melancholia fq

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Comedy of Abandon: Lars von Trier's MelancholiaAuthor(s): Marta FiglerowiczReviewed work(s):Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Summer 2012), pp. 21-26Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/FQ.2012.65.4.21 .Accessed: 20/07/2012 06:47

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FILm QuArTerLY 2

1

As Melancholia starts we hear the overture to Wagners Tristan

and Isolde. A huge close-up o Justines (Kirsten Dunst) ace

appears onscreen. She opens her eyes. Dead birds all rom

the sky behind her. These tableaux start to change once every

ew measures. Justine is held down by cords o abric; a horse

alls in a dark empty eld; Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

clutches her son Leo (Cameron Spurr) out on a gol course.

They are all in extremely slow motion and it takes a while

to notice they are moving at all. Finally a blue planet rolls

toward Earth. In perect pace with Wagners crescendo, the

two spheres collide.

The last time Lars von Trier stunned us with music, his

score heightened intense, grueling pain. This is not the last

song, / Its the next to last song, sings Selma Jezkova (Bjrk)

in Dancer in the Dark (2000) until her voice is choked

by the hangmans noose. Von Trier makes it seem that

nothing matters so much as this single humans suering.

Each detailrom her guards crumpled ace to the glasses

Selma clutchesrefects back reasons why her eelingsare supremely dicult to bear. The sheer length o her

vigil, paced by screams, aints, and ocial telephone calls,

is laden with tragedy. To Melancholias tableaux theres a

similar grandeur. The opening tableaux could not be more

shameless about their beauty, or about the scale o their

subject matter. A great sadness is upon usa great planeta

great cinematic event. But this Wagnerian opening lacks

Dancer in the Darks intense tragic concentration. Indeed, its

poised to make us eel comically disoriented, unsure about

its center o emotional weight. You cant bring into ocus

two dimensions o the opening: its speed as well as its scale.Every shot in turn is caressing and languorous, but we pass

between them with the near-fippant briskness o a plot blurb.

Planetary, human, and tinier-than-human dramas, tableaux

and musical phrases, are rhymed so detly and insistently that

their collective melancholycould they all be so splendidly

sad at the same time?seems almost (i never just) a joke.

Is there a deeper meaning? chuckles von Trier in his

commentary. Probably, somewhere. Theres truth both to

the hint and to the chuckle. Compared with his past grisly

creations, Melancholia is a rite o spring. This is the closest hehas come to comedy; to what is at once a comedy o manners

and a comedy o abandon. Von Trier has been amous or

making us see more than we want to see, or longer than we

should endure, with more gravity than we might be used

to giving sad eelings. Melancholias strangely enthralling

mismatches o emotional scale and duration celebrate these

melancholy excesses, but also lit the standards by which such

eelings might be given philosophical, personal, or aesthetic

weight. Depression has its pageants, it turns out: and this is

one. This pageant wont teach you anything serious, properly

speaking. But what it shows about seriousness and proportion

as such is enough to make Melancholia a radical questioning

o how we try to make ourselves believe our eelings matter.

2

We spend the rst hour o the lm at a wedding. Justine is

getting married to Michael (Alexander Skarsgrd). Her sis-

ter Claire and Claires husband John (Kieer Sutherland)

are hosting and paying the expenses. When the party begins,

Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp 2126, IssN 0015-1386, lconic, IssN 1533-8630. 2012 by h rgn o h univiy o Clioni.all igh vd. Pl dic ll q o pmiion o phoocopy o podc icl conn hogh h univiy o Clioni Prigh nd Pmiion wbi, hp://www.cpjonl.com/pinino.p. DOI: 10.1525/Q.2012.65.4.21

Comedy of AbAndon:

LArs von Triers Melancholia

MARTA FiGLEROWiCz aNaLYZes aN O-tHe-sCaLe, CarNIVaLesQue aPOCaLYPse

Melancholic excessDancer in the Dark. 2000 Zntopa enttainnt 4 Ap, Fanc 3

Cina, At Fanc Cina, Tt Fil svnka, Libato Podction &Pain unliitd. DVD: Fil 4 (u.K.).
http://www.jstor.org/action/showImage?doi=10.1525/FQ.2012.65.4.21&iName=master.img-000.jpg&w=305&h=129


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22 summer 2012

Justine is radiant. And then a screw comes loose. Im trudging

through this grey woolly yarn, she tells Claire, and its cling-

ing to my legs. Its really heavy to drag along. Claire winces:Justines paralyzing sadness has returned. In Dancer in the

Dark, Manderlay (2005), and Dogville (2003) depression and

its sibling resentments wreak murder and rapine. InAntichrist

(2009) they make Gainsbourgs character cut o her clitoris.

Vinterbergs Festen (1998), which Melancholias wedding also

nods to,studies incest. Justine does cheat on her spouse with

a stranger she ells and straddles in a gol course. But thats as

much o von Triers trademark interpersonal violence as well

be getting.And even this small thrust is quickly blunted asJustines Bottom-like victim proves charmed by his adventure.

(We had good sex!) Instead, Justine pays her tempers costsin bourgeois luxury goods. As her depression spirals she loses

a dream husband and an executive job, and makes her rela-

tives very impatient. These losses are sustained at a reception

that involves several indoor and outdoor meals, limos, re bal-

loons, and high-ceilinged ballrooms; amid Bruegel and Goya

reproductions, to the recurrent sound o the Tristan chord.

None o von Triers prior characters ever had such a lush, pro-

tective setting in which to stage their suerings. None o his

MarriageMelancholia. 2011 Zntopa enttainnt27 Aps, mf Fil Intnational AB, Zntopa Intnational swdn AB, slot machin sArL, Libato Podction sArL, A t

Fanc Cina, Zntopa Intnational Kln GbH. DVD: magnolia Ho enttainnt.
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4/7

FILm QuArTerLY 2

ormer unhappy lovers were ever given such a weighty cul-

tural backdrop, a backdrop that seems to make them the voice

o melancholy high-income generations.

Yet even as Justine bucks under her guests expectations,

the lm as suchdoesnt dutiully carry this cultural weight.Soon youre not sure which is more spectacularly unny and

pitiable, the characters or their majestic decors. The greaterthe gits Justine receivesher starry-eyed groom at one point

gives her an apple orchardthe more sel-indulgent she seems

in morosely rejecting them. The more operatically characters

express rustration at Justines inappropriateness, the more

wanton a gure each o the brides detractors cuts against their

always grander setting. (She ruined my weddingI will not

look at her, repeats the French wedding planner played by

Udo Kier and covers his eyes whenever Justine passes.) On the

other hand, these paltry gures also pull their oversized social

structures down along with them. I Bruegels Hunters in the

Snow and Wagners Tristan are such good outlines or their

petty quarrels, maybe this partys insignicance is merely the

insignicance o the cultural models it tries to ollow.

A lm bent on existentialism or social commentary

would trace these breakdowns o scale back to some

individual or communal point o origin: it would make

Justines disproportionate sadness symptomatic o her

personal alienation, or her bourgeois amilys decay.

Melancholia never lets itsel get so serious. Instead it stages

an escalating, ever more spectacular trompe loeil. Larger and

smaller time rames and cultural rames keep overlapping

and blending into each other. Each moment o pathos gets

a comic lining, and each comic moment is made vulnerablysad.In the end, the weddings large and small collapses seemto celebrate not any serious sense o tragic seriousness but the

hal-discomting, hal-enthralling dizziness o realizing that

your sense or these proprieties has ailed amid the partys

many incredible melancholies and resentments, that youre

enjoying yoursel or nding yoursel moved despite this loss

o purpose or proportion.Melancholia prevents these larger tensions among its

plot, setting, and soundtrack rom resolving in great part

through its montage. As in the overture, von Trier plays with

our sense o the weddings implied real time. Each eventseems to take at once a very long and a very short time; to

require at once less and more emotional eort than youd

think at rst. Ater the opening sequence, we zoom down to

Justine and Michaels limo struggling along a country dirt

road. The mood is cheerully zany: Michael and Justine kiss,

misuse pedals, and dent the car a little, as they help their

driver along a particularly hard turn. Finally they get to

Claire and Michaels house on oot. The sequence takes ve

minutes. But it turns out the couple have kept their guests

waiting or over two hours. Claire lashes out. I wont even

bother saying how late you are. The gravity or inconsequence

o Justine and Michaels trespass could only be measured by

their guests wait, but that wait is obscured. Rather than give

you grounds or anger or rustration, von Trier lets you take

in these negative eelings without a timescale that couldjustiy or dispel them. Hes not making light o the eelings

themselves, not exactly, but o the standards o seriousness by

which we might want to test their weight.These temporal undulations persist and augment.

Whenever Justine wanders away rom the reception, von

Trier cuts back and orth between her and her guests in a

way that blurs how long her walks are taking, how quickly

the others impatience escalates, and how much o the

wedding everyone still needs to bear through. And when

Justine rejoins them, his cuts at once prolong and rush the

partys rhythm. In a striking short sequence a quarter into

Melancholia, the wedding band starts playing La Bamba.

Michael dips Justine. Everyone cheers; its the newlyweds

rst dance. But Michael and Justine dont go on dancing.

Ater the two opening measures, he passes Justine to her

boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgrd). Ater another two shes twirled

around by John. Another turn and she bends down to her

nephew Leo, oering to put him to bed. With each such

change o partner, the camera cuts to a new angle. It hurries

around joltingly as i Justines vigor were hard to keep pace

with. But the song only skips a beat once, gently, right beore

Leo appears. Between the jagged montage and the near-

seamless soundtrack, it eels at once that were watchingthe party as it happens and that its been schmaltzily cut

and sound-edited, as in a wedding-day home video. Its as

i Justine has barely danced one number, but also as i she

has already done three. I we knew how long this dance has

taken we could praise or admonish her as kind or conormist,

rebellious or slack, depending on whether we preer our

sulks to be long or short. Without this knowledge her eort

seems at once weighty and weightless. We also have to smile

at our notions o emotional stamina; they seem so arbitrary

now that von Trier has prevented us rom unselconsciously

applying them.The objects von Triers characters handle and consume

blankets, fowers, pieces o paper, cakes, balloons, puy

dressesmirror these problems o proportion and duration.

They wilt, defate, crease, catch on re, all apart while being

eaten. In the process, they dramatically lose appeal. These

tiny collapses echo Justines grander meltdownand the way

that, as we already know, Earth and Melancholia will soon

old into each other. In the course o the wedding not much


5/7

24 summer 2012

is made o this sel-consciously silly triple rhyme between the

cosmic, the human, and the ornamental. But Melancholias

next hour will devote most o its energies to exploring such

imbalances o not just duration and social pitch, but sheer

physical scale.

3

As Melancholias second section starts were still at Claire and

Johns grand mansion. Justine has come to stay with them:

shes nally accepted her unruly eelings need her sisters

care. Even beore Justine gets there, emotional proportionisall the characters talk about: John and Claire constantly quar-

rel over whether John should take Claires anxieties seriously.

When Justine arrives these emotional sel-scrutinies

increase. Shes a bad infuence on you, John tells his wie.

Around John, Claires anxieties get undercut. When shes

with Justine, they are blown up and bored into beyond any

proportion her husband would allow. But von Trier keeps

upsetting our sense o the greatness or fimsiness o what the

sisters dramas could explain or be responding to. Sometimes

he gives us spectacular interpersonal events without any clear

outward causes or eects. In an early scene, Claire tries to

show Justine how nice and warm the water is in the bathtub.

Youll like it, Justine! Claire holds her sister up rom

behind, palms arched away rom Justines breasts so sharply

that her tendons stand out. The embrace looks determinedly

platonic. Later, at night, Claire sees Justine wander o into

the orest. She ollows and hides behind a tree. Justine

spreads hersel out on a riverbank entirely naked. She basks

in Melancholias glow, masturbating. Justine touches withher palms the very parts o her body over which weve just

seen Claires hands hover. Touch, warmth, nakedness, and

water, are combined again, but this time the context is

sexual. Claires mouth alls open; her eyes widen. The lm

then cuts to Claire leaning back on a lawn chair the next

morning, visibly tired. For all we know, this could have been

Claires nightmare. Except Justine is also the only person

in the lm who would spin out her helpless nakedness so

perversely. This might be one sisters dream, the other sisters

budding psychosis, or a dramatic mutual recognition o the

two siblings shared incestuous longings. The sequencesthrill and appeal hinge on how persistently it reuses to either

save itsel rom triviality or to plunge headlong into it. What

weve seen might just as well be a major emotional discovery

as an imaginary nonevent; and theres something grandly,

blatantly comic about how hard it is to tell the dierence by

merely looking at Claires and Justines aces.

The sisters eelings reach an even higher pitch when

it becomes clear that Melancholia is going to not merely

circle Earth, but crash into it. Justines cynicism and Claires

anxiety keep stoking each other. Von Trier describes them as

constantly changing parts, alternately becoming the lms

emotional center. Justine tells Claire that the universe is

evil, that there is no lie beyond Earth, and that Claires

notions o celebrating their last minutes with wine and

music are a piece o shit. Claire protests eebly, thencries and hyperventilates. No other character takes Justines

negativity as seriously as Claire. And no one but Justine lets

Claire all so ar into her visions o deaths and catastrophes.

But the crueler Justine becomes, the deeper Claire alls into

hysterics, the more von Triers pans play up the nouveau-

riche perection o Claire and Johns lawns and porches, to

which Johns shiny scientic equipment and the bright blue

planet seem, or the time being, similarly kitsch additions.

The power o this sequence comes, again, rom the way its

lack o immediate outward counterbalance gives Claire and

Justines dialogues at once more and less weight than youd

expect such an apocalyptic set o exchanges would muster;

rom the way it makes their plight seem as vertiginously silly

as it is sad.

As objects start to appear against which the characters

eelings could potentially be gauged, Melancholia tampers

with their scalethe way it did in the overture, and also in

its rhymes between the weddings collapsing persons and

pastries. Sometimes, a single thing grows larger or smaller.

At other times, von Trier creates visual parallels between

dierent human or cosmic scales. These shits o scale are at

rst underhanded.Beore it is clear Melancholia will destroythem, Claire and her amily attend to many small roundobjects that diminutively announce its qualities. Johns patio

is decorated with stone globes, and his windows have ringed

iron railings. Leo rolls small balls at each other and makes a

metal loop with which to measure the waxing planet. Claire

picks blueberries and gets a bottle o pills. While she and

Justine are in the garden, fower petals rain down on them.

Taken together, these little spheres and circles seem to sum

up all you will need to know about the fy-by: its hard, its

blue, its looping back, its alling toward you, and its deadly.

Surely, you think at rst, these parallels cant be intentional:

they take away so casually the seriousness o these charactersimpending doom.

While the fy-by recedes, and then starts getting

bigger, earthly objects appear to change size, too. Human

aces emerge rom shadows in large close-ups that mimic

Melancholias rise on the horizon.And then these samecharacters are shot rom a distance, perched on a tall stone

ence, so that they look like children or toy gurines. The

amily alternates between watching the fy-by through Johns


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FILm QuArTerLY 2

Melancholia. 2011 Zntopa enttainnt27 Aps, mf Fil Intnational AB, Zntopa Intnational swdn AB, slot machin sArL, Libato Podction sArL, AtFanc Cina, Zntopa Intnational Kln GbH. DVD: magnolia Ho enttainnt.

ObSCure ObJeCTS AND DeSire
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7/7

26 summer 2012

ancy telescope and Leos loopapparently with equal trust

in both. As Claire tries to drive over to the village or help,

she keeps getting into ever smaller vehicles. She goes rom a

huge SUV in which she completely disappears to a rickety

gol cart that can hardly hold both her and her son.These sequences also deepen the rst sections breach

between the communal and the individual, betweenmomentary sensations and long-term disasters. The scales

we now have to balance are now cosmically, spectacularly ar

apart. Theres this girl that has a depression, says von Trier

in his commentary. At the same time, strangely enough, he

smirks, theres this planet approaching. Writ just as large

are parallels between the catastrophic union o these two

planets and the disastrous wedding we were just witnesses to;

between the end o lie on Earth and Justines deathbound

moods. Justine tells Claire she knows the universe is evil

because she knew how many beans there were in a bean

lottery jar: I know things, Claire. Claire, Justine, and Leo

are trapped in the house because their cars will not run, but

theyre also trapped on Earth as such because Melancholia

will destroy it. Claires chest keeps heaving, but its not clear

whether this is because Melancholia is pulling away the

Earths atmosphere, or mostly because shes having a panic

attack: no one else has such severe breathing problems. Soon

ater John commits suicide by drug overdose, Claire and Leo

get stranded in their gol course as little pill-like grains o

hail all down on them in an enactment and a mockery o

his death. The more you notice how comic these parallels

are, the more amazing it seems that so much comedy

could come o such variously morose material. Their veryshamelessness carries with it a sort o majesty.

4

In the ending, these smaller thrills use into a grand dis-

sonant catharsis. Von Trier calls this the happiest ending

hes ever made. His prior ones work toward a similar dou-

ble sense o excess emotional distance and closeness. But

they do so by violently, alienatingly pushing their emo-

tional gravity to the limitas when Selma is hung mid-song

in Dancer in the Dark, or when Grace (played by Nicole

Kidman, then by Bryce Dallas Howard) slaughters terriedvillagers in Dogville and fogs her black lover in Manderlay.

Melancholias nale, by contrast, seems teasingly uncon-

cerned with our sense o proportion. Great things happen:

Justine perks up, the sisters reconcile, and Earth shatters.

Faced with so many breakthroughs, you dont know whether

you should laugh or cryand the buildup is such that its

hard to keep yoursel rom either. As the last shots start

Claire, Justine, and Leo huddle together inside a skeletal

tent made out o sticks. Justines persuaded Leo itll shelter

them, so he stays calm. Weeping, Claire grateully clutches

Justines hand. You see each person in large close-up. And

then you zoom away until theyre antlike silhouettes against

the brightening sky. The Tristan chord booms again, dwar-

ing the characters emotional exchanges but now itsel

comically dwared by the cosmic body wiping out humanculture altogether. As Melancholia takes over the entire hori-

zon, its size is overwhelming. But cast behind the stick tent

and the orest it also looks gorgeous, with the slight overkill

o a psychedelic back-to-nature poster. And there is some-

thing ridiculous about the notion that you would need such

a big planet to kill three persons in a stick hut; or, conversely,

that Claires amily could stand in or the entire biosphere

dying with them. These disjunctures are more precarious,

and more readily risk being misread, than von Triers prior

spells o grueling gravity. Yet their comic precariousness also

drives home more powerully than those hangings, shoot-

ings, and scourgings, both how helplessly ungroundable

his characters eelings are and how helpless they are beore

these eelings grand urgency.

Melancholia is not, strictly speaking, philosophical. Still

less is it weightlessly aesthetic or sel-absorbed. Its power

comes instead rom placing you on the threshold o all

these orms o seriousness. Von Trier makes you eel at once

conned and liberated, conused and tippled, by not letting

you cross into these realms. This is not to call Melancholia

tentative. Rather, it is to say that Melancholia recasts what,

in prior von Trier lms, were overwhelmingly universal

questions, as questions that might only be raised by a passingmood or eeling. Maybe theres nothing particularly serious

about our sadnesses. Maybe theyre not as weighty as we

might think: or society, or art, or even or ourselves. This

comic kind o sel-scrutiny marks a break with von Triers

past works. But as a way o commenting both on them, and

on our sense o emotional propriety in general, it gives his

visions a renement thats as new and impressive as anything

in recent cinema.

Marta IGLerOWICZ i gd dn in englih h univiy o Clioni, Bkly.aBstraCt: th pic viw L von ti Melancholia(2011). thi flm mk bkwih von ti pio wok. rh hn ph i plo o h limi o moionl inniy ndgviy, Melancholiadi nd comiclly qion o n o ling popoion ndcl.

KeYWOrDs: Melancholia, L von ti, comdy, moionl popoion, moionl cl.

DVD Data Melancholia. Dico: L von ti. 2011 Znop eninmn27 aps,Mmf ilm Innionl aB, Znop Innionl swdn aB, slo Mchin sarL, Lib-o Podcion sarL, a nc Cinm, Znop Innionl Kln GmbH. Pblih-: Mgnoli Hom eninmn. $26.98, 1 dic.

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