depression. The use of the word ‘melancholia’ to denote depression dates back to the 4th century and the first modern account comes from Robert Burton’s 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, which looks at the subject both as a medical and cultural phenomenon. The film Melancholia is a similarly brilliant study of depression, the epidemic of our times, and is both emotionally challenging and exasperating – just as being with a depressive person is – and yet, perhaps perversely, when the blue planet, called Melancholia, finally crashes into the earth, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing and felt immensely cheered up by the end of the world.
Lars von Trier is a self-confessed melancholic and has suffered severe depression, even having to cut short a casting session when he couldn’t stop crying. The tears of Justine in the film are beautifully observed. And yet, he continues to make absurd, challenging and, in this case, beautiful and funny, films about profound personal pain. Here there’s an echo of Robert Burton’s seventeenth century take on the condition where his persona Democritus Junior explains, ‘I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy.’ I suspect Lars von Trier is similar.
For me, the best films about depression have humour, and not necessarily black. As well as the ultimately bleak One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, other funny films about depression are the more nuanced American Beauty, About Schmidt and A Serious Man. Melancholia is less conventional in style, plot and structure and as well as finding the humour in its subject matter, it is also a film that focuses on beauty and eternity. Melancholy in ancient Greece was attributed to a preponderance of black bile, one of the four ‘humours’ responsible for personality. In Melancholia, the only character to manifest bile, is Justine’s mother, the profoundly bitter Gaby. She is dressed drably and is out of kilter with the lush beauty of the rest of the film.
The two sisters, whose names are the titles of the two main sections, are like the sun and moon of melancholy, both beautiful, one blonde, one dark. One behaves badly, refusing to conform with social norms at her own wedding, unwilling to have sex with her husband, but seducing a young man on the golf course, but finding herself calm and at ease once she is taken in by her sister’s family, away from any social pressue. Like sun and moon, Claire’s and Justine’s trajectories are complementary. Claire is ‘good’, dutifully married, a caring mother, wanting everything to go right and to make her sister ‘happy’, a word used several times. But as things unravel, both socially and globally, Claire’s realisation that she can’t control the world, leaves her anxious and terrified.
These two women are portrayed against a background of serene beauty which gradually becomes less and less populated – we see the wedding guests leaving in a series of different states – the insulted boss, the philandering father, the puzzled husband – in part one. In part two, first the butler fails to turn up for work, then John, with his reassurance of that the end of the world is not nigh, dies, leaving Justine and Claire alone with Leo, the young boy. The castle is timeless, seeming sometimes to have the anonymity of a hotel, ambiguously situated – America, Scandinavia – an unreal place. Its golf course seems to stand for the futility of human existence and culture and the grounds through which the women ride their beautiful horses, shot from above, seem to go on forever. Getting in and out is difficult, from the stuck limousine, also shot from above, at the beginning, to the flat battery of the golf cart at the end when Claire tries to leave. The horses won’t cross a certain bridge, whether it’s over the Lethe or some other divide, is unclear.
These two women are portrayed against a background of serene beauty which gradually becomes less and less populated – we see the wedding guests leaving in a series of different states – the insulted boss, the philandering father, the puzzled husband – in part one. In part two, first the butler fails to turn up for work, then John, with his reassurance of that the end of the world is not nigh, dies, leaving Justine and Claire alone with Leo, the young boy. The castle is timeless, seeming sometimes to have the anonymity of a hotel, ambiguously situated – America, Scandinavia – an unreal place. Its golf course seems to stand for the futility of human existence and culture and the grounds through which the women ride their beautiful horses, shot from above, seem to go on forever. Getting in and out is difficult, from the stuck limousine, also shot from above, at the beginning, to the flat battery of the golf cart at the end when Claire tries to leave. The horses won’t cross a certain bridge, whether it’s over the Lethe or some other divide, is unclear.
The references to beauty are made explicit in the tableaux at the beginning and the way in which the women arrange art books in the living room. There are echoes of the erotic potential of death in the scene of Justine bathing naked in the blue light of melancholia that made me think of Anne Sexton’s poems – in contrast to the more prosaic hoarding of suicide pills by Justine….
And so much more – the men in the film disappear, all of them become inadequate in different ways … there seems to be a subtext of how we react to climate change in the way the characters react to the impending disaster … the conscious referencing of famous paintings, famous films, the use of Wagner’s music, the echoes of literary references … the moral questions … the role of the domestic rounds of food and bed time … wealth and poverty … temporal and eternal priorities …
So ultimately, it’s a serious and beautiful film, but still, thinking about that blue planet crashing into the wigwam at hole number 19 on the golf course, makes me laugh.
Victoria Field 28th October 2011
