Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#276 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 1:28 pm

Obnoxiously psychotic, depressed; tomato, tomato

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#277 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 1:33 pm

Jeff wrote:
Reliakor wrote:I thought Dunst's character more obnoxiously psychotic than depressed
What did she do that led you to that conclusion?
Flitting away from the celebration whenever the merest fancy pops into her head (to bathe, to extend a bed-tucking into a nap, to leave the groom's token (the photo) on the couch). I can understand how in the psychiatric culture of the present day such things may well be diagnostic of what we call clinical depression, but I personally have no inclination to favor her character with anything more than amused contempt.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#278 Post by Jeff » Thu Dec 29, 2011 1:51 pm

Reliakor wrote:Flitting away from the celebration whenever the merest fancy pops into her head (to bathe, to extend a bed-tucking into a nap, to leave the groom's token (the photo) on the couch). I can understand how in the psychiatric culture of the present day such things may well be diagnostic of what we call clinical depression, but I personally have no inclination to favor her character with anything more than amused contempt.
I viewed all of those actions as her attempts to escape from what she considers the "fake" happiness of her guests, their bourgeois celebration, and the marriage she's not really interested in. She wasn't bathing and napping for fun, she was doing it as a way of avoidance, becoming insular, and hiding from a world she found herself suddenly unable to cope with. I don't think one needs to subscribe to popular psychology to view that kind of behavior as signs of severe depression. Psychosis implies that she was deranged or out out of touch with reality, which I didn't see any evidence of.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#279 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:06 pm

Jeff wrote:I viewed all of those actions as her attempts to escape from what she considers the "fake" happiness of her guests, their bourgeois celebration, and the marriage she's not really interested in. She wasn't bathing and napping for fun, she was doing it as a way of avoidance, becoming insular, and hiding from a world she found herself suddenly unable to cope with. I don't think one needs to subscribe to popular psychology to view that kind of behavior as signs of severe depression. Psychosis implies that she was deranged or out out of touch with reality, which I didn't see any evidence of.
I sympathize with her plight, and don't care for the mediocrities around her either, yet I simply don't think her response to it bears any admiration. If she were to simply divorce herself from these people and accept her position as a malcontent I would shout her name to the heavens; I just very much dislike this sort of incestuous infliction of her own demons onto those in close proximity to her. When depression reaches a certain pitch of severity that involves the kind of willful callousness I believe I witnessed, considering her out of touch with reality is light criticism.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#280 Post by Gregory » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:25 pm

Reliakor wrote:If she were to simply divorce herself from these people and accept her position as a malcontent I would shout her name to the heavens; I just very much dislike this sort of incestuous infliction of her own demons onto those in close proximity to her.
That's exactly what she does in the "Justine" part of the film: intentionally sabotaging the career, marriage, and bourgeois world that feel essentially wrong to her (or at least that she doesn't belong in them) so that in the later part the only people left for her are her sister and nephew. She has accepted what she is, and her acts of will in the first half seem to make her generally stronger in the second half. One could argue about what she should have done differently in the first place if she had been a functional, healthy person who could take charge of her life and avoid getting into a situations where she's working for someone she loathes and is engaged to a person she really doesn't think she should be married to. But she's not; I think that's part of what we're supposed to see in the first half. I think it misses the point to criticize the film by saying that the way she acts is not completely admirable.
SpoilerShow
For me, her most admirable act is in the final stage of the story, when she overcomes her tendency to nihilism ("Life on earth is evil") in order to comfort her nephew during the last moments, an act that she would surely find pointless if indeed nothing mattered and everything related to their lives (including the nephew's suffering) was utterly insignificant or even inherently "evil." That's the only way I've found to make sense of the end of it, anyway.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#281 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:34 pm

I don't find it as complicated as all that. I just legitimately think she was having a bad day. Depression isn't ever a constant affliction - it comes in and out with varying frequency, and does not have any regard for what situation one is in, or how happy they 'should' be. von Trier has made a very deliberate decision of setting the first half of the film at a lavish, fairytale wedding to a hunky, sincere, kind man as the backdrop for one of Justine's worst mental breakdowns. She wasn't making a conscious decision to shit all over her wedding because of some disdain for the bourgeois.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#282 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:37 pm

Gregory wrote:One could argue about what she should have done differently in the first place if she had been a functional, healthy person who could take charge of her life and avoid getting into a situations where she's working for someone she loathes and is engaged to a person she really doesn't think she should be married to.
I follow you, but functionality isn't binary, and there are certainly severely depressed people who don't embroil themselves in quite as dysfunctional a state as Justine. I fully support Von Trier's premise in this film (choose one, I support it); it would just require (for me) Justine to be a more interesting and noble personality than she is presented.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#283 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:40 pm

People embroil themselves in legitimate mental afflictions that they have no choice in having? Interesting.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#284 Post by Gregory » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:44 pm

Depression is pretty constant for many people.
I should add that I don't think her disdain for bourgeois life is of the moral or political sort; she just doesn't think she belongs in that world, and she can never be what she's expected to be: the perfect bride and upwardly mobile career woman. It's no accident that her breakdown as many major pressures peak and converge at the same time: extended wedding celebrations that are picture-perfect and everything needs to happen on schedule and on cue, celebrations she feels entirely isolated from but which she's repeatedly told not to spoil because of their material cost; a major promotion in front of everyone; come up with a tagline tonight or this kid gets fired, etc. So I find it bizarre to say that she just happened to be having a bad day.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#285 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:47 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:People embroil themselves in legitimate mental afflictions that they have no choice in having? Interesting.
I don't know where the affliction ends and the will takes over, and I suspect even psychiatry hasn't advanced past conjecture and what is of clinical expedience.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#286 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:50 pm

She wanted the wedding, she was excited as she approached the wedding. She was giving a legitimate effort to appreciate it and enjoy herself. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that her mental state just got the best of her. I just don't know why von Trier would have chosen her wedding as the setting for the opening half of the film were it not an attempt to show us how little control she had over her mental state, and how far gone she was. I think Justine would choose to be able to be celebratory and happy like the other folks at the wedding were she given the option, she just doesn't have their level of psychological control over herself.

Reliakor, if that isn't a joke, you might want to read some books or talk to an actual psychiatrist.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#287 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:08 pm

Gregory wrote:Depression is pretty constant for many people.
I should add that I don't think her disdain for bourgeois life is of the moral or political sort; she just doesn't think she belongs in that world, and she can never be what she's expected to be: the perfect bride and upwardly mobile career woman. It's no accident that her breakdown as many major pressures peak and converge at the same time: extended wedding celebrations that are picture-perfect and everything needs to happen on schedule and on cue, celebrations she feels entirely isolated from but which she's repeatedly told not to spoil because of their material cost; a major promotion in front of everyone; come up with a tagline tonight or this kid gets fired, etc. So I find it bizarre to say that she just happened to be having a bad day.
It also seems to be the case that Justine lacks a lot of the emotional support she would need to deal properly with her affliction. She repeatedly attempts to reach out to her father and mother, and is either avoided in the case of her father, or oppressed by her mother's self-indulgent negativity. Her sister, while there for her at least physically and with basic concern, evinces Reliakor's attitude: Claire's pragmatism finds Justine burdensome, and she's repeatedly irritated that he sister can't just snap out of it and be practical the way that she herself is. It's unfortunately the case (well observed by von Trier) that people often resent those sufferers of mental illness they must care for, no matter how much they love the sufferer, because that person just can't do simple things, easy things you'd think, and therefore monopolizes attention. When something seems so simple to you, it can be hard to watch a grown adult just fail to do such simple things (and which you must now do for them). That's where the 'why can't you just snap out of it?!' response usually comes from.

What makes the climax so wonderful is that when Claire can no longer be pragmatic, can no longer find shelter in either her material lifestyle or the authority of her husband, she turns to her sister for support--and her sister gives it, even at the moment when the gesture should be the most meaningless. Depression is a disease that makes you turn inward, closes you off in your own skull; that's unavoidable. Justine, repeatedly looking for a way out of this, finds two escapes from it: in the end of her consciousness, and in a gesture of comfort and human sympathy for people whose fear and despair she actually doesn't share. Where Claire is weakest, Justine is strongest, and vice versa. But at the end of the movie both have stepped outside of their petty self-concerns for one brief moment. If you don't find that moving on a basic human level, all I can do is shrug.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#288 Post by Gregory » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:16 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:She wanted the wedding, she was excited as she approached the wedding. She was giving a legitimate effort to appreciate it and enjoy herself. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that her mental state just got the best of her. I just don't know why von Trier would have chosen her wedding as the setting for the opening half of the film were it not an attempt to show us how little control she had over her mental state, and how far gone she was. I think Justine would choose to be able to be celebratory and happy like the other folks at the wedding were she given the option, she just doesn't have their level of psychological control over herself.
I think she was most likely deeply conflicted about it long before it happened but was trying to get herself to go through with it. A depressed person will often try very hard to push onward (through the grey yarn in the image of the film) and try to approximate what is "normal," to do what others expect. There were surely appealing things about the wedding and the marriage itself but they represent a type of "normal" that she could never attain and could only pretend to fulfill for so long, which is why she had to continue to escape, to be alone and to wrestle with the bridal gown. The effort to do otherwise reached a point where it became impossible to continue, the convergence of pressures I described above, and something had to give. Would she choose to be "happy" in some way if she somehow had that option? Probably, but I don't think she aspires to be like the other people at the wedding, most of whom are clearly miserable or despicable in their own ways. The "happy, normal" person is an illusion in the world of the film. Claire, for example, is pretty "normal" but is troubled and fragile, falling apart the moment there are not clear directions or a milieu in which it is clear what she is expected to do or what the social norms are.

Mr Sausage: I agree with all that -- well said.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#289 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:27 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Gregory wrote:Depression is pretty constant for many people.
I should add that I don't think her disdain for bourgeois life is of the moral or political sort; she just doesn't think she belongs in that world, and she can never be what she's expected to be: the perfect bride and upwardly mobile career woman. It's no accident that her breakdown as many major pressures peak and converge at the same time: extended wedding celebrations that are picture-perfect and everything needs to happen on schedule and on cue, celebrations she feels entirely isolated from but which she's repeatedly told not to spoil because of their material cost; a major promotion in front of everyone; come up with a tagline tonight or this kid gets fired, etc. So I find it bizarre to say that she just happened to be having a bad day.
It also seems to be the case that Justine lacks a lot of the emotional support she would need to deal properly with her affliction. She repeatedly attempts to reach out to her father and mother, and is either avoided in the case of her father, or oppressed by her mother's self-indulgent negativity. Her sister, while there for her at least physically and with basic concern, evinces Reliakor's attitude: Claire's pragmatism finds Justine burdensome, and she's repeatedly irritated that he sister can't just snap out of it and be practical the way that she herself is. It's unfortunately the case (well observed by von Trier) that people often resent those sufferers of mental illness they must care for, no matter how much they love the sufferer, because that person just can't do simple things, easy things you'd think, and therefore monopolizes attention. When something seems so simple to you, it can be hard to watch a grown adult just fail to do such simple things (and which you must now do for them). That's where the 'why can't you just snap out of it?!' response usually comes from.

What makes the climax so wonderful is that when Claire can no longer be pragmatic, can no longer find shelter in either her material lifestyle or the authority of her husband, she turns to her sister for support--and her sister gives it, even at the moment when the gesture should be the most meaningless. Depression is a disease that makes you turn inward, closes you off in your own skull; that's unavoidable. Justine, repeatedly looking for a way out of this, finds two escapes from it: in the end of her consciousness, and in a gesture of comfort and human sympathy for people whose fear and despair she actually doesn't share. Where Claire is weakest, Justine is strongest, and vice versa. But at the end of the movie both have stepped outside of their petty self-concerns for one brief moment. If you don't find that moving on a basic human level, all I can do is shrug.
I do find the ending of the film moving, but I think it absurd of Von Trier to formulate this kind of duality between the catatonic depressive and her shallow, conventional foil (neither of whom I can stand). My dislike of Justine stems precisely from her species of depression having no strong ideological basis, and therefore only being a pathological condition. Hamlet could be considered a depressive person, but it doesn't manifest itself infantilely.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#290 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:34 pm

Should also be noted that Justine's self-destructive actions comes from a far more honest and clear-sighted place than the productive actions of everyone else. Her depression makes her inappropriately act on genuine feeling. I imagine the first half as being like pulling apart a fabric that's already beginning to come undone at the edges anyway.
reliakor wrote:I do find the ending of the film moving, but I think it absurd of Von Trier to formulate this kind of duality between the catatonic depressive and her shallow, conventional foil (neither of whom I can stand). My dislike of Justine stems precisely from her species of depression having no strong ideological basis, and therefore only being a pathological condition. Hamlet could be considered a depressive person, but it doesn't manifest itself infantilely.
I've just realized that you have no idea what you mean. Most especially because your go-to example here is Hamlet. I mean, really? In no way could that be comparing like with like. Not only that, but you dislike a person for suffering from a pathological condition, ie. one that she cannot help having!

This movie gives you the opportunity to share and understand the feelings of a person suffering from something outside of their control. As far as I can tell, you have failed this opportunity.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#291 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:42 pm

I don't like the way you've chosen to be mentally ill, bitch

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#292 Post by Gregory » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:45 pm

While I tend to be critical of psychiatry, I know someone who is not. His response to Melancholia, having only read a description, was to scoff, "They have drugs for that!"

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#293 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:49 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:Should also be noted that Justine's self-destructive actions comes from a far more honest and clear-sighted place than the productive actions of everyone else. Her depression makes her inappropriately act on genuinely feeling. I imagine the first half as being like pulling apart a fabric that's already beginning to come undone at the edges anyway.
reliakor wrote:I do find the ending of the film moving, but I think it absurd of Von Trier to formulate this kind of duality between the catatonic depressive and her shallow, conventional foil (neither of whom I can stand). My dislike of Justine stems precisely from her species of depression having no strong ideological basis, and therefore only being a pathological condition. Hamlet could be considered a depressive person, but it doesn't manifest itself infantilely.
I've just realized that you have no idea what you mean. Most especially because your go-to example here is Hamlet. I mean, really? In no way could that be comparing like with like. Not only that, but you dislike a person for suffering from a pathological condition, ie. one that she cannot help having!

This movie gives you the opportunity to share and understand the feelings of a person suffering from something outside of their control. As far as I can tell, you have failed this opportunity.
Where do you draw the line? What condition or circumstance may not have its etiology so schematized as to render the existence of free will absolutely dubious? Is depression a special condition for which no shades of grey exist? Do all severe depressives require their sister to bathe them (in the midst of a hysterically weepy fit)?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#294 Post by Reliakor » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:51 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:I don't like the way you've chosen to be mentally ill, bitch
No, a reduction of my stance would be more along the lines of (to Justine): "You're certainly depressed, but you're also an asshole." See the difference?

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#295 Post by Zot! » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:53 pm

I also don't think it's necessary to like Justine, but it is important to understand her illness. Although irrelevant to the story, it does seem disingenuous that there isn't at least some discussion of treatment (meds) or lack thereof, especially to get through something like a wedding.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#296 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:59 pm

Most medication for depression comes with some kind of major side effects, and sometimes takes months to really get going. Also, there are some people for whom none of these medications work well, and going off and onto them can make their symptoms worse. I don't know if it would have been in the best interest for the film to get into that hornet's nest.

Maybe if we ignore Reliakor, he'll just go away.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#297 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:03 pm

Reliakor wrote:Where do you draw the line? What condition or circumstance may not have its etiology so schematized as to render the existence of free will absolutely dubious? Is depression a special condition for which no shades of grey exist? Do all severe depressives require their sister to bathe them (in the midst of a hysterically weepy fit)?
Your confusion is so fundamental that it's difficult to know where to start. Free will is not a relevant issue here. Clinical depression is a disruption of proper brain chemistry. Your post makes as much sense as demanding a severely drunk person use their free will to stop slurring their speech. If your brain chemistry won't allow certain responses, then it won't, free will is irrelevant. You can only act as your brain allows you. And if your brain exhausts you, makes you anhedonic, overwhelmed with feelings that have no location outside of you on top of external stressers doing your condition no good, then your range of reaction is going to be limited.

If you think acting erratically under a mental affliction makes someone an asshole, so be it. Note that Justine manages a gigantic expression of human sympathy while you cannot even manage a relatively minor one being handed to you like a gift.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#298 Post by Keyrek » Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:04 pm

Zot! wrote:I also don't think it's necessary to like Justine, but it is important to understand her illness. Although irrelevant to the story, it does seem disingenuous that there isn't at least some discussion of treatment (meds) or lack thereof, especially to get through something like a wedding.
As a tangential note to that, at the beginning of part two, I presumed Justine was at some kind of mental health clinic (the business w/ the cab) that ultimately failed to get through to her.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#299 Post by Zot! » Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:35 pm

Keyrek wrote:
Zot! wrote:I also don't think it's necessary to like Justine, but it is important to understand her illness. Although irrelevant to the story, it does seem disingenuous that there isn't at least some discussion of treatment (meds) or lack thereof, especially to get through something like a wedding.
As a tangential note to that, at the beginning of part two, I presumed Justine was at some kind of mental health clinic (the business w/ the cab) that ultimately failed to get through to her.
Interesting take, I thought she was just at her apartment and wasn't coping, but that is a better reading. I agree that a deep examination of meds would have been unnecessary, but the fact that such a large wedding was arranged for someone who was so touch and go is skirting unbelievability. I guess the killer planet science is also suspect, so I think I just need to stop nitpicking.

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Re: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

#300 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:46 pm

I was fortunate to catch this in a theater last night and found it very appealing. Given its already elliptical style, I thought it could have been trimmed down a bit (the "Claire" segment seemed a bit padded out for its content), but really liked the collision between the galactic and the personal. I don't see how the audience could not sympathize with Justine during the film's first half which is truly a wedding reception from hell (it must be four or five in the morning when that damn onion soup is being served!). I didn't expect something this surreal or satirical to be emotionally satisfying as well.

A couple of things to chew on...
SpoilerShow
I took it that the Google search result page for "Melancholia" made no mention of the mystery planet of that name, but only the condition; could this suggest that von Trier wants it known up front that the planet is strictly metaphorical and is the result of a shared hallucination among the four characters on the estate?

Credit to my son for picking up on this, but Claire and her son are shown struggling on the green of "Hole 19" on the estate's golf course when it has been mentioned repeatedly that there are only 18 holes. What meaning can we take from this?

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