On Melancholia

BY Morteza Abedinifard, June 24, 2023

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia deconstructs the concept of melancholy not only through the plot and cinematic techniques, but also through the use of Wagner’s prelude to Tristan and Isolde. The movie’s intertextual reference to a composition that is the epitome of the Romantic notion of infinite longing (sehensucht) expresses a hidden layer of melancholy that is normally concealed from common understanding of the term.

Melancholy, sometimes taken as an equivalent term to depression, is commonly defined as being inactive and lacking desire—that is not feeling the demand or enthusiasm for reaching out to the world and using its resources for the sake of one’s own pleasure. While the main character (Justine) of the movie is melancholic—as she appears to be someone who is not enjoying the sources of joy that are around her—her encounter with the world demonstrates a deeper understanding of her expectations from the world. To her, the human world around her, that is the socially and culturally conditioned space around her, is completely undesirable and her only response to such a world is her experience of melancholy, that is withdrawing from any desire or wish for the satisfaction of any such desire. And Justine’s apparent resignation from desiring is embodied in the form of a planet called the Melancholia.

But this is all what we see on the surface: Von Trier’s deconstruction of melancholy through intertextual references to the 19th-century musical romanticism opens a space for a novel understanding of the mood. The movie depicts melancholy not as the negation of desire but as the result of an infinite, intense desire that cannot be satisfied in the world. Furthermore, melancholy as portrayed in the movie goes beyond a merely psychological mood or state; it becomes more of an existential condition that offers an epistemology that seems to be a more authentic understanding of the world.

The movie is about a young woman who seems to be suffering from melancholy, living underwhelmed by some pensive dominant mood that has affected her life so strongly that she cannot feel happy in her own wedding. Right from the beginning of the movie, we learn that she does not like to eat or socialize. Each time she tries to spend time with other people (except with her nephew) she faces failure, as she does not receive the response she expects, which seems to be a mutual understanding of the condition. Alongside her dissatisfaction with the way others encounter the world’s tragic nature, there is another important theme: a planet called Melancholia is coming towards the Earth, which, based on the prediction of scientists, is going to pass by the Earth. While studies that show the planet is not going to hit the earth, there are some who think that it will hit the Earth bring about the end of the world.

The effect of this situation on Justine is ironic: when gradually this belief of the danger that is threatening the Earth becomes stronger and stronger, Justine begins to feel both livelier and more restful. There is an obvious fast improvement in her mood. Although this does not mean that she does not feel the melancholy anymore or feels happy and excited, the melancholy that was torturing her from inside is replaced by an objective perception of the word and its condition. In a sense, her inner melancholy has received an outer response from the world, and this is how Von Trier’s definition of Melancholia goes beyond a particular psychological mood and becomes an epistemological position about the world. The objectivity of Melancholia, a fact that cannot be denied but can be only hoped not to occur, becomes the right perception of the world and its possible motion towards the end. Hence, the melancholy she feels is the emotional expression of the instinctual awareness she has of the fact that the Earth is being hit by an object called Melancholia. The threatening planet is, therefore, the embodiment of the mood or the feeling that Justine is experiencing. And this is introduced as a fundamental truth. This provides a condition where the mood or psychological state in which she is living completely fits the reality outside.