Melancholia (2011): No Hope Left Behind

”The Earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it”

It starts with death, the end of everything. A planet called Melancholia is colliding with Earth, ending all life as we know it while Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner is heard in the background. A beautiful and sorrowful opening to Melancholia (2011) by Lars Von Trier and starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Kiefer Sutherland.

The movie is divided into two parts, one for Justine (Dunst) and the second for her sister Claire (Gainsbourg). I won’t focus much on how it ends, since from the beginning the viewer knows that Earth perishes in the collision.

The first part is about Justine and her wedding reception. It’s a party full of cynical and horrible people. Justine feels unhappy, and no one in his family or his husband Michael can make her feel better. But why is that? Why is someone who just got married feeling so unhappy? We don’t know much about Claire and Michael and how they were before the wedding, but it seems they didn’t love each other enough, since the wedding was a colossal failure. Apart from that, we can say that Justine suffers from depression.

Depression has to be one of the most misunderstood and difficult diseases to tackle; nobody wants to talk about it, nobody can truly understand it; it’s like this monster everybody wants to ignore, but it doesn’t go away. Imagine waking up and wanting to die for no reason, feeling sadness and a sense of meaninglessness every minute, a hug or a kiss from a loved one that doesn’t make you feel better, wanting to cry until you have no tears left to shed. Imagine hurting yourself and thinking about suicide, imagine thinking that only death can stop you from feeling like this, this awful feeling that is always there. I have read a lot about depression and many lives have ended because of this horrible illness and there is no cure for it. A tragedy that haunts me at night. “It tastes like ashes” says Justine at some point when she eats. Imagine being her for just a moment and see if you can just continue being full of hope for you and the world around you.

The second part is about Claire and how she deals with her sister’s depression while Melancholia is approaching Earth. Claire and her husband John (Sutherland) are in constant discussions about the Earth’s fate. John assures Claire many times that nothing bad will happen to them, that everyone, including their son, are going to be okay.

Anxiety is the most important word for this part of the film, since Claire feels anxious because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. She can’t be relaxed, and she can’t trust her husband fully, because she feels something is very wrong. She panics, she starts looking for answers, and when she discovers that the end is imminent, she can’t accept her fate. Everything is bad and nothing will ever be good again. The fear of not knowing is a horrible thing to feel, but the fear of knowing is not much better.

Melancholia has to be one of the saddest and most beautiful movies I have ever seen and one that talks about depression in a way that is so realistic that I think it should be watched to at least get a little idea in how depressed people see the world, and how despite all the good things outside, sometimes the things in our heads are far more heavy and complex than everything else.  

Von Trier pushes the boundaries of cinema by showing us once again his nihilistic view of the world through a film with powerful scenes, perfectly crafted shots, amazing photography, delightful music and taboo themes that are not often touched that we need someone like him to spit us in our faces and to talk for the people that cannot be heard because depression took them away forever. Sometimes everything dies, sometimes we are all alone, sometimes death is the only peace and sometimes there is nothing left to die.