Melancholia

I like Melancholia.
I've had others tell me that I focus on the negative, seeing half-empty glasses all around me. I've been accused of fashionable sneering. I've been told that I never smile. I rain on parades. I'm a wet blanket. I am unproductive. I delight in pointing out the stupidity of your tastes.

"I drag you down, I use you up - Mr. Self-Destruct"


Yet I've found a scarce few things which have made your fabricated, instinct-driven shithole of a world slightly more bearable for me to haunt until you decide to finish me off. Is it my fault they tend to revolve around death and decay, around the ends of worlds?
No. It is your fault. Yours, Homo "Sapiens" - yours and your animalistic, ritualistic, co-dependent, mindless grasping for control over each other. I await the end of your imaginary world of power-mongering and meaningless formalities. And some days it's not worth getting out of bed. And some days I've spent imagining you breaking down my door and tearing me to pieces. And I can feel your every expectation, your folkways and mores dragging me into the morass of your thoughtlessness. Creepers and vines. I cannot shed you. I am not strong enough.

Justine was, even if it broke her.
I almost stopped watching Melancholia several times during the second third or first half. It was painful. The segment titled after her contained almost nothing of Justine whatsoever. It was all you. It was all your world, the human world, and somewhere under it, gasping for breath, fettered by your stagnant, clinging customs, was Justine, aunt Steelbreaker just barely breaking through the surface.
Why do you hate us? Cowards die many times before their deaths. If you are indeed so valiant compared to us Justines, then you need only fear the taste of death but once. Or do you fear, do you know, that in that moment you will find yourselves for the first time as maladjusted as we are in your world? Will you need a Steelbreaker to hold your hand? To shelter you from the inadequacies of your own delusions of social stability and continuity?

Melancholia is not one of my favorite movies. The second third of it was too abrasively... normal. However, it has quickly become one of my favorite memories. I just don't think I could sit through that wedding montage again anytime soon. But if I can suffer through that, you can stand to watch your own world end. Watch it.
Maybe just that. Maybe I'll replay just those scenes a few more times, so I can give a little sigh at Melancholia looming above the lot of you as it is always above me.

This is the second movie I've seen by Lars von Trier. Dogville is another fond memory I have little intention of watching again. He seems overly-fond of gratuitous nudity and places too much emphasis on sexuality. I'll likely give The Nymphomaniac a pass on that account. Ditto on Antichrist. I'm also not sure I could sit through Dancer in the Dark considering the supposed setup of social irreality tearing individuals down. Maybe I'll force myself through it.
Steelbreaker.