Melancholia, Lars Von Trier’s 2011 film, features the terrifying approach of a planet that will either fly by or destroy the earth. The two planets play off a parallel drama with two sisters who occupy the poles of extreme depression and anxiety. In the opening shots of the movie, the planet creates a second cast shadow on a sundial, and the trees also cast two shadows on the lawn. The anxious sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourgh, would appear to have been ensconced in an idyllic mansion replete with golf course and servants but no televisions, effectively cut off from the world by her controlling and wealthy husband. As the planets near each other, this world becomes a place in which natural light creates two cast shadows.
Melancholia of course also refers to the psychological state of Justine (Kristen Dunst,) who we meet on the way from her wedding ceremony to the reception at her sister's mansion. We are initially seduced by her beauty, finding her in her stunning wedding gown, perfect pearl earring, and her adoring and handsome groom, playfully running two hours late to her own party. Many shots of her coy smiles, her sensuality, her playful interaction with her groom, and we want to be convinced, and almost are, that we are meeting a woman on the happiest day of her life.
The planet about to approach and destroy the earth, is called Melancholia, and there was a period of the movie where I took this for a metaphor or possibly a dark delusion, or a representation of Justine’s love affair with destruction. And yet the planet becomes more and more real as the movie progresses.
I am oddly gripped by the approach of the planet looming gorgeously in the sky, changing the light and the air, imagining myself being able to bravely face the end of the world, and behold it with terror and awe. The raw purity of knowing there would be absolutely nothing to do but behold and experience, even if for a moment of life, seems to me to be an enlightened state. In that moment, as the planet approaches irrevocably, things just are absolutely larger and more powerful than any human drama, anything a human being could possibly do or not do.
I lose touch completely with what the anxious sister is feeling as she sobs and rails against the loss of her world, her husband, her son, and her life.
I don’t romanticize more ordinary deaths, of old age, or car crashes or heart attacks. But there is something about imagining this type of end, where the natural world proves itself to be so much more powerful than any of our human accomplishments or frailties, that I find oddly exhilarating. No comfort in being remembered by those who survive, there will be no survivor. The force of nature, huge and arbitrary, simply destroys and creates.
