
The Melancholia Experience
I've gotta say I was impressed with this film. Every so often a picture touches you and makes you think about your own life. For this, I think most of us can ask if we are a Justine or a Claire. I'm no Marxist, but this film serves up an excellent fable for the emptiness of our overly grasping, materialistic existence and subsequent guilt and/or self-pity we may feel about this fact. It actually reminded me of Fight Club and how Tyler talks about us being the middle-children of history with no great purpose, and how this can wreck havoc with our psyche.
Justine has it all. Beauty, wealth, is married to a great looking guy, and yet she welcomes the seemingly inevitable demise that mankind faces. Why? Because she has reached the apex of a shallow, and meaningless existence. It's no coincidence that the day she sealed the deal on her last triumph in life the rogue planet and her impending doom presented themselves. Her contempt for humanity in general is a mirror image of her contempt for herself. How many people do I know like Justine? 'A few' is the answer. People who have it all given to them with little or no merit and have therefore lost purpose, so hang their cloak on other 'problems' Climate change, Wars, the coming decline of the west. All paranoid manifestations of their miserable existences. Films like this can be a lesson for us all to wake up.
Good movie!