Director / Writer : Lars Von Trier
Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Shuterland

I’ve been waiting too long to write this note about Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. When I first saw it, I remember I really, really, really liked it without knowing why, yet. I had as mixed feelings as Melancholia’s reception in Cannes that year. Lars Von Trier made it even worse by making a scandal, –ended up being kicked out from the festival–, which had grown bigger than the movie itself. So I waited. I thought, maybe I will change my mind after a few days, or months, or even years.

Many refer to Melancholia as an absurd film. Some refers to it as a feminist film. Some think it’s the worst film Lars Von Trier ever made. Of course, everyone has the right to criticize. Obviously, for me, Melancholia is far from absurd. Whether or not Melancholia is a feminist film, I will let others judge since I am not really interested in that angle. At some point I agree with some writers, specially the one who making reference to Shakespeare’s Ophelia. But I have little objections since some of them are simplifying and reducing the complex relationships between each characters into just ”a depression and the complex relationship between a mentally ill woman and her sister’. So I think it’s time for me to write mine.

Ophelia falls in love with Hamlet but in the same time struggles to please her father and her brother.  She lives for their consent. When Hamlet repulses her for her total submission, Ophelia is torn apart and loses herself.  Being in a great sorrow,  she dresses herself with heavy-elegant-gown and drowns herself in a river full of flowers. This scene inspired John Everett Millais to paint ‘Ophelia’ and then Lars Von Trier implicitly picked up the idea for the official poster of Melancholia.

Von Trier’s contemporary Ophelia is Justine. But if we really insist on finding similarities between Justine and Ophelia it would be anything except broken-heartedness. Melancholia suggests that Justine suffers from depression but nobody is trying to understand why. Not even her loving sister, Claire, who accepts Justine’s mental instability as something that has deep roots, and who thinks her duty is to take care of her.

As suspected, the only moment where we could see the true Justine, who likes to have fun as an easy-going girl, is in the beginning scene of Justine in Melancholia. Justine and  her husband, Michael drive with a limousine towards the castle where their guests have been waiting for two hours to celebrate their marriage. The limousine is stuck in a curve of a small road and Justine –in her wedding dress– obviously enjoys the scene and is trying to drive the car under the limousine’s driver and Michael’s worried gaze. Justine seems at ease and laughs freely. Until they arrive in the castle and Justine’s happy face is gradually taking darker accents.

The Wedding Party as an Empty Ritual
Von Trier chooses a wedding party not just as a background and a passive character to reveal the cause of Justine’s melancholia but elusively criticizes the wedding ceremony itself.  The wedding party is perfectly prepared by Claire and her scientific and wealthy husband, John. They hired the most expensive  wedding planner, to organize an unforgettable and spectacular wedding for Justine. They asked the best chef to prepare the meals. They invited families, friends, colleagues, and vip to make as merriest marriage as possible. But is that what Justine really wants?

In many cultures, a wedding party is not out of personal aspiration but mostly out of social pressure. The groom and the bride are just a pair of puppets to be put in the best decorated stage, among an unknown crowds,  dressed like dolls. The newly couple sometimes have to resign to what people expect them to be. There are very few wedding exactly true to what the couple wants. Our cultural prescriptions oblige the newly wed couple to play their best performance. The wedding become an empty ritual where the groom and the bride  sometimes have to perform a false image to please others. Some survive till the party is over, but some don’t. ‘I smile, and I smile, and I smile,” says Justine bitterly.

As a bride in her own wedding party, she’s supposed to have everything that she wants. But she can’t even have the simplest quest she could ask for: talking heart to heart with her father and her mother.  When she is desperately needing attention from her parents, who left the party earlier, she also has to bear the heavy burden that is impossible to fulfil, “You better be goddamn happy,” said John. How could she be happy while struggling with countless pressure from her family and her peers?  And people are wondering why she is depressed.

Betty Friedan once wrote about “the problem with no name” : she pointed out that many women were miserable but couldn’t articulate the source of that misery. They know that something is very wrong, but they tend to look for the source within themselves. Justine may have another problem which causes her melancholy. But by what happened in her wedding party, one could imagine, if she has to deal with this peer pressure everyday, we can sense that it is enough to make her life miserable.

Her divorced parents were arguing and fighting in front of the guest. Her mother, Gaby, criticized Justine’s decision to wed. Her father, Dexter, was busy with his younger lovers —yes, lovers, he has two lovers. Her brother-in-law keeps on reminding her about the cost of the wedding. Her boss –and also her father-in-law– is driving her crazy by keeping on asking for a ‘tag-line’ for their new campaign in advertisement.  And her husband, is just as ignorant as anybody else about her mental state. ‘I am trudging in through this…It’s clinging to my legs. It’s really heavy to drag along,’ confesses Justine to Claire.

By all means, Justine is an independent girl. She is a brilliant advertising executive. She has a bright future. Why she even bothers to get married to the man that she is not in love with? Her confession implies that it’s not the wedding that she needs. She thought, by being married, that everybody around her would be happy.  At least in her wedding party. This indication shows how strong social pressure can affect one’s life. She is trying to reach an ideal. It makes me think of Alain Ehrenberg’s  The Fatigue of Being Oneself -Depression and Society. In short, Ehrenberg’s pointed out that today’s society puts a great pressure to be the author of one’s own life while plugging the rules about what is ideal. If one can not make it, then it’s their own fault. Hence, it is become the source of depressions.

The Characters
Over and above criticizing the excesses of our society spent on the wedding party, Lars Von Trier is putting the mirror in front of our high class community today. The characters in Melancholia are carefully chosen. Justine –played by Kristen Dunst, thank God not by Penelope Cruz– is the typical woman who still puts her society above everything else. She is outraged by the abandonment of her divorced parent, but still, she is trying to be a conformist, to follow an ideal social convention, that is, growing up, having a career, getting married, having kids, and all the rest. She just doesn’t want to accept the fact that she is different, and that she is just not fit. That’s slowly becoming an impossible compromise.

On the other hand,  Justine’s sister, Claire –perfectly played by Charlotte Gainsbourg– is the ideal product of our society.  She is married to a wealthy scientist, has a little boy, and acts as a provider of care to her family, sister and her parents. Unlike Justine, she was not shattered by her parent’s divorce.   Instead, she has been growing fine among all the pressures while still holding on her sanity. But, living with all her ideals, Claire is easily worried and very fragile to threaten. She has too much to lose.

The divorced parents, Gaby (Charlotte Rampling) and Dexter (John Hurt) are a typical couple who couldn’t survive from the marriage turbulence from the previous generation. They don’t have energy left to give to their children. When Justine asked them to stay so they could have breakfast the next day, Dexter left with an apology note, and Gaby thought that was the most silly idea.

In the party, also present is Jack (Stellan Skarsgård), the father of Michael (Justine’s husband); Jack is a despicable, power-hungry man. He wants his employees toiled to their last sweat (could it be refer to Von Trier’s producers who keep on asking him to finish his movie while he was in a deep depression?). Justine knows about this. “I hate you and your firm so deeply,” said Justine to Jack when he keeps on talking about her finding a tagline for a new campaign.  It’s no coincidence that the new campaign in advertisement that needs ‘tagline’ is based on a painting The Land of Cockaigne by Pieter Bruegel, a sharp critique to spiritual emptiness believed to derive from gluttony and sloth.

Meanwhile Michael (Alexander Skarsgård)  is a typical rich-spoiled kid who wants to buy Justine’s heart with wealth. And there is Tim (Brady Corbet), a new employee in advertisement firm where Justine works. Tim is an opportunist who will lick everybody’s ass in order to get accepted. And then there is John (Kiefer Sutherland) , a typical wealthy man who always counts his money to the last digit. He is also a scientist who is super confident to the arithmetic calculations.

John is trying to convince Claire : ‘Sweetheart, you have to trust a scientist. Melancholy is just gonna pass right in front of us,”
“What if your scientist have miscalculated and…”, protest Claire.
“They haven’t”.

But, when we realize that it is miscalculated, we can guess who’s the first  to disappear like a coward.

Planet Melancholia
The title Melancholia is a smart choice. Melancholia is one of the four basic temperament in human personality and behaviour. Melancholia in a common sense is a sad thoughtful state of mind and considered as a light depression. The strange feeling that is hardly define. But in psychiatric terms, melancholia describes a severe depression. Depression it self has it long history since forever. It has always been there in our society, among us, though it came with different names or different shapes depending on the era. It deprives the sufferer from everything. People who got into a deep depression wouldn’t care at all about what happened around them. But people around them is easily calling them crazy.

Literary and literally, melancholia has rarely been taken seriously by our society. Individuals who are hit by melancholy, mostly have to deal with it themselves, which make it even worse and dangerous. I don’t have to say that Von Trier’s Melancholia is a metaphor. After watching this film, one must ask one self if he considers it as a fantastic film or a down to earth drama.   If you think it’s just a fantastic film, then a bit of melancholy might help you see things another way.

Certainly, Melancholia is not as absurd as it seems. Melancholia might offer you a happy ending if not a solution. If one day, planet Melancholia really hits the earth, I just hope that you have hands to hold on to and beloved ones to be with.