All About Death: Melancholia, The Corrections

Despite this blog being mostly for book commentaries, I occasionally need to jot down some thoughts on a movie. I've mentioned "Last Year at Marienbad" several times before (see: Sontag), so imagine my delight when I saw an allusion in Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" to the famous landscape shot! Reading this article by the excellent Jim Emerson also got me excited.

The last movie I saw by von Trier was "Antichrist" and I had such an intense visceral reaction to it -- here's a director that can make me suffer outside my comfort zone through beautiful art.

A couple things I mulled afterward:

1. I cannot agree with the statement that people and/or the world is evil. I can agree that everyone has the potential for evil ... and thus also the potential for good.

2. The main character's (Justine's) fatalism allows her to face total destruction gracefully and with her eyes open while her practical sister suffers a complete breakdown and her nephew retreats to a fantasy land. I suppose this is more of a reflection on clinical depression, because it's not as though Justine was out livin' the life before Melancholia came into view. For her this is welcome vindication and relief. I keep thinking of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" where the condemned man is about to face the guillotine and the last two minutes of his life that he's portioned out to think about himself he instead spends staring at the sunlight's bright reflection off a building or something to that effect. I can't help thinking that right as you're about to die the world must look the most beautiful and you can't stand to leave it. So does that mean I'd rage against the end like Justine's practical sister? Well, who knows. It also reminded me of Camus' recent "Reflections on the Guillotine" which I wrote about a few entires back.

3. Given all of the above, I also pondered the fate that Justine's brother-in-law chose, which was to just kill himself once he realized the planet would hit. Spare yourself the exquisite suffering. So in that position, what would I do -- stay and watch till the very last seconds? There's always the hope that some miracle might occur and fortunes change. Hmmm. It helps to put things into less of a sci-fi planetary collision context, so on to the next topic of this post!

I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY was able to read "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen. The book isn't so much about a plot as it is about people; I'll remember that family for a long time. Aside from the characterizations, it was the demise of Alfred that shook me. The thing is, he had chances to kill himself before he lost his wits (and really with that goes your identity, your person) and his freedom to a nursing home but he didn't do it. He couldn't shoot himself or stop swimming to drown. And then his very last chance to ACT (again Dostoevsky!) is to ask his son to kill him. The son refuses and Alfred is basically reduced to a non-entity. Personally, I always say that I'd rather commit suicide than lose myself to utter dementia and indignity -- who are you without your memories and consciousness? The prospect that I wouldn't be able to do that, or would put it off until it was too late honestly scared the bejeebus out of me.

So with that in mind, back to "Melancholia": maybe I'd be like the brother-in-law after all, rather than wait it out till the end to stare at the horror. But then say one does go that route, it's still the same effect; at the moment you "hear the guillotine" you can't stand to leave the world and that's why Alfred never pulled the trigger.