SEQUENCE 1.2 (2014) An Allegory of a ‘Therapeutic’ Reading of a Film: Of MELANCHOLIA Rupert Read SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: 6.43 If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language. // In brief, the world must thereby become quite another, it must so to speak wax or wane as a whole. // The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy. 6.431 As in death, too, the world does not change, but ceases. 6.4311 Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. // If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present. // Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit. Heidegger, Being and Time: If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the philosophy of psychology I: 20: [A]n interpretation becomes an expression of experience. And the interpretation is not an indirect description; no, it is the primary expression of the experience.     2 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       1. This essay is a (more or less philosophical) i. Throughout this paper, I dance in a account or allegory of my viewing(s) of Lars von ‘dialogue’ with – am in ‘conversation’ Trier’s remarkable film, Melancholia (2011).1 It is with – Steven Shaviro’s fascinating personal, and philosophical. (The personal here paper, “Melancholia or, the romantic turns out, potentially, to be philosophical.) Von anti-sublime”: Trier’s film in turn is clearly among other things a http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence (brilliantly accurate) allegory of (his) depression; 1/1-1-MELANCHOLIA-or-The- and it is also clearly (though at the very same time) Romantic-Anti-Sublime/ (The page much more than that. In expressing my experience references that I give to his work in of the film and the world (and my experience as a these notes are to this webpage as it part time mega-melancholic – which is part of my prints out). Shaviro’s paper, with basis for using the adjective “brilliantly accurate” in which this paper is in sequence, I the previous sentence), my essay is inevitably engage with explicitly through this personal, ‘person-relative’. Furthermore: This is an apparatus of 33 sidenotes (signalled inevitable feature of therapeutic philosophy, the by the use of roman-numerals). There philosophy practiced most famously by Ludwig are also 33 endnotes for other Wittgenstein. As the later Gordon Baker for references (signalled by decimal example explained clearly2(cid:1): such philosophy numerals). My aim in these sidenotes responds to the individual reader (/ viewer). And is to show how my interpretation of vice versa. In a kind of dialogue or (to use the term the film, as I see it, complements and that Melancholia prefers) dance. . .i ultimately contradicts Shaviro’s. {sidenote i} 2. Why do I call my take on Melancholia a philosophical one? Well, let me seek to explain. ii. Shaviro suggests repeatedly and Let’s start with one of the apparently-odd plot- intelligently that one thing it means is features of the film. The entire action takes place that the world of the 1% is largely within the grounds of a family home, a chateau: in closed to the rest of us (Cf. also n.iv, part, because Justine (Kirsten Dunst) – and in fact, below). But I will argue below that (as later, both the two main protagonists – apparently Shaviro perhaps implies on p.6 of his cannot leave the chateau. Each time that Justine essay) there is a deeper ‘existential’ attempts to take her horse across the little bridge, meaning to it, a meaning that she fails. And near the end, the same uncanny connects for instance with the therapy failure hits Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), in her present in Buddhism (to the effect golf-buggy, the last vehicle able to move (albeit that the greatest suffering comes from with the risible speed and style of a golf-buggy) in the sense of continuing self/ego, a their little world. …I believe that this uncanny suffering that peaks in the trappedness is a key to the film. What does it condemnedness-to-self of the mean?ii inveterate melancholic), and with the words of Bob Marley’s great song, 3. We can (and should) think here of Last Year at Running Away. (Other obvious Marienbad,3 so clearly inter-textually telegraphed in possible meanings would be: that it the opening images of the sculpted plants which allegorises death (this was pointed out have two shadows (In Marienbad, they cast just to me by Kristof Bodnar), or Hell, one – but the people there cast none at all).iii In which are also of course states, Marienbad too, it is impossible to escape the relevant to the film’s theme, that chateau. One is trapped, on my reading of that cannot be escaped.) {sidenote ii} marvellous, puzzling film, in one’s own Reason. In   3 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       one’s – in the film’s ‘character’s – own half-dead iii. The rich intertextuality of Melancholia hyper-rational minds. In psychosis as understood is not sufficiently appreciated, in roughly along the lines envisaged by Louis Sass in Shaviro’s essay (see especially p.2). For his Madness and Modernism.4 In the case of instance: it isn’t just that the Breughel Melancholia, we are dealing primarily, it would painting “Hunters in the snow” seem, with neurosis: with ‘affective disorders’. The appears in Tarkovsky’s Solaris as well trap in this (similar and dissimilar) case is simply (in) as in Melancholia – it plays a pivotal one’s life. The trap is one’s mind. (Neurosis is: being role in that film, a film that clearly that trapped in one’s own mind, and hating it. Psychosis Melancholia is clearly ‘in sequence’ is: being trapped in and by one’s own mind with. As for Marienbad: Melancholia is without even realising that one is.) The chateau is a clearly a rich re-writing of it. It shows lived world. The chateau is your mind. You can’t us psychopathological trappedness, as escape it.iv Marienbad does (it plays the neurotic to Resnais’s psychotic); but, unlike 4. The magnificently-depicted utter futility of Resnais’s film, in the final seven Claire’s effort to run away, by getting into a big minutes it actually offers a genuine strong car – a 4×4 – and then a golf-buggy, and escape-route. Crucially, as I remark in then just running… Where? The interaction at that section 3, above, Shaviro doesn’t point between her and Justine here is startlingly mention that the second shot of reminiscent of the interaction between Deckard Melancholia’s prelude, which and Roy at the climactic moments of the famous remembers Marienbad, shows us chase in Blade Runner, as the latter asks the former, every object casting two shadows, as Deckard seeks pointlessly to escape his fate, his whereas in Marienbad the objects being-toward-death: “Where are you going?”… didn’t cast any shadows at all; only the Justine uses the exact same verbal formulation, to people did. Marienbad was a world of Claire. ghosts, a world where mind or spirit was real and matter not; Melancholia 5. The point: there is nowhere to run to. Nowhere by contrast sees, in Justine, the to go. There is no escape. You can’t run away from midwifing of a return from a life of your own most death, nor from the present being ‘stuck’ in the mind to the actual moment. (As Leo (Cameron Spurr) later puts it: world, just in time (i.e. before the “Dad says there’s nothing to do then. Nowhere to world is obliterated). {sidenote iii} hide.”) The only ‘escape’ from what Freud called “ordinary unhappiness” / anxiety, and, still more so, iv. As Shaviro points out, it’s not easy to from melancholia, is (as Buddhism has long get into this world, either: Think back indicated) acceptance. To ‘escape’, paradoxically, to the struggle of the wedding you have to embrace. To accept what is happening limousine, which seemed a simple bit right now, to embrace it; and to embrace others. of fun at the start of the film, and (And this, as I will discuss below, is what Justine at which Shaviro decodes as echoing the this point in the film is managing, for the first time, failure to consummate of Justine and to do, in both a very direct and a symbolically-rich Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) (“How way.) There is no (other) escape. This existential do I put it in?”, Justine asks. In gear, point is starkly literalised in Melancholia by the that is…). But now (i.e. in connection whole planet being about to be wiped out. with the point I am making about the existential and psychical meaning of 6. Melancholia has a way of bashing the viewer the closed world of the chateau) it over the head with a number of stark, heavily- takes on a different hue: as connoting 4 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       signalled symbols. The most obvious of which is part of the limit-conditions of this calling the blue planet about to crash into Earth lived world. {sidenote iv} ‘Melancholia’; a metaphor for Justine’s condition. (Similarly, the music is gloriously extreme;v the v. Shaviro understands the importance whole ghastly-wedding scenario is way over-the- of the music in the film better than top; etc.) most critics, though his take on the music still isn’t quite right, and isn’t 7. However, look for example at that remarkable (for my money) sufficiently generous. opening sequence.5 When one thinks back to this He doesn’t mention, for instance, that ‘prelude’, from the end of the film, one notices that the tune and themes of the Prelude virtually none of the scenes presented there are recur insistently during Tristan and present anywhere in the body of the film. For Isolde – much as they do during instance, the scene showing the final trio of the Melancholia (see p.3-4 of his film: but standing, facing the camera, separate, on text). {sidenote v} the lawn at night, dressed up in their wedding gear, but with the two ‘moons’ behind them (as vi. As elaborated in section 17 of my was not yet the case, during the wedding). It paper here: Depression is a solution, a almost looks like a publicity-still for the film. My preferred way of life; for it offers an take on this shot: This is how the three of them illusory safety (illusory, because there would have been, had Melancholia come to hit on is no limit to how bad it can get, as we the night of the wedding. Apart. Before the journey get a sense of at the opening of Part 2 on which Justine leads herself and them, through of the film. Contrast the true safety rock-bottom, to mutuality and an affirmation of life discussed in my section 23). A semi- made directly in the face of mortality. willed separateness/retreat. (Shaviro’s discussions of willing need I think to 8. Or again, the little scene of Justine walking be complicated by the difficulty, in through the forest in her wedding dress, so, so, so psychopathology, including some of slowly, held back by the creepers (this scene, we the self-deceptive psychopathology of later discover, is a direct ‘representation’ of everyday life, in setting out the extent Justine’s experience, as she attempts to explain it to which what is in play is an act (i.e. to Claire); and the parallel scene of Claire, seeking willed) or an affliction. For discussion, desperately to carry her boy ‘to safety’ across the see e.g. pp.73-4 of Louis Sass’s 19th green, but sinking in so deep with each Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the infinitely-slow step; these are visual metaphors Light of Modern Art, Literature and of/for the mental states from which the sisters are, Thought, Harvard University Press, hopelessly, seeking to flee from (and thus 1994.) {sidenote vi} inadvertently entrenching – see below). vii. Depression, Wilkinson and Pickett 9. It might still be said that, once one notices them have taught us (see Wilkinson, Richard and thinks about them, these ‘visual metaphors’ at and Pickett, Kate, The Spirit Level: Why least are rather obvious. Turn then instead to the More Equal Societies Almost Always Do question of why Part 1 of the film is called ‘Justine’, Better, Allen Lane, 2009) is Part 2 ‘Claire’. And to the question of why (for probabilified by inequality. This point instance) the wedding scenario in Part 1 is so neatly buttresses Shaviro’s helpful madly over-the-top. If one does so, then I think one critique of the sad world of the 1% as will start to understand the subtlety lying behind this film shows it to us (see n.ii, above). Why does inequality probabilify higher   5 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       some surface unsubtleties. societal levels of depression? A key reason, Wilkinson and Pickett suggest, 10. For the deliberately plodding telegraphing of is because it ‘forces’ one into seeking one or two of the film’s central metaphors is the status by means of one’s capacity to counterpart of a much-subtler, sinuously-delicate obtain material ‘goods’ / consumables way in which metaphors that are not merely (e.g. luxury houses, orchards, big cars). literalised, not straightforwardly paraphrasable, This connects directly with the point enter repeatedly into the film. Precisely because of under discussion in n.7, the blatancy of some of the basic above. {sidenote vii} symbols/metaphors of the film, these are by contrast easy to miss (and have been missed by the viii. Shaviro suggests (p.5) that Justine’s plodding reviewers of the film – when has such a naked planet-bathing manifests her fine film last been so almost-universally under- finding “her depression confirmed by appreciated by its reviewers?6 the prospect of imminent doom.” Compare and contrast the following 11. So for instance, as I said earlier: the chateau is a interesting interpretation, offered by world. But more than that: what we are given in my student, Alex White, in a draft of Part 1 is Justine’s world. This world is very like the his “Melancholia: a philosophical world that all of us live in (They fuck you up, your interpretation” (unpublished): Mum and Dad; and rampant capitalism does, too); “Neither rejecting nor attempting to and yet unlike it (except for those of us who are escape, we see Justine beautifully personally familiar with a serious amount of strewn naked, illuminated only by the melancholia). One can sympathise with why she blue rays of the looming planet, would be so troubled, when one meets the crazy, Melancholia, in the middle of the ‘normal’ people in and governing her life. But it’s night – no longer trying to run away more complicated than that: from her demons, we see her wildly confronting melancholia in the most 12. The arc of the journey the film takes one on is dramatic and emotionally powerful closely tied to a complex sequence of one’s fashion. From this moment, we begin identifications and dis-identifications with Justine, to see a transformation in Justine and then with Claire. As outlined in (11), above: becoming more self-dependent on This leads in effect to a delicate play with the the help [sic.] from her sister and meaning of ‘world’ in the film that is the direct gradually coming to grasp with [sic.] counterpart of or complement to the deliberate her melancholia. Although this is not plodding in the Melancholia-as-a-world-perhaps- an instant fix, the crucial thing to note about-to-smash-into-our-world metaphor. Here is is that Justine ceases to resist her an outline very rough, massively over-crude sketch feelings and enters a gradual phase of of the main elements of this sequence (abstracting untangling her condition. Depicted by again from person-sensitive issues such as one’s her increased overt affection and care experience or otherwise with melancholia): for [Claire’s] young child, we can see Justine making genuine attempts to, A. From the start of the prelude, Justine is an not reject her fate but, accept Other, a haunted figure. melancholia… The result of this is that for the first time in the film, we see her B. Then, from the start of Part 1, she seems transform from metaphorically already perhaps just a normal gal, a normal bride. living in death – consumed by (Look at her giggling in the car at the failure melancholia – to her entering the 6 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       of the chauffeur to get the limousine to living and embracing powerful penetrate its way up the chateau’s winding moments of love for her family and road.) acceptance of her melancholic disposition which cannot be escaped. C. But we come to see gradually that she is …Justine…has to stop denying haunted. That she has been putting a brave [melancholia] to herself and face on things. That her smiles are largely a wallowing in the vast comforts of self- (sometimes bravura) performance. As already pity. This is the metaphor [...] which mentioned, it’s understandable perhaps that Von Trier encapsulates so well in the she should be so, when one starts to stunning sequence of Justine lying appreciate her (largely dreadful) place within naked before Melancholia. This is the her family (Her depressed mood is first first time in the film that we see her brought out by her parents’ truly-terrible stop running.” This intriguing take – ‘wedding speeches’), job, life. The film on what (if interpreted-) otherwise explores the reasons forvi as well as the (see endnote 11) I find the least unreasoned-ness of depression (It is not as if impressive scene in the film – actually Justine’s (dismal) life is enough reason to be fits pretty neatly with the ‘sequence’ permanently melancholic. On the contrary, of psychological turns that I depict in we eventually realise with her that even in section 12, above. Its main defect it the valley of the shadow of death there is seems to me is that it does not every reason to feel love and even joy. To account for why she is naked, and why escape the confines of one’s mind as it has she seems to be erotically aroused, or been… The film is an increasingly convincing a seductress, at this moment. (as one watches it, as it goes into depth) {sidenote viii} portrayal of melancholia (of ‘depression’). Of how it is based on something – and based on ix. Very unfortunately, as I detail in nothing. And of how it can be accepted – and sidenotes xiii-xvii, below, Shaviro thus overcome.). The film undercuts the rejects this element of Justine’s absurdity – the widespread, ghastly illusion – journey. He speaks (p.12) of Justine of the idea that one can be ‘made’ happy by implicitly gesturing at a “’fantasy of things (especially, by things).7 Over and over, the future’ when she cares for Leo”. even into Part 2 of the film, characters insist No: she is mourning a sense of that Justine ought to be happy; and there is lostness and a lost future; and we endless talk of Justine (and eventually Claire, should all mourn for such loss when it too, talks this way about herself) being made affects (those who are collectively) our to be happy. The skin-crawling ghastliness of children, especially when we bear the scene where the bride is supposed to toss some responsibility for the loss (as, in her bouquet, the uncomprehending smiling the real world, we (often) faces of those staring up at her at this point, is do). {sidenote ix} a lovely visual version of this. The point, we eventually understand (and experience?), is x. Mark Fisher (cited by Shaviro, on p.1), that, when one really lets go of the counter- writes that “it is easier to imagine the productive effort to project a state that is not end of the world than it is to imagine one’s present state, only then can one start to the end of capitalism”. Joel Kovel’s The attain a kind of contentment, a joy in the Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism moment. or the End of the World (Zed Books, 2007, 2nd Edition) is actually the key   7 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       D. She is othered, then, in her depression; and text here. Shaviro’s remark (p.1) that we keep veering back to her, in our “Melancholia affords us a truly recognition of the madness of her (our) depressing realisation. It shows us that world.8 these well-to-do people would rather see the whole world come to an end, E. But we gradually come to appreciate that than give up even the tiniest fraction the wedding party is a hyperbole; it is not of their wealth, power and privilege”, even meant to be realistic. This is most stark his accurate dissection of the hubris of in the behaviour of the the character of Jack property, connects in my view with his (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s boss (as remark (p.4) that “We are given the grotesque and cruel as anything out of de prospect – or better, the tableau – of Sade – and he is the ‘best man’!) and his the end of the world as paralysis and minion, Tim (Brady Corbet). This is a kind of impossibility”, in the following sense: Kafkaesque absurdist extreme of no-escape: It is not just that the rich are The profit-motive and a rigorously utilitarian destroying the world. It is that we attitude to other people won’t leave you aren’t doing nearly enough to stop alone for even one moment, not even at your them. We are by and large willingly wedding. This gives us some insight into our depressed into stasis. It is in this market-mad world, by touching context that the film ought to be uncomfortably on what might well be heard (as I press in sections 20-33) as a claimed to be its contemporary essence; and call to ‘arms’. While the rich play, the it gives us some insight into Justine’s world. In a planet burns; we need to start to burn world of depression-retreat, of being locked with anger that this be so, and find in one’s own ego, and of times of high some way to stop it being so. anxiety, everything can seem extreme: too {sidenote x} much trouble, such that one cannot even lift one’s leg into the bathtub; Or everything a xi. As Shaviro helpfully puts it (p.6), “…for tremendous threat that can’t be overcome. [Justine] the catastrophe has already The wedding party gives us Justine’s world: happened. The end of existence holds we eventually inhabit that world (as if) from no additional terrors; there is literally the inside. We realise something about the nothing left to worry about.” Though world of the unhappy; just how deeply it we should note that there can of differs from the world of the happy. The only course be something worse than way to come to see something like that is death, certainly for the individual: some kind of extreme vicarious experience: namely, endless torture. Roughly this such as that of a wedding-from-hell which is is thus another major feared end- really a wedding in hell (Hell being not, as point of psychopathology, shared by one of Sartre’s characters said, other people, many anxiety-depression scenarios of but rather, contrariwise, the felt absence, the neurosis and delusions of psychosis unreachability, of other people, even in their (and of course by superstitious presence, and their deep failure too to reach religions). {sidenote xi} oneself). xii. As I explicate in sections 22-6, the F. Thus Part 1: Justine’s world. Part 2 adds into worst happening in fact literally starts Justine’s world – which now, from a to set the scene for Justine to emerge complicated dance of outside and inside, of from the potentially-endless retreat actuality and possibility and impossibility that is severe depression (For 8 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       (No-one could be quite as bad as Justine’s discussion, see 2.3 of my Wittgenstein boss), we know, and come to know better still Among the Sciences, Farnham: in the same way, as we see her (Justine) in her Ashgate, 2012, edited by Simon fuller abjection – Claire’s world. In Part 1, we Summers. Cf. also section 4 of probably didn’t like Claire terribly much. In Shaviro.). {sidenote xii} Part 2, we come to appreciate the terrible difficulty of living with someone like Justine xiii. Shaviro (p.13) writes of Leo “standing (and with someone like John (Kiefer in for what Lee Edelman calls Sutherland)!). We come to appreciate Claire. “reproductive futurism”. Edelman Her patience, her love. We come to know and shows how the figure of the Child “has to be touched by her self, her world. Her come to embody for us the telos of ordinary unhappiness and happinesses, the the social order and come to be seen ordinary anxieties of life (Claire, John tells us, as the one for whom that order is held “gets anxious so easily”…). She is closer in perpetual trust””. I confess to probably for many viewers to being a natural finding it profoundly depressing that avatar for oneself. Shaviro and Edelman despise this idea, which to many previous G. We also gradually come to understand generations would have appeared how inadequate she is to the threat of death. what it is: the most elementary Two worlds may be about to collide. Her’s common-sense. As I argue in my talk and Justine’s; Earth’s and Melancholia’s. The “Love or justice?” (Conference: second Part of the film is no more (and no Changing the Climate: Utopia, less) realistic than the first Part. It is a deep Dystopia and Catastrophe, Monash engagement with ‘the reality principle’, in the University, Melbourne, Australia, 30 shape of utter vulnerability, death and its August – 1 September 2010, denial. This blue planet, our double, which http://rupertsread.blogspot.co.uk/201 shows us (from the prelude sequence 0/-10/utopias-changing-climate- onwards) the arbitrariness of our placedness conference.html), and in my “Care, and ‘security’ in the universe, and which Love and Our Responsibility to the crashes into us in spite of our best science, is Future” (Arena 35/36, 2011, pp.115- in this sense no less (but also no more) 123), the appalling way in which we unrealistic than the wedding party of Part 1. are currently complicit in the slow- And, just as Justine struggles with the latter, motion destruction of that order so Claire, in all her caringness, cannot cope speaks volumes about our values. with the former. Rather than placing ‘freedom’ and material gratification centrally, any H. We pitied Justine earlier, and tried to sane society will place centrally what it empathise with her. But our position was no can pass on to its most vulnerable more secure (than hers). This is what Claire’s members, who are its future: its arc tells us. Facing death, being-towards- children. See also sidenote xv, death, is a near-impossible challenge. below.{sidenote xiii} I. But we want to rise to that challenge. We xiv. For without this gift, Leo lacks want not to be Claire. Gradually, in Part 2, resources to cope with his situation. there is something to fear (Which there As his essay comes to a climax, Shaviro wasn’t, in Part 1, and yet angst was there, claims (p.13) that the figure of the uncanny, massive). Claire majors on child as the film comes towards its   9 SEQUENCE  1.2  (2014)     Rupert  Read       (ordinary) anxiety, ordinary unhappiness, climax is “deeply problematic”. I don’t rather than on depression. But these are not accept this. On the contrary: Justine’s so far from being two sides of the same coin. relationship with Leo at this point Two worlds that can be seen clearer in the models the sanity that could enable us reflection of each other’s image. In the to avert climate-apocalypse (see the situation now unfolding, in the “dance of notes immediately preceding and death”, without undue attachment to life and following this one). What enables her to desire, in the dance of Claire and Justine, at last to come to life is the realisation the depressive sister is the better off. (This is that this child is connected to her, the film’s distinctive contribution to without any other parent (Claire at this investigating the ecology of depression; in a point being incapable, and John certain ‘niche’, depression is adaptive.vii We dead), and that her caring for him is will return more than once to this point.) As long overdue (the long-delayed Melancholia approaches, melancholia ebbs. building-caves together). He is afraid The planet is (of course) not literally and about to be extinguished. She can melancholia;9 it was just what occasioned the do something, in the time remaining. bringing of something to a head: The proper She can care for the future; she can be awareness of the preciousness of this present for and to the child. The child’s timeless moment. future – precisely the figure that as a species we need to defend from J. Thus as Part 2 proceeds further, we avert ourselves (and especially from the 1%) from Claire10 and swing towards Justine – breaks through to her, now. And she again. She becomes the well-adapted one, in breaks, and emerges from her ‘sleep’, this new environment, this new world-with-a- her excessive retreat. {sidenote xiv} deadline. xv. Shaviro (p.13) castigates Justine (!) for K. But this too needs to be interrupted. For caring for Leo more than for Claire. Justine is caught up still in an unhealthy state Justine does care profoundly and of mind. She wants life to end.11 She is directly for Claire, at the death: see the relieved by the prospect of the world coming remainder of section 22, supra. But it is to an end;viii now she is – at last – able to live! also appropriate for her to offer more Our attraction to her hatred for the Earth / for care to Leo: because children are not life is of a kind with our attraction to her very able to care for themselves, to protect state of mind. (I return to this point, below.) themselves, as adults are.{sidenote xv} L. This isn’t what we sought yet; this isn’t yet a xvi. Shaviro helpfully calls it “a beautiful truly authentic life; this is far from being semblance” (p.12), and likens it in that freedom from the confines, the iron cage, of specific connection to von Trier’s own the ego. Justine’s nihilistic words to Claire film. I find less helpful his remark may attract us, but then on reflection repel us (p.13) that the ‘cave’, which is actually from her again; and appropriately so. The a kind of outline ‘teepee’, is “a self- repulsion is accentuated by her brutality consciously exotic image”. The toward Abraham, the film’s Turin horse; and ‘teepee’, made of natural materials, we should note that it is at this moment in treading lightly on the earth, might the film, as she realises perhaps that there is suggest a greater sense of ‘oneness’ no escape, that, significantly, she (and we) with nature than is to be found in see the effects of Melancholia for the first 4x4s, limousines, etc – i.e. than is to be 10