Melancholia – Women, Mothers and Planet Earth

It is of worth to think about Melancholia, movie realized by Lars von Trier, in the current debate of climate change.

From a physical and scientific perspective, Melancholia is the story of a Planet, about 20 times the size of Planet Earth. It’s the end of Planet Earth, as predicted through the science community, Earth being fully absorbed after its collision with Melancholia.

From a philosophical perspective, it is a movie about nature and human society. Those are wonderfully incorporated through the two main actresses: Kirsten Dunst in the role of Justine, Charlotte Gainsbourg in the role of Claire. Right, it is also a movie about gender and the role of women in our male dominated society.

What about the other women: they are torn between the two extremes, nature and human society, one that revolts against social norms (Charlotte Rampling, who hates weddings), and all the others.

Lars von Trier created a philosophical masterpiece. He understands that the power of movie making is a power of communication through the image and the visual. Texts and words in the script are chosen carefully, without overloading the already powerful messages, casted through the images and the finely chosen scenery.

From a physical and sensual perspective, Justine can be characterized as the plenty female. Justine is the incorporation of nature and independence. Claire, who has strong male traits, incorporates human society, conformism and a tendency to dominate. The movie is divided in 2 sequences, Part 1: Justine, Part 2: Claire.

The movie’s setting: The movie starts with a stretched limousine with the bride (Justine) and the groom. The oversized and heavy limousine remains stuck on its way to the wedding, too clumsy to adapt to the bends and obstacles of our lives. An object of technology and luxury not adapted to a landscape dominated by nature. And in nature, the rhythm of life is slow and pleasant, causing bride and groom to arrive hours late to the wedding.

The wedding takes place at a golf club, a golf course, dominated by a big castle. The landscape with the castle and the golf course is artificial, like a dream or a nightmare, in strong contrast with nature. Although they represent the countryside, they also represent a society, which has lost its connection to nature.

Justine: From Claire’s perspective, Justine is seriously sick, out of balance, depressed. Justine thus perfectly reflects the current state of Planet Earth. Lars von Trier provides us strong images of Justine, mother nature.

Justine has full control of society and the male world. Rather than revolting and confronting society, she gets depressed, falls sick, when she is abused by male power and domination. Pacifically, she refuses male domination and authority through fainting. By rejecting male domination and power, Justine takes control over the male world. She dominates men in refusing to respond to man’s sexual desires, while she lives her sexuality opportunistically and with domination, with the man of her choice.

In general, the relationship between men and Justine can be considered as Oedipal, conditioned through Justine’s pronounced feminality and motherliness.

In one scene, Justine lies nude, directly exposing her feminine body and erotic sensuality to Planet Melancholia. We can interpret the scene of Justine, narcissus, being attracted and stimulated by the female beauty of Melancholia, a mirror image of her own.

For Justine, the final setting for the apocalypse is mystic in nature, empathetic for the one child, a mysterious cave of wooden sticks. The setting reminds us that children can be comforted. They are not afraid of death like adults are. They are in confidence of adult’s words and promises.

Claire: Empathetic, caring and loving her sister Justine, Claire’s values belong to the superficial values of our society, values which are flawed. Lars von Trier also shows us through the entire wedding that these values constitute the foundations of our culture, and build the norm for our society.

According to Claire, the final setting of the apocalypse would be sitting on the terrace, drinking a glass of red wine, listening to Beethoven’s 9^th symphony.

Claire’s way to deal with death are pure measures of hygiene. She hardly seems to have dealt during her entire lifetime neither with death, nor life. She and her Self is a product of our artificial, male dominated society.

Animals: in the movie, animals are represented as living beings, definitely more closely related to nature in the sense that they react more instinctively and spontaneously to the threat of Melancholia. The horses also reflect the taming and domination by humans. Justine’s physical and psychological male domination is reflected through a scene, where she hits her stallion until its resignation, finally lying down onto the ground.

Final setting: moments before the apocalypse, Justine declares Planet Earth and human society as evil, not worth to be safeguarded. She also declares that there is no other life in the Universe. Is it worth to safe Planet Earth, our civilization? Yes, of course. Human beings have their strengths and weaknesses. Our civilization today is a given, she is learning, she is learning form its mistakes, and she can improve. While Melancholia is the apocalypse, our Planet and civilization is far from over. In the wake of climate change, big challenges lie ahead of us, which have to be tackled without hesitation or further delay.

Melancholia: One can ask the question, whether from a gender perspective, Melancholia represents male, female gender or asexuality, and eventually conclude on the gender of Planet Earth.

In absorbing Planet Earth, Melancholia absorbs what once has been created as a fertile and vital planet. From a male perspective, it would signify an act of destruction. We can also consider Earth’s absorption as the plantation of a seed.

Looking at the “dance of death (Totentanz)” trajectory of Melancholia, Melancholia actually seems to end up in Earth’s trajectory around the sun. Thus there is hope for new life and a planet, 20 times as big as planet Earth. Life starts from scratch and it is possible that history repeats itself, in endless cycles, dictated through the universe.

Thus Planet Earth is both, the matrix for life, and at the same time, the seed for new life. Man has first to be created, before he can reproduce. Planet Earth can be considered as both, male and female in gender.

To conclude: our civilization needs to revalue what is abject, from what is to be valued.

The way in which we create societies, is mainly through dirt. We value nature as abject, as dirt, while we create shiny worlds and cities as mere Fata Morganas.

As in deep ecology, we have to turn our world into what is fundamentally natural, turning away from domination of nature into a symbiosis of human society with nature, to assure the resources, needed for the survival of our civilization and our varied nations and cultures.

Also an important lesson, referring to Michel de Montaigne, Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm, Sogyal Rinpoche, we as humans have to learn early and consciously what life is and what death means to and for us.