Speaking of the SubIime and other planets. . . I recently saw Lars von Trier's film Melancholia (2011), which he wrote and directed. The first part of the film is from the perspective of Justine, whose depressive behavior causes her to destroy her marriage on her wedding night - and resign from her cushy job. Her dad is a drunk and her mom is ingrown with bitterness, so neither of them are much help to her. The reception and aftermath become a wasp’s nest of family infighting, jockeying for status, treating people instrumentally, judgementalism, and all the other venal crap that makes up daily human life.
After the wedding/marriage meltdown, Justine sinks into an even deeper depression. Her sister, Claire, is the no-nonsense, put-together one with little patience for her erratic sibling. But when Justine finally breaks down completely, Claire takes pity and tries to nurture Justine back to stability. The second half of the movie is from Claire's perspective. It is some days or weeks after the wedding debacle, and another big event – this time astronomical – frames the action. Claire becomes increasingly convinced that the massive planet Melancholia, which somehow has entered our solar system, is not going to fly by the earth, as the mainstream scientists predict, but will in fact hit it (which it does, as we find out in the opening sequence). At this point, the sisters' roles are reversed: Justine, whose world has already come to an end, and who already expects the worst, is quite calm and collected. Her world has already fallen apart. But now Claire begins to go to pieces, consumed by desperation and despair, acting irrationally and erratically. The final sequence is quite a moving statement about the power of art to make meaning out of catastrophe. And the film itself is very beautiful. Brazillian philosopher Deborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Vivieros de Castro see the planet Melancholia as being an allegorical version of what Isabelle Stengers calls "the intrusion of Gaia." By Gaia, she means not the goddess or the organism; not a nurturing mother in whose embrace we all subsist. Rather, Stengers means the geophysical processes that capitalist society has set in motion, that have taken on a life of their own, apart from our will. That future is headed our way, and is given tangible form by von Triers, argue Danowski and Vivieros de Castro. All we know for sure is that this “Gaia” will destroy the world we know. It's a compelling reading, as the movie can serve as quite an apt parable. The sensible people who are "getting on with their lives" and regarding climate change as something for hysterics to worry about may not know how to cope, as the effects become less and less escapable. The depressing depressives, who've known all along how bad things can get, may be the ones who are most mentally prepared. And that group includes a lot of writers!
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |