fruitpunchmouth:
Watching Melancholia made me feel really comfortable about my fixation on the end of days.
SPOILERS BELOW
Reading reviews, i feel like this film has been misunderstood by many critics. It’s not sci-fi, so it shouldn’t be analyzed as such. Melancholia starts off as a film about a woman…
Ooo- so glad you mentioned something about this movie! I saw it in the theatre when I was deathly ill and almost vomited a few times while watching it. I usually hate shaky camera action because I think it’s cheap, but needless to say, I ESPECIALLY hated it here. Anyway…
In the movie’s defense, I think the reason why Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character didn’t do internet research until the last possible moment is because she was in denial about the fact that there was absolutely nothing she could do to make things better- deep down she knew everything was fucked. Why nobody else talked about Melancholia, well… maybe it was some sort of commentary on how everybody is so involved in the little stupid details of life that they tend to miss the bigger (planetary?) picture, completely blind to what life is all about (whatever that may be). I think there were a lot of philosophical questions brought up in this subtle way throughout the film that I didn’t pick up on until later on… you brought up one:
“If the entire earth was destroyed, our entire existence would be rendered meaningless.”
Kirsten Dunst’s character says, “The earth is evil,” but yeah, who’s to say if there’s nobody left? If there’s no life on other planets, like she says, is she saying that life is evil or a mistake, just a blip? but a mistake by who? God? It’s pretty fantastic how religion wasn’t even brought up. and it’s funny how Dunst’s character is saying all this when she does so many “evil” things in the film… but then again, what in the hell IS evil with nobody to judge it? Another thing I found really interesting was the fact that there was no outside world, it was only implied… if you’ve ever seen a Bergman film, it was very much like one of his- using the technique of solely filming within a segregated community to focus on the relationships and real inner workings of the characters’ souls. I think the fact that Dunst’s character was getting married was kind of confusing (why did she go along with it?) but it makes sense as a filmmaker’s device to create that community apart from the rest of the world- the ideal forum for bringing up those major philosophical issues.
This is totally a movie I didn’t know how to feel about at first, but I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot in the time since I’ve seen it, and thinking about my own life in terms of the questions it’s made me ask of it.
