How engaging it is to consider an impending catastrophe! Why stop at our mortal selves (simply because, as an honest man once said, "in the long run we all end up dead")? Why not embrace the end of the whole world along with our personal ending?
I have not yet seen the film MELANCHOLIA - and I am not sure that I want to… anticipating another dose of the Tree of Life perhaps – but I understand the film begins with rather an impressive 'special effects' sequence of a planet smashing into Earth from space. So we know the ending before we begin: total destruction.
My first reaction was to recall Douglas Adams 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' which also begins with a similar event, this time planet Earth being totally destroyed to make way for a Super-Galactic Highway being constructed by a superior intelligence from outer space.
There are differences of course between Hitchhikers and Melancholia. The former (book/radio show/film) is very funny, on the basis that even our endings are not all tragedy. In fact, some of aspects are very comical (and so I have found it sometimes from being in the company of the dying). The latter film I suspect is not very funny, judging by my friend needing to go to the toilet halfway through to be sick.
I wonder about another possible difference between Hitchhikers and Melancholia. How seriously are we taking ourselves? In Hitchhikers the answer is not very. In Melancholia, the answer is… probably a great deal more. Since I am an ignorant unseeing as regards the film at this point, I decided to listen to Mark Kermode's opinion Vox Pops (broadcast on the BBC in September). One thing Kermode does remind us is that Von Trier really does have a very nasty side to him – Breaking the Waves? No thank you – which he likes to take very seriously…
… and sitting in judgement: because the world is evil, we are going to get our just deserts. Total wipeout.
… and/or is there another judgement: because the world is depressed, let's all go kill ourselves. Total totalled.
Conflating MY end, MY death with the TOTAL end of the world does smack just a tiny bit of hubris. After all the probability is that after my death the world will go on – surprise, surprise! Only I won't be "THERE" to find out how it turns out. Ah! There's the rub. That is the bit MY self-important self finds so unacceptable, isn't it?
On the basis, if I can't continue… then I see no reason why the rest of you should be allowed to continue. We have been here before. T4. I gather Von Trier has already got himself into neo-Nazi speak trouble, and perhaps he does us all a service to remind us where this destructive collective urge is lurking.
The urge which equally, despite my friend's nausea (his true melancholy), or my refusal to look at this moment, calls forth an ethical urgency to go see into this darkness that Von Trier has possibly unwittingly laid bare. That at least appears to be my friend's claim, "wanting to see it again and thinking of it as brilliant".
Oh dear, I feel my eyelids are being pealed back.