MELANCHOLY, by Lars von Trier. (A shortened review***)

***WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

A wedding as allegory of our meaningless lives in the 21st century.      In the opening scenes of Melancholy, there come extremely grievous images: a bride looking like a corpse, birds falling dead, a mother in despair. It seems clear that there will be no hope. Why do people think so much about global catastrophes? Is there any benefit to our mind balance in believing it's coming soon, and thus we will not die alone? Such prophecies seem on the rise, perhaps as a byproduct of the speeding of time running in this I.T. age. An aria from Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde' makes the soundtrack. A German musician who had Schopenhauer as inspiration according to whom humans' quest to meet personal needs leads only to hypocrisy and pain. In such opera, under daylight only the latter finds place, and after sunset there's just one 'hope'. Lovers' fate is to never satiate their desires, and only through death may both be free from a miserable existence. Here' night' is a death symbol, only cessation of suffering.                          Part One: Justine.                         Newlyweds try to go from church to her sister's on a huge limousine, a vehicle they could never cross that so narrow track. Glaring consumerist nonsense! At the party our attention is drawn by an overwhelming trend to nonsensical rituals. All people there seem automates, with the single exception of the bride. John, the wealthy brother-in-law, repeats incessantly: "I paid for this great party in my property". Bride's drunken father tries to display ostentatiously two females, and that's his narcissistic performance. Bride's boss tries to make his private show, where Justine should create a slogan to skyrocket whatsoever's sales. Every gesture is an empty repeat of others': bride and groom cut their cake, bottom-up 'for luck', he feels compelled to sex without even noticing his partner's indifference, overwhelmed by anguish. Even a quarrel of bride's divorced parents is as usual: drunken father, mock heartthrob, authoritarian mother arguing without concern for newlyweds. Another battle in the war between the sexes, caused here by plain selfish, almost autistic behavior. Once upon a time, at the dawn of history, someone made the first suggestion that newlyweds should be first to cut together the cake. Cheer was intense, thus leading people to meaningfully repeat it from then on. But in 2012 parties it comes only as part of a protocol to be performed exactly as always. Our lives lost their authentic emotions because of too much repeating. Besides, we may not have our own lives, making our own mistakes. As the groom tried to have sex, Justine asks for a while. Tim, the slogan lad puts it behind her, who flees to the gulf camp not to hear his pleas. Suddenly something unexpected happens: she forces him to sex. Soon thereafter, the bride's boss talks to her, now trying to manipulate her emotions, telling that 'the poor Tim had already been fired for not accomplishing his task'. Justine sees such blackmail and indignant shouts the boss and his firm to be pure shit! The insulted businessman noisily leaves the party. The groom, feeling very sad, quits the wedding and even that deceitful marriage.                          Part Two: Claire.                           Marquis de Sade's character named Justine had one sister only, too. Freud called 'sadism' a behavior in which both erotic and destructive impulses merge for the sake of pleasure. In Von Trier's plot, Claire (the French word for bright) is her sister, married to the owner of the property where the wedding takes place. Justine is now plunged into a deep depression, on the edge of starvation. Only constrained does she take a shower, or drink water. Even Leo, his tender nephew, is unable to cheer her up or to bring hope. The Flyby is then close to the Sun's nearest planets, beginning its path towards the Earth. Justine's mood changes abruptly, now intensely attracted by Melancholy. Then there's a scene that is certainly the most beautiful one of this masterpiece. She lies on a rock under Melancholia- light bath, naked, oddly voluptuous and having no more anguish! The powerful energy that takes hold of her is of a new nature: neither Eros nor Thanatos, it is now a fusion of these that possesses her. Following irreversible fusion of the most fundamental impulses of Nature there would be neither Life nor Death! Only the Nothing would remain, the only redeeming power of Schopenhauer's Philosophy. As the Flyby comes nearer, Claire starts to panic because of little Leo's future, the boy who proves the futility of a sophisticated telescope using only two pieces of twisted wire. His contraption is enough to see if the planet comes nearer or away. Thus, there wouldn't be need of a new Da Vinci to waive out so many high-technological stuff that are destroying our Earth.. John utters: "It is obvious that there will be no collision, something proved by advanced calculus!" His statistical certainties, arrogance and even overt lies, remind us of the economists, who immediately before the crisis in 2008 proclaimed that world's economy was quite well! Claire considers watching doomsday collision solemnly on the porch. Justine refuses it violently! People who live on glitter want even actual doomsday to be another empty meaningless repetition, for avoid perceiving the here-and-now. Nowadays, even death seems to come as ready-made as a fast food lunch. Justine shows psychic abilities, and when little Leo complains that "there is absolutely nothing to do" to avoid the worst, she comforts him saying that John, then already dead, had forgotten to mention the 'magic hut'. If for magic there is nothing impossible, there could perhaps be still a way to avoid the unavoidable doom. And thereafter, both begin to build a hut with twigs, under which they sit together with Claire.  Is that "magic hut" a sign of hope meaning that young people as Leo may stiil save the Earth from an ecological doomsday?