Somehow I feel as if a first post warrants some kind of intention for writing on the internet. I don't know, I've been doing very little with my body and very lot with my brain these past few days. I've also been taking advantage of the netflix...and I have all these ideas of the things I absorb through various media that I feel as if it may be of benefit to myself to put them somewhere tangible (as tangible as the internet can be I suppose...) I don't really think that anything I put on here will be that original or thought provoking (though I'll spare you the self-deprication for now at least, as I'm sure there will be plenty of that). Also, typing is easier than writing and my body has the predilection towards tendonitis.
As an aside I really enjoy elipses. They're some sort of period, comma, hyphen hybrid and the ambiguity is satisfying. Also parentheses.
Also I hate the red squiggly lines that appear below words that I misspell. It's not so much really that I dislike the constructive criticism but more due to my apathy. So excuse typos. I apologize for being ignorant. I dislike typos just as much as the next anal retentive undergrad.
Also I'm going to use second person, sorry.
SO that's enough of that. I watched Melancholia by Lars von Trier last night (Also trainspotters with Ewan McGregor but it doesn't really incite much thought, good flick though). I saw the movie as a parallel between the two sisters, Justine and Claire (the latter I had to look up the character's name). Sort of a portrait of the two characters and their relations with their relatives.
JUSTINE
Dunst did an exceedingly good job at emoting deeply rooted sadness. Justine's affliction goes unnamed throughout the movie, and doesn't become overtly obvious until the second part ("Claire"). It's the type of sadness that one just has. The movie hints that it may be due to the dysfunctional relationship between her parents...her dramatic and confrontational mother and her vacant and unreliable father, but I think that her depression goes beyond that. Her emotions seem completely absurd in the situation-- she's at the reception of her marriage in a beautiful castle/mansion/golf course (a yuppie newlywed wet dream)-- yet she seeks solitude (rather uncouth), goes on a public diatribe against her boss, ends up fucking a random intern and ruins her marriage. That's sadness though, and makes complete sense in that way. Self-destruction, dissociation, etc.
Justine's segment of the movie radiates awkwardness and honestly made me uncomfortable. I think it was the quiet (except for brief interludes of music from the ballet Tristan and Isolde) and the intimate cinematography during the wedding party scenes...as if it could have been filmed with a handheld camcorder (with a very high quality lens or something). These attributes were juxtaposed harshly with the set which was elegant and idyllic in every sense and lit with the soft light of dusk and candlelight. This coupled with the costumes-- all beautiful floor length gowns and tuxedos-- made Justine's segment on the verge of absurd, almost hilarious, but definitely tragic. Like children running around playing dress-up.
CLAIRE
The sequence of claire's segment structurally paralleled Justine's. You see their public facades slowly peel away to reveal their inner anxieties and turmoil. You see the men in their lives who both operate under the false belief that they know their wives better then the girls know themselves. They believe that they can save them (very chivalrous). I felt for these poor saps...their false assumptions weren't obnoxious but almost childlike in their tenderness and naivete.
Claire's personality is also revealed as contrasting to her sister's. I think this is where the connection to using music from Tristan and Isolde comes in to play (though I have to confess I only saw the movie version with James Franco (unf...Franco) and do not know the true version). I don't think the music alludes to the relationships between the girls and their husbands, but rather between the girls. Claire is Tristan-- very much cognizant of duty (to her family and taking care of her sister and to propriety rather than to a country or a King). She is the sensible one and her fears are rooted in the idea of a physical disaster occurring-- the crashing of Melancholia into the earth-- as well as pain and dying and taking care of her son. Justine is likened to Isolde-- the romantic. Her sadness comes from nothing. It's pure emotion. She seems most content alone, outside, captivated by the night sky or with her horse. I think it's beautiful that von Trier made this allusion of the sisters to a pair of star-crossed lovers.
To go off on a tangent, I thought it made absolutely no sense that Claire had an English accent and Justine did not or Claire's son or husband. Perhaps this was a nod to the fact that Tristan was British? That may be a reach though.
MISC.
I also thought that von Trier meant for the sisters to be compared to the heavenly bodies themselves. There's one beautiful scene that shows the sisters on the terrace and in the night sky on one side is the moon and on the other is melancholia. Or melancholia served to symbolize depression and anxiety generally. Melancholia's orbit around earth structurally mimics both of the sisters' emotions through the movie...coming closer to earth and receding, but then crashing with full force (despite the fact that its collision with earth was rationalized away by Claire's scientist husband).
One more general trend to comment on that I noticed. The degree to which characters responded to the Melancholia striking earth was inversely proportional to their rationality, maturity and 'sanity' throughout the movie. Justine, the most emotionally berserk of the characters, becomes the most sensible at the end of the movie (yet still retaining her romantic appeal by making the magic cave to quell the anxieties of her little nephew and her sister). Justine and her nephew are the most accepting of the impending doom of the planet whereas Claire becomes a blubbering mess, running around her property trying ridiculously to escape. Even still though, she tries to maintain propriety (which made me chuckle which may have been inappropriate) by suggesting wine and music on the terrace as the world ends because she just wants 'it to be nice'. This reaction, even though sensible under normal terms, seems absolutely irrational given the situation (an attitude that is vocalized explicitly by Dunst).
The most intense of reactions comes from Claire's husband, the scientist, who ends up ODing before Melancholia hits, completely abandoning his family and exposing himself as a coward. His character really pissed me off.
To sum it up, this movie gave me a lot to think about. I thought it had a good mix between internal human struggle and fantastical cinematography complemented well by the score from Tristan and Isolde giving it a twist of creepiness. It was beautiful to watch and I didn't know how many heavy hitters it contained cast-wise.
Cheers.
