Melancholia | Eastern North Carolina Now


Justine and Clare, Charlotte Gainsbourg, enjoy a light moment picking blackberries when a freak summer snow occurs: Above. Is this what the end of days looks like? Just like the birds of the sky and the beasts in the field, Justine intrinsically senses the impending doom: Below.

   And while the final chapter is entitled Claire, it is actually more about Justine still, and how she is both the sponge and the mirror to accept and reflect all that is good, all that is bad, and ultimately, all that is real of what humanity we have been shown by Lars von Trier until ultimately, Melancholia, as the symbol of the powers to be, stoops low to turn off the lights ... for good.

   In one of Justine's profound moments of irreparable sorrow, she bemoans, "I know things. Life is only on Earth. And not for long."

    I believe this is what a reflective, and unabashed fatalist, Lars von Trier was saying to others in his audience that are of a like mind as myself. That, and be prepared for the end is sudden, and irrefutable.

    Rated R. Released in theaters November 11, 2011.
Not unlike Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, this film, as a possible homage to the classic that was just as opaque, is told mainly through 136 minutes of mostly images upon the screen, so it is most proper that I leave with these last two of a surreal nature, which were from the overture: Above and below.




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