Philm | Melancholia (Lars von Trier – 2011)

About this event

“a beautiful movie about the end of the world” - von Trier “Derived from the Latin astrum, the term ‘disaster’ connotes a misfortune that befalls us on account of a malevolent star.” - Christopher Peterson Most disaster films leave us with the consolation that at least a small contingent survives, that it’s not all over: there will be survivors to tell the story, to appreciate what happened, maybe to learn from it, but, at any rate, to start up again and go on. The complete film: (https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZo8bc5ZM0ClulVAbgjCJyCYigg29h95Fx07)*Melancholia (https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZo8bc5ZM0ClulVAbgjCJyCYigg29h95Fx07).* In 2013, Samuel Scheffler published a book called Death and the Afterlife (https://archive.org/details/deathafterlife0000sche). (1) By the title, he wasn’t referring to heaven or hell but the life that we expect will still be here after we, specifically, are gone. He makes the case that for all our evident concerns for our individual lives we also identify with those who will go on with theirs after we are done with ours. It matters to us that they will go on even if we are not around to witness. He conjures a thought experiment: suppose somehow you were assured that the world would end thirty days after you are dead. The duration and physical quality of your life will be full and unaffected, only that of everyone who survives you will be cut short. You know this. Would this make a difference to you? How you went about your business and projects? How you faced each day? Scheffler thinks it would fundamentally change the way you view the world. It would drive home a profound futility that you would not experience if you did not have this knowledge – even if, unknown to you, the world did, in fact, end thirty days after you are dead. Ignorance, maybe, isn’t bliss, but it leaves space for it. The mere possibility of the total annihilation of the world as you have known it[2](#sdfootnote2sym) is not enough to trigger this reaction. It is significant for the thought experiment that it’s thirty days or some fathomable period. Hearing that it will be four billion years off won’t, unless you are Alvy Singer (https://youtu.be/5U1-OmAICpU?si=zUBqjvWHOAuKex4L), ruin your day. The ultimate disaster is the one that ends not only your experience but every memory, every trace of it anywhere in the universe. You would die twice over. No one asks for existence, but having been granted it, it created space for desire, at least for its meaning, if not always for its duration (https://dn710408.ca.archive.org/0/items/immortality_202601/immortality.pdf). It is still an open question in astrobiology whether life like ours exists anywhere else in the universe. On the one hand, the vastness of the universe seems to invite the possibility. On the other, ever since Enrico Fermi asked “where is everybody?” (https://youtube.com/watch?v=-P_A3h77zOM&si=Mq9N1nG70vpo_6SE) the reasons why we are likely alone in the universe (or will forever be left wondering) have piled up. In von Trier’s film, Justine, ex-bride, states with cold conviction that the world is evil, and that life on this planet is the only life there is or has ever been – “and not for long” – as she waits with her distressed sister Claire and young nephew, Leo, for the end of it. Astropsychology Dispositionally prepared for disaster by her depression before everyone else in the film seems to get it, Justine suggests to her nephew they build a magical cave made of sticks that will save them. Her life ended sometime before. There remains only compassion for those whose illusions still torment them – still tease them like the rogue planet Melancholia did as it flew by so close, then backed away, only to boomerang back with mathematically elegant vengeance for the kill.[3](#sdfootnote3sym) As though all of this was a mistake and should never have happened, or as if there are no mistakes because whatever you conceive as the opposite of a mistake