Melancholia

The Earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it.A movie about loneliness, anhedonia, the indifference of the universe, and the selfishness of people, but most of all, it doesn’t tone down depression to make it enjoyable. It’s a raw and deeply realistic depiction that doesn’t spare you from showing what actual depression feels like, what reaching that low point truly means—how ugly, disgusting, and just melancholic it is. I'm going to try to split this review into topics I think are important to talk about, and I did some research on them: the opening scene, depression and its side effects, the indifference of our universe, and accepting the fate it gives us. THE OPENING SCENE (had to go back and rewatch it) This movie also really digs deep into human nature (fucking love this movie; need to consume it). It has one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever watched and sets the tone of the movie's exploration of depression and the end of the world. It’s not here just for visuals; I think Lars made this feel so dreamlike and surreal as a way to symbolize that overwhelming feeling and the nature of depression itself and those inevitable collapses that come with it. I think the planet Melancholia represents—well, the name itself says it—that the planet crashing into ours is a symbol for the consuming nature that depression has on us. It "completely covers our world and rocks it to pieces," and once you're that depressed, in that low point, there is nothing you can do about it. Justine just walking in the woods in that dress represents the heavy feeling depression has. We see her stomping around and almost looking like she is being crushed by this force, and it becomes tangled in some roots, representing the expectations people put on her that are trapping her and pulling her to a deeper point. Then there is another scene of Justine just extending her arms while birds fall from the sky. I think the birds falling is representing the collapse of order in that planet that happens when someone gets depressed and the loss of hope and feelings. Her extending her arms while it falls is her accepting what has happened to her and knowing she can't do anything to stop it. Then there is Claire, who is a complete contrast to Justine, running God knows where, trying to escape the inevitable. This shows the contrast of acceptance and denial. DEPRESSION AND ITS SIDE EFFECTS This is also related to the opening, since a symptom of depression is this distorted feeling of time (derealization, I think)—when time is just slow and somehow nothing at all. Depression, again, wraps everything around you; it makes you lose your sense of reality and the sense of what you are and what others are. It rocks your life completely. Justine and Michael's relationship is just off. I don't know if it's because we are seeing this through Justine's perspective or Michael is just dumb, but he doesn’t seem to even understand just how bad Justine's situation is. It feels like they just knew each other. The first chapter, “Justine,” is the wedding reception where Justine is putting on this act to please everyone around her, and then her exits where we see how she is truly feeling. I noticed this in a review, but you can notice that during the wedding dance, the husband and wife barely dance together; it’s more Justine dancing around with everyone. It just feels off, since we are seeing this through Justine's perspective, at least in the first chapter, because Justine is the embodiment of depression in its most raw and pervasive form. From the beginning, we see her extremely struggling to find joy on what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life. But despite all that, she is still very off and kinda just unable to connect with the people around her (derealization) and even herself (depersonalization). In Justine, von Trier depicts depression as this parasitic and paralyzing force that slowly approaches you and covers you and gets bigger more and more and more until it ultimately consumes you. Earth symbolizes this consuming darkness. Justine's depression mirrors the inevitability and inescapability of the planet's approach, representing how depression feels like an unstoppable, destructive force that is always looming, where she ends up accepting this apocalypse with relief and peacefulness. But Claire, on the other hand, represents the effects that depression has on others who live with a person they love who is struggling with it—the anxiety and fear they have as it slowly ends up consuming them too. Unlike Justine, Claire is more hopeful and happy about this whole Melancholia thing, but as the planet approaches, her rational attempts to cope and find solutions reflect the natural human response to fight against overwhelming fear. But she ends up realizing the inevitability of this situation, and losing that sense of control makes her panic. In contrast to Justine’s calm acceptance, Claire’s descent into anxiety symbolizes how depression not only affects those who suffer from it directly but also those who care for them, revealing the limits of empathy and understanding. THE INDIFFERENCE OF OUR UNIVERSE AND ACCEPTING THE FATE This movie also really digs deep into human nature (fucking love this movie; need to consume it) and shows our universe how it truly is, instead of how some people think it is. It’s uncaring about us; we are meaningless to it. It’s vast and indifferent to us because we are nothing but smaller than atoms, and no matter how hard we try, we can't affect it, which scares us. Our existence not being worth something—neither bad nor good—is terrifying to the human species. Melancholia (the planet) embodies this as it slowly approaches us, and the characters' responses to this reflect different ways of grappling with an indifferent universe and accepting the fate it delivers. Justine is depressed, so she is the character that is more accepting of what's going to happen. She is the embodiment of a view of the world that recognizes the almost stupid "meh" of our existence towards the universe. She is aware of our insignificance; she believes that human existence isn’t meaningful and that the end of the world is not something to be feared but rather a natural consequence in the body of the universe. Our own universe mirrors us. We have seen plenty of similarities between the human brain and galaxies, so imagine if we lost an atom—we wouldn’t notice, we wouldn’t even care, or it wouldn’t affect us. It’s indifferent, and to the universe, we are that atom. So losing us is like us suddenly losing an atom in our body; it’s indifferent. And if you actually read that and thought that's bullshit and we have a meaning in this world and are in control, then you’re Claire. She spends much of the film trying to manage her fear of the approaching disaster, desperately hoping that things will be different. She does these attempts to protect herself and her family and find comfort in routine and logic, revealing a resistance to the universe's indifference. But as Melancholia gets closer and closer, the reality of the situation crashes into her, making her anxious and panic. Her breakdown in the face of the planet’s imminent collision demonstrates the human difficulty in accepting a fate that is beyond our control, especially when it is one of total annihilation—like we weren't even there.