(Excerpted from the "Melancholia" chapter of Han Bingzhe's "Death of Eros." Abridged.)
Narcissism is different from self-love. The subject of self-love takes the self as the starting point and clearly demarcates the boundary with others. The boundary of the subject of narcissism is blurred. The whole world is just a reflection of the self, and its differences cannot be perceived and recognized. , in any time and space can be repeatedly perceived only the self.
The subject of depression is deeply trapped in the whirlpool of "self" until it drowns; Eros can perceive the existence of difference from the experience of "other" and lead a person out of the narcissistic swamp. Eros inspires a voluntary ecstasy and self-sacrifice. A debilitating feeling hits the heart of the person who has fallen in love, but at the same time a stronger feeling ensues. This dual feeling is not created by the "self", but a gift from the other.
In the same kind of hell, the Other may appear in the form of the Doomsayer. In other words: Today, only the end of the world can save us from the same kind of hell. The "melancholy" star is a paradoxical being that treats melancholy on the one hand, and causes a specific form of melancholy on the other. In front of this ruined planet, she felt the vitality for the first time.
The overture to Tristan and Isolde frames the musical structure of the entire film, evoking the power of love. Depression is a manifestation of "love incompetence". When "The Melancholy Star" broke into Justin's "self world" as the "other", Justin ignited a desire for eroticism.
In the nude scene on the rocks by the river, a woman who has fallen in love can be seen being engulfed by lust. In the dark gray light of the dead planet, Justin stretched his limbs, full of anticipation, as if eager for a fatal collision with the celestial body. She longed for impending disaster as she longed for a happy union with a loved one. The song ignites the connection between love and death, end times and redemption. Even more counterintuitive, the near-death experience brought Justin back to life. Justin went from being a depression patient to being able to love. The existence of the Other becomes the Utopia of Eros.
Lars von Trier deliberately interspersed the shots with some famous classicist paintings to control the film's context and lay it out with a special kind of semiotics.
In the surreal opening credits he flashes Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Huntsman in the Snow, immediately throwing the viewer into a winter melancholy.
The scenery in the background of the picture stops by the water, and Claire suddenly appears in front of Bruegel's painting in the next second of shots. The convergence of these two shots creates a similar topological quality, so much so that the winter melancholy of Hunter in the Snow spills over to Claire's figure. At this moment, Lars von Trier let pieces of black fragments slowly fall from the sky, swallowing the picture bit by bit like black flames.
There is a flower in Millais' Ophelia that is not mentioned by Shakespeare. A red poppy flower, symbolizing eroticism, dreams and hallucinations. The beautiful Ophelia stepped into the water step by step, her lips slightly opened, and her eyes were cast into the distance, looking like a saint or a lover. This again points to the kinship of love and death. Ophelia, Hamlet's beloved, sings, and dies like Shakespeare's Sirens. Falling flowers covered her whole body. She completed a beautiful death, a sacrifice for love.
Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath is also an image of desire and death.
Bruegel's "Easy Country" shows a saturated and even excessive social picture. The so-called bliss is no different from hell. Fat-brained people lay numbly on the ground, exhausted from contentment. In "Anle Township", the cactus does not grow thorns, but directly grows into bread. All things are good, just like cacti can be eaten and shared. This satiated social model is similar to the pathological "wedding society" in Melancholia.
Interestingly, Justin placed Bruegel's "Easy Country" directly next to an illustration by William Blake, where a slave hanged by a pierced rib is drawn to life. The invisible violence of the positive world contrasts sharply with the bloody violence of the negative world, illustrating that "well-being" is based on exploitation and extraction.
This series of comic-book-like pictures is an intuitive presentation of the entire film language. Eros and the desire for love overcome depression and lead you from the "homogenous hell" to the "Utopia" of the other.
The apocalyptic sky in The Melancholia resembles the empty sky of Brownshaw's childhood. That sky burst into his "homogenous hell" suddenly, opening the door to other utopias for him.
"I was a kid, seven or eight years old, living in an empty house on the outskirts of the country. One day, I was standing by the locked window and looking out, and suddenly -- very, very suddenly, I saw that A hole in the sky opened up to me the 'infinite infinity' and invited me to seize this captivating moment and follow it to see the 'infinite infinity' side of the world. It brought Unexpected consequence - suddenly finding the sky completely empty, both unknowable and bright, but where is God? Clearly, this phenomenon overrides the proof of God's existence and makes the child feel a sense of wonder. The ecstasy, the indescribable joy that brought tears to his eyes - I must tell the truth - and I know, those were the last tears of the child."
This catastrophic world, and the intrusion of the "outside" and the "other," means de-"self", i.e., the culling and emptying of the "mine" part in the face of death: "The sky is empty, the curtain of death Slowly pull away, disaster is coming." But disaster makes children feel a kind of "destructive happiness", that is, "absence of happiness".
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