More than one hundred years ago, during a trial opposing the small kingdom of Romania to the French entrepreneur André Hallier (it is about the building of a part of the Constanta harbour), the would-be French president Raymond Poincaré uttered one of the dicta which will label for over a century Romanian cultural space. As he said : “Que voulez-vous, nous sommes ici 
aux portes de l’Orient, ou tout est pris à la légère...”. The colonial undertones of this utterance, opposing an “anarchic” East to a “well-ordered” West, where presumably everything is taken seriously, know a long history of appropriations and parodies, but seem to have been a constant, albeit cynical response of Romanian elites – in a sort of schizophrenic appropriation of the Other’s gaze – to different states of affairs which befall this part of the world during the last century. Here (or there), the things are like that, as if a latent natural leaning towards corruption, disorder and complacency are inscribed in Romanian DNA. Just as if blatant stupidity, authoritarian policies and nepotism were evils one cannot oppose. The success of such an utterance can also be explained as it echoed this time a self representation dear to Romanians, developed by the romantic reading of an ancient Balkan legend, Mioritza, revived in 19^th century during the national building process which conveyed literature and history as much as it conveyed military fervour. The kernel of this romantic reading is briefly this: in front of the inexorable fate there is no sense in resisting. Death will have us all in the end. According to this dicta Romanians are calm, peaceful, albeit disordered. But are they?

One cannot escape the feeling that the nowadays institutional power sees the Romanian demos through both the lens of Poincaré’s scold and the defeatist cum romantic reading of Mioritza. And it is indeed what the cultural right struggled to inculcate not wasting any chance in conveying all means of symbolic violence ranging from institutional legitimation to more pervasive forms of argument from authority, such as stating purely and simply – I say so… What they are creating is their version of an idealized people. “True” Romanian subjects are peaceful and docile, just like the anhistorical shepherd of Mioritza, calmly waiting for his end. When caught with the pants down, and publicly presented as corrupt, potentates of the day will mumble in a voice: well, remember, we are here at the gates of the Orient, there’s nothing serious about these frauds. Indeed, things might have continued like this as long as the neoliberal consensus would function on the backs of corporate blue collars and on the wasted lives of the struggling proletariat, who, facing deindustrialisation, fled in all the four corners of Europe in search of mere survival. And then the crisis struck. Since then, the political spectrum in Romania could be better depicted as this trailer of the Legio video game presents the “puny kingdom of Belalagusia”, that is a spectacular, devoid of life and cut off from the people, “game of conquest”. If the austerity measures taken during 2010 by appeal to a fiscal “state of emergency”, haven’t sparked much opposition, except the poorly staged trade union protests, a strange conundrum of events seem to have opened the stage for an authentic civic protest.

One might find just and clear statements of facts here as well as here. As it has been stated, the Palestinian-born doctor situation was an unlikely catalyst, which prompted many a commentators to link the sudden popular support with the vaguely similar situation created at the beginning of ’89 revolution around Lazlo Tokes, in Timisoara. But unlikely as it may seem this sudden popular backing of the Health ministry official, more improbable, appeared the fact in its bear materiality of seeing people taking on the streets of Bucharest, for five days now. The lack of a culture of protest, the crisis of democracy as well as the signs of entering in the age of post-politics, seemed to have been for a while the distinctive traits of contemporary Romanian political culture. One may add to this the retreat of the public intellectuals of the 90s in the spheres of established power, as well as an increase recourse to emergency measures taken by the government, be they in terms of taxes or in the sphere of employment. It is precisely against this grim background positively entertained by a media preaching the “apocalypse at the gates” and glorifying obscenity, that the institutional power found itself facing a first authentic uprising in the last 20 years. Something has changed. Here (or there) at the gates of the Orient things have started to be taken seriously. Here (or there) the humble shepherd stopped dreaming about his end and started to worry about it.

1. Authenticity: A first question which arises is that of the authenticity of such a movement. After abortive attempts to mimic the Occupy movement, which haven’t sparked much interest in the public sphere, protesters gathered in pitting, this time, clearer messages against authority. At a first view, one can remark that none of the protests (at least in Bucharest) has been organized according to the Public gathering act. Being spontaneous, it came short as regards to cold legality, which requires a 3 day notice. Failing to comply to such an obligation constitutes a misdemeanour. As such, participants to protests, took the risk of being fined and, eventually, filed by the authorities. Such a risk, though minor in itself, stands for a more significant symbolic act. When a threshold in the relation with the institutional power has been reached, breaking the law didn’t seem a deterrent for acting. Moreover, it signalled a subjective position of the protesters qua actors in relation to the power. It is thus significant, that when asked by Gendarmerie forces what they are doing in the streets the usual response will be an appeal to the higher level norm, i.e. the constitutional right to express disagreement, protected under the freedom of speech. Such a sudden empowerment signalled also a reflexive stand of re-appropriating the original status of the primal constitutional subject, the people. Even more, the plurality of views expressed in the public space (ranging from calls to return to monarchy, to sophisticated post-political projects) during the protest days along to a shared discontent of the spectacular “political” spectrum, attest once more for the authenticity of such an up-rising.

2. Return to politics : Some commentators of Romanian protests have justly read the events as “a rebirth of the political nation”, while stressing out the proper political dimension of opposing authority and cutting with a tradition which linked citizenship to religion and ethnicity. It can also be added that the appropriation of the public space, specifically of the historical Piata Universitatii, tried, at least unconsciously, to place the movement in a continuation of the ‘89 revolution, but also of the 90s anti-communist protests. In this manner, is seems that after 20 years of apathy, the “stolen” revolution returned on the streets of Bucharest, and the body politic resurged once more from the divided and atomized population. As one of my best friends said, after returning from the Piata, “my heart was filled with joy … if this isn’t the anatomy of freedom, I don’t know what freedom is”. As a distant spectator, I cannot reply otherwise than my joy stems from seeing resistance sparking and people re-creating itself as a demos, asserting its sovereignty. The common Romanian has been subjected to humiliation, spoliation and finally, indifference for too long. A subject imagined by the revolutionaries of 1848, mocked by the plutocracy of the 19^th century, regressed to the status of a tribe by the fascisms of the 20^th century, dissolved by the repressive “really existing socialism”, and turned into a mass of meaningless abstract signifiers by the IMF technocrats – the people of the constitution became only a ghost. But it is terrible when ghosts return and they claim their due.

3. Violence : One thing should be clear from the start : violence is not and should never be justifiable. On the other hand violence is necessary to any serious attempt of undermining the status quo. Which brings us to the paradox of the inherent relationship between violence and any form of asserting sovereignty. One cannot affirm himself as a subject situated supra legem, where is the true place of sovereignty, without exerting a form of violence, be it only in symbolic form. Of course, there is a serious gap between symbolic forms of violence and true, brutal force. But in a clash whose very stake is the statement of supremacy (remember that the protesters demand the president’s resignation), material forms of violence pertain to the adversarial position of the conflict opposing the state to its subjects. There has been much talk these days in Romania over the illegal and unjust violence of some of the protesters. Conspiracy theories and accusations coming from both sides never cease to circulate : the Gendarmerie accusing protesters of violence, the protesters accusing the Gendarmerie of abuses. The media praying on catastrophic messages and insisting on “battle”, “anarchy”, “hooligans”, “anarchists”, decrying the damages. Then followed the creation of a mass hysteria against football supporters who, on Sunday evening, changed the peaceful protest into what was described as street-fights. Of course, there are many truths about abuses and violence on both sides, and every attentive reader of Foucault may have an idea about the ambivalent role of the marginals during uprisings. As such, they are both the ones able and ready for direct conflict, but also the mass of manoeuvre of the policing forces, as many are already under the surveillance of authorities. However, the debate over different categories of protesters (the “good” protesters, the “stand-by”, the “evil anarchists”) seem to overlook the obvious fact, that by its very form, a protest is disruptive, it does violence to a certain order of things, it puts into question the very core of authority.

4. Again violence : Moreover, what is constantly ignored, is also the level of the inscription of violence in Romanian reality as such. Not only Romanian society, still very traditional in many respects, sustains strict hierarchies founded on ownership and affluence which are blatant (just try to get a meal in a good Romanian restaurant in province when the local potentates are present and you’ll know what I mean), but also the constant uncertainty fuelled serious frustration. We are fucking angry say the rioters in Bucharest. They are youngsters, not all of them hooligans, not all of them “baieti de cartier” (corner boys), not all of them so young – there are hipsters, rockers (there are quite a few in Romania) and punks, skinheads blending with gypsies (who have already been beaten by the gendarmerie). And how could you be otherwise than angry, when the authorities supposed to represent you have made a common rule of breaking the social pact, when the exception has become the rule and the rulers of the day defile obscenely in the media scolding the poor for being poor, the sickened for being sick and the weak for being at all? I will not develop here on the systemic violence inherent to capitalism – just a quote as a response to the artificial awe on the TV screens in front of the outbursts of anger : “is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement? (Marx, Philosophy, 1847)”. In relation to this, one may remember Foucault’s statement in the debate with the Maoists over the concept of popular justice : “the masses, when they perceive somebody to be an enemy, when they decide to punish this enemy (…) do not rely on an abstract universal idea of justice, they rely on their own experience, that of the injuries they have suffered, that of the way in which they have been wronged, in which they have been oppressed”(Foucault, Popular justice, p.9). In other words, once the authority, through its actions is identifiable as an enemy, as the people decide it as an enemy, they return the wrongs they have been subjected to.

5. Shame : It is not by accident that the event sparking the protests has been something which can easily be described as a public humiliation the president subjected Raed Araffat to. To some extent, the tasteless scolding has made it easy for the regular Romanian to take awareness of his being part to a “tradition of the oppressed”. As the media objectified this power relation in a concrete manner, the pressure has certainly came to a point were a simple reaction of anger, or a retreat in the relative comfort of home was not possible anymore. The Thing continued to stay there, un-symbolized, persisting, calling for words and actions, for ritual and exorcism. Then things become political. For sure, something happened at the level of subjectivity which made the image of the president to appear  precisely as an embodiment of the phallic father, the horrible little man who is force devoid of authority. Maybe it was the all-too presence of the object which made people think (yes, even common people do think), that enough is enough. Or maybe there was no place to run to anymore. Seen through these lenses, reactions politicians uttered yesterday- such as that of one the governing party’s  senators, or the Romanian ministry’s of foreign affairs – seem illuminating for the overt humiliating representation of the people. As such, for the Senator, the protesters expose a “worm mentality” ( i.e. they are actually worms which have a mentality, if that could ever make any sense), as for the ministry of foreign affairs they are the product of “inept and violent slums”. It goes without saying that such sheer distaste will not help much in appeasing the conflict.

6. Politics again : We don’t know for sure what the outcome of this up-rising will consist in. However, these protests express a rupture in the ways of doing politics in Romania. If historically, social uprisings and revolutions in this part of Europe have resorted to different forms of authority to guarantee and legitimize their actions (one might recall Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 pretending to act in the name of the Czar; the revolutionaries of 1848, reassuring the Ottomans of their loyalty towards the Porte), nowadays protesters do not have any Big Other on which to rely. Moreover, they do not act as members of a group, be it trade unions or political parties. They act only as the people, in its bare life, trying to reclaim its place in the political order, while trying to recover the political itself in a world from which it has been excluded and reduced to pure economical speculation or assertions of authority. They are as such devoid of a stable subjectivity, but are subjectivity. And this must draw our attention to the last crucial point, that is the future of these protests. On Thursday, the opposition parties announce organized protests of their members and sympathizers in support of the movement. What is going to happen to this form of subjectivity once the powers of the spectacle will be on stage again? What is going to happen at all with these spontaneous burst of anger, solidarity and reclaim of sovereignty? If the state of exception in which we live draws on a separation between law and life which goes together with a continual investment of life by law (in its residual, marginal form, of force of law), what is at stake in every authentic protest is the meaning of life itself. Its accomplishment stays for a regain of life, but its failure, is the return into the shadows of worldlessness.

Bibliography:

Michel Foucault, “On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. C. Gordon. ,Trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshal, J. Mepham, and K. Sober. New York, Pantheon Books, (1980).

Karl Marx, The poverty of philosophy, 1847 available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/index.htm

Yet Another Disaster Film : On Lars von Trier’s Melancholia As a Joke 

In May 1888 Nietzsche indulged himself in writing what he called a letter  which will become over time one of the most brilliant pieces of cultural criticism. His title is The Case of Wagner and it closely scrutinizes the idiosyncrasies in the work of the German musician along with his that of its intellectual context. Wagner seems to be a symptom  of the fin-de-siècle, to such an extent that Nietzsche rightly asks himself whether he is not less then a musician, but purely and simply “une névrose” ”(Nietzsche, Wagner 1, p. 241). One of the German philosopher’s diagnostics could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to nowadays cultural atmosphere. Along his lines, “[n]othing is more modern than […] total sickness, […] maturity and over-excitement of the neurological mechanism”(Nietzsche, Wagner 1, p. 242). Let alone the late 19^th century pseudo-psychological slip, which we could easily excuse, one can find these three patterns almost everywhere in the nowadays sphere of cultural production, be it “high” or “low”. Take for instance the Coca Cola Zero advertising that I usually see at the cinema before the screening of a movie (not owning a TV set, this is the only time when I have the chance to relate with this kind of work). What one sees, is “sickness” (take a look at the not-so-good-looking guy in the bar and his supposedly ridiculous punishment), “maturity” (the hero knows how to handle things), and moreover “over-excitement” (the pressure of timing, the riot police/SWAT team uniforms as well as the climactic happy end). We might indeed live in a libidinal age of culture, with all its unpleasant consequences. Now, if one could be quite charitable with regards to such forms of aesthetics pertaining to the realm of advertising, one should expect more from the following movie, especially when the trailer presents it in such a promising manner. Once again, unfortunately, Nietzsche proves to be right.

Before getting into the core of the issue, I think some additional remarks seem necessary. I am by no means a Lars von Trier specialist, and even less than a fan. I appreciated to obsession his Europa (mostly because I was 11 when I saw it for the first time and it might have stricken a chord). I found Dogville brilliant. And Antichrist unwittingly beautiful – if one can get over seeing a clitoris cut by old (!) scissors and a penis turned to a mass of blood and flesh, it is still a cinematic masterpiece. Yet, I felt (and I still feel) a complete revulsion before Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the dark, and especially Manderlay. So, for a while, his movies remained for me a kind of a mystery, placed under the sign of a radical love/hate scission. I didn’t have the time, nor the interest into getting closer into this enigma, until now. Basically, this might be my first engagement with von Trier’s cinema. And things prove to be this way, because, Melancholia was different. It simply didn’t struck me at all. Or if it did, it was more in an unpleasant manner. It left me cold and then, only then, it touched me as a deeper enigma.Melancholia was a fly-by, and definitely the message didn’t reach its addressee. In this sense, I think that this failed aesthetic experience could be edifying with regards to what I think does not function in von Trier’s work.

Beauty, Sickness and Ideology

In order to explore this unachieved encounter, I would treat Melancholia as a symptom, both of von Trier’s cinema, and more generally of our ‘high’ culture. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, you may find a short synopsis here. In a nutshell, the movie presents itself as being “a beautiful one about the end of the world”. We cannot miss the statement, which is, to some extent, emphatic and arrogant. It is a movie designed to break with a vulgar, consumerist, mass, (mis)treatment of romance (see, for instance, the director’s statement). Additionally, it tries to represent the end of the world in a romanticized (and I’m not being sarcastic) manner. Indeed, the Wagnerian overtones are there – both musically and symbolically. The film starts with the “Prelude” for the first act of the opera Tristan und Isolde, punctuating the outset of what will be constructed as a tragic representation. Symbolically, it encapsulates some of the Wagnerian themes present mostly in Gotterdammerung. The majestic cum theatrical presence of an imminent and grandiose end, the mourning and loss, not to speak of the fire scotching the earth, they all point out into this direction. At this juncture, the film presents itself as a (and this nobody could have missed) a variation on the theme of the twilight of civilization. There is definitely a presence of a twilight, of a dark, decaying, end approaching since the very beginning. The static, almost photographic and abstract scenes in the prelude and recurring at times during the film, which emphasize geometrical forms, the presence of the sundial, the angelic/Ophelia-like Kristen Dunst floating from one scene to the other, the horses falling into the ground and the insistence on stumbling into the telluric complete the patchwork of references to Durer’s Melancholia.

In addition to this, there are countless of other references to the 16^th century (I recall noticing Peter Breughel the Elder’s, The time of the Cockaigne and The Hunters in the Snow ), the pre-Raphaelites (Millais’s Ophelia), and even abstractionists (was it Kandinsky?) which can as well stay in an exhibition entitled Melancholia (by the way, I visited the one in Paris held at the Grand Palais in 2006, and many of them were placed there). Not to be mistaken, von Trier has done his homework. He engages with the ‘high culture’, with the tradition of Melancholia, of the Black Sun protecting the geniuses since Renaissance (for a good historical insight on the issue, see Culianu’s 1484). And he shows us this, not making any kind of compromise. The statement is “this is an art movie”. The injunctions is, “be attentive, I am doing ‘high art’ here”.

The end of the world has been the material for cultural artifacts (both ‘high’ and ‘low’) since time immemorial. From the Apocalypse to Armagheddon (1998, Michael Bay), passing through the millenarist movements and the Communist manifesto, fear and hope where inextricably linked to the image of the end of times. If the common Hollywood disaster movie would speculate lamentably either on hope, on bravery of men fighting destiny (and winning!), by throwing bombs into the sun (again Armagheddon), defeating aliens in hopeless (yet successful) battles (Independence Day), finding cures to unimaginable diseases, you will not see anything of this in Melancholia. Remember? It is a high culture product. To spoil you the pleasure, everybody dies in the end. The world comes to pure destruction and there is no miraculous, nor human force or idea which could stop the planet hidden beneath the sun (the Black Sun) to hit and utterly eradicate life on earth. To be sure, there will be no new and fresh start for humanity, nor at least for ants, scorpions and alike. Life will completely disappear in a fire reminiscent of the old burying rites. And it might be here where my disagreement starts. If we agree that ideology pervades both high and low levels of culture, that is both Wagner and Lady Gaga, we should be more attentive to the ways in which it operates in its pretended non-ideological instances. For instance, when American pilots destroy aliens in Independence Day, or Bruce Willis saves the world inArmagheddon, you don’t need to bear the name Marx in order to understand the hidden glorifying agenda of an aesthetically unsophisticated film. The same should be applied to ‘beautiful’ stories of the end of the world, however. My contention is, that, in spite of its overtly anesthetization of the end of the world, Melancholia conceals, as any other cultural artifact an ideological narrative which, in itself can be understood as an injunction.

Lars von Trier’s pharmakeia 

The most striking for any disaster movie viewer before von Trier’s Melancholia is undoubtedly the lack of agitation, the complacency and the morbid calm with which the main character awaits the imminent end to produce itself. It is common wisdom, that if you are going to be hit by another planet, there isn’t much to be done about it. Yet, other characters react somehow, either by suicide, either by hysteria, though nobody sees much of the panic one could expect from such a disaster. Life continues calmly in the aseptic country estate while Melancholia strikes. There is a simple and somehow futile opposition to disaster. In the final scene, sheltered in what resembles the skeleton of a hut (or a pyre !), characters hold hands and await for the earth to be scorched. And this might be the key to the enigma. Justine (the main character), seems since the beginning to be under the spell of the hidden planet. A languid depression recalling acedia (yet doubled by manic outbursts) takes hold on her. You cannot really miss the way in which life seems devoid of purpose, her feet can hardly move, the meatloaf tastes like ash – any reader of Sartre’s La nausée could rightly diagnose her – there is the nausea, which historically is the malady of the West. Von Trier doesn’t economize on the register of sickness and decay. There is the sickness of the high classes, the sickness pervading from the family relation and the list could continue. However, at the end of the film, it is Justine who comes with the ‘proper’ way of confronting the end. And this is nothing less than the aforementioned wooden sticks forming a hut and the strange ceremonial. Again, we should not be mistaken, she is not a religious fanatic, nor any overt reference to religion is present in the film’s text. But the scene it is inextricably ‘religious’ as such. As futile at it may seem, the shelter is there, in front of the disaster the characters reconstruct the human, all too human reaction to fear before death.

Von Trier’s movies bear witness of a theological subtext which slips at times in the film’s narrative. The ultimate-victim attitude of female characters in Breaking the waves and Dancer in the dark, recalls hagiographies of old times. The same is true for Dogville and Manderlay, which build upon themes of redemption, retribution and sin. Antichrist is a pandemonium of our post-theological times. Where could one place Melancholia in this line ? It definitely bears the traces of a poetics of loss. Indeed, the acedia was a medieval sickness with life as such (von Trier says bluntly through Justine’s pseudo-philosophical ramblings – ‘life is evil’). A sickness and a sin which would strike mainly those who where most exposed to thought or to prayer (poets and monks, painters and writers, See Agamben, pp. 3-11). Briefly, it was a predecessor of modern ennui or spleen. In acedia, the tormented soul relates to its ‘true’ existence, that of pure materiality which has been deprived of divinity, of God since the primeval sin. As such, it is no accident that Justine rejects the postcard from Eden. Moreover, acedia is pure ambivalence, as in this encounter with the Real of complete contingency, one has the experience of the loss of God and as such could redeem herself. Not to succomb to acedia after its experience, is the path to sanctity. From this point of view, the film can be read precisely as the story of an attempt to recreate the religious event as such.

To conclude, the underlying narrative, is that of the (im)possibility of overcoming Melancholia. The tools are nothing less then some sticks and the power of the ritual, of a tradition with which the characters seem to have caught the ties, yet it seems the only way of rendering the end meaningful.

It’s the end of the world as we know it …

Let’s jump out of the film’s cinematic texture, and engage with the context in which it was produced. The end has been here for quite a while. I myself seem to have experienced the end of the world three times now – first the fall of communism in 1989 (which, was however, the end of aworld ), then 9/11 (which was the end of another world, that of the end of history), and last, September 2008 (which was for some signaling the end of capitalism). Books recalling the end of the world have been here occupying a spectrum from Oswald’s Spengler’s Decline of the West (there is no coincidence mentioning him here) to Living in the End Times. Each of these theoretical representations tried to find a way out or a scapegoat for the deadlock which history has brought upon us. There, is, not only a tradition tracing back to the Apocalypse, but also one tracing to modern anxieties about the future of the polity. The last financial crisis, which turned out to be an economical depression, which turned out to be not the last, affected not only the political imaginary, but the imaginary as such. The End is here, so speculating on our contemporary eschatology, seems to be at hand. Let’s assume for a moment that Melancholia wouldn’t be a planet and even less than a metaphor for an affect but the crisis of capitalism. That the high-class characters in their manor by the lake would still be the high-class characters in the manner by the lake. That they are acting just as they are acting. What do we get ? The very way in which political actors reacted to the real planet of hedge-funds striking the markets, that is, either politically and socially suicidal measures, either trying to take shelter in ‘magic caves’ while repeating the mantras of economical freedom and austerity measures. What would they tell about these actions? There was nothing else to do. What does Justine do in front of Melancholia ? Tells us that life as such is evil and that there is not a pity that it will be wasted, then takes shelter in a ritual. What would have Madoff and his likes think about lives of others, life in general?

No, Melancholia is not only about the economical crisis. This would be a cheap and easy metaphor. Real artists, dwell in the realm of the abstract, ‘the higher truth, the perfection’. A more appropriate signified for this metaphor, more on the taste of von Trier would be that of the collapse of meaning in contemporary societies (but isn’t the collapse of markets the precise double, the doppelganger of the semiotic crisis ?). The spleen persistent in the arts milieu for decades now, the pervasive stupidity of the media, the rampant and unveiled affirmation of nonsense as political discourse, the constant violation of laws by those who are supposed to protect them, the resurgence of fascism, of cultural, social and ethnic division and intolerance, of violence as political  passage à l’acte, aren’t they, the signs of what Badiou coined as ‘worldlessness’ ? Aren’t they our Melancholia ? So what is, then, injunction the film whispers us? There is nothing to do. Take shelter in what is left of our traditions, in our world. In any case there is no escape. But this is the only thing to do. One could risk even a radical conservative reading of the film. Our Western culture (‘life’) is endangered and there is nothing left to do except accepting the imminent pyre of flames. It is worth noting that all the characters in the film are played by ‘white’ actors. As such, one could only be puzzled by the aesthetic effect of the Gotterdammerung – like finale. What we see, it is a false exit, and a glorification of the ‘deeds of men’ (and women!), who placidly accept faith as such in a suicide fantasy.

Lignes de fuite

Finally, I propose moving a step further and ask together with Nietzsche whether von Trier doesn’t propose us exactly “an apostasy and return to sickly Christian and obscurantist ideals?” as a cure for the melancholy tormenting our ‘Western’ culture. Shouldn’t we, if there is still place for a we, oppose this return of the worst ideological veils, that of religion-as-ritual, of the ‘there is nothing to do’, of the melancholic sickness, of nihilism ? And moreover, shouldn’t we try to learn again to value life, once again and in spite of the general decay?

To conclude, again, a quote from Nietzsche:

“The trust in life is gone: life itself has become a problem. -Yet one should not jump to the conclusion that this necessarily makes one gloomy, a barn owl! Even love of life is still possible, -only one loves differently . . .  It is like the love for a woman who gives us doubts”  (Nietzsche,Wagner 2, p. 280).

Not to forget, consider Kundera’s definition of kitsch as an obfuscation of the excremental in culture: “kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence” (Kundera, p. 312). Where are the terrifying effects of atmosphere collapsing in von Trier’s film ? Where is the fear and the struggle ?

Bibliography :

Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas [:] Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, Ronald L. Martinez, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Ioan P. Culianu, 1484 [:] Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Milan Kundera, L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être, Paris, Gallimard, 1984.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Case of Wagner : A Musician’s Problem” in Id., Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, Judith Norman trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 231-262 [1888].

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Nietzsche contra Wagner : From the Files of a Psychologist” in Id., Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, Judith Norman trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 263- 282[1888].

I should have known it before. If you have a good resolution, please try to stick to it. For instance if you do not like Lars von Trier and you have solemnly sworn that you will not see any of his new movie, do not see them. Even if the trailer looks nice.  Even if the movie was praised in Cannes. Even if there is naked Kirsten Dunst in it. Even if the director says that he does not like his own film which you think on the other hand could be a good sign. But even the best resolutions are made only to be ultimately broken, such is their sad destiny. I should begin by saying that I do not like Lars von Trier. The sophisticated intellectuals among you may now think: “OK, so what´s the point? Return to your Sex and the City Part Three and do not mingle with us, brilliant minds of our turbulent time!” But that would be a great injustice. I have spent the best years of my youth in the obscurity of art cinemas. I have survived without any obvious brain damage even Andrei Rublev, The Grande Bouffe and The Baby of Macon (this one partially because I succeeded to smuggle a bottle of cheap wine into the cinema). But I have left after first twenty minutes of Breaking the Waves. I hated Dancer in the Dark. Not only because Trier entirely copied the scene of the execution from Kieslowski´s Short film about Killing but also because of Trier´s method how to decimate his viewers. The first half an hour of the film basically nothing is happening. At least you may think so. In fact you are getting attached to the hero and start to feel for her however different from you she might be. If you are hooked – and Lars will make sure you are – the hell will break out. Everything will go wrong. And you are touched though you have not expected anything else. You are moved against your will. And the female hero? She will do literally nothing to save herself, with widely open innocent eyes she will march straight into the trap and then suffer till the bitter end. This is the pattern. Now you can naturally object: “And what about Dogville? There she surely revenges herself!” True, but still it takes her unbearably long time to realise that “people just ain´t no good” as Nick Cave put it when he has some sense in him and before he let himself grow this horrible thing above his lips. As for the other Trier´s films, I had given him a chance with Europa…and I fell soundly asleep after ten minutes. And no, I have not seen The Antichrist. I did not want to wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night being haunted by the image of a cut of clitoris.  The painful expression of my husband that he makes whenever this movie is mentioned persuaded me definitely though he has obviously other violent scenes haunting him that mine would have been.

Notwithstanding our common past full of misunderstandings (Lars´ and mine I mean) I went to see  Melancholia.  The previous screening just ended and we were forced to wait outside. Two ladies wanted to enjoy the overwhelming impression till the last credit. “I don´t see why they are still sitting there. The music in this movie is not good. It is so sad,” commented the young gentleman, whose task it was to check our tickets and to make sure that we are not smuggling any cheap coke or chips into the cinema where we can buy them for double price (by the way if you have switched to Vitamin Water instead of coke thinking how you are improving your health and generally the whole planet, do not be mistaken, it is still produced by Coca Cola company and yes, it contains a lot of sugar and your teeth will fall out, and no, you will not save little black children by buying Fair trade). Vox populi, vox Dei. The young gentleman was right about the music. It was sad. It was Wagner. And it was beautiful. At the beginning of the movie I was silently apologising Trier for all the bad things I had thought about him. It was a visual masterpiece and I was ready to swear that Trier is a genius. If Wagner had lived and had been looking for the director for videos to accompany his music, he would go to Trier. If Millais had lived and had painted Ophelia nowadays she would look like Kirsten Dunst. If Trier contained himself to make allegoric movies without words I would like him. Helas, it was not the case. Incapable of any continuous narration he introduced us into something which seems to be a family drama. Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, is celebrating her wedding organised for her by her loyal sister, Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Justine is basically sabotaging the whole party. Only later we learn that she already knows about the coming catastrophe (her prophetic skills being demonstrated by the fact that she rightly guesses number of the beans thrown by wedding guests into the bottle), so she might decide to deliberately destroy it all –  tell her shark-like disgusting  boss, who is chasing her even at the day of her wedding in order to get from her a new tagline for his publicity, what she really thinks of him, behave so coldly with her new husband that he is forced to leave to save the rest of his questionable dignity and of course to have sex with a complete stranger (here Trier is copying again, this time he is stealing from Francois Ozon´s 5×2).  Maybe… maybe not. Maybe is Justin this type of person who would ultimately ruin anything. But, as she repeatedly assures us, she is trying. But she is scared. Her cold-hearted mother played by as always fabulous Charlotte Rampling advises her to run away (but firstly the mother has to make a scandalous naked-truth-revealing speech at the wedding for we are still in the Scandinavian family drama for the time being). Justine knows that she cannot run away as the whole world will shortly collapse. She tries to tell her sister about her nightmarish dreams, but in vain. Everything is dissolving. And so is the movie. There are some fine and even human moments in this part of the movie and we would like to know more –  but wait, wait, this is Lars von Trier and something like a straightforward story would be simply too insulting. So we jump in the second part of the movie which is in fact nothing more than a bad science fiction. The planet Melancholia is approaching the Earth and a collision is inevitable for there is no Bruce Willis to save us in the last minute like in Armageddon. This part is more focused on Claire who is desperately trying to save her child. She is a nicer person than Justine because she seems to be loving and caring and she is the only person in the movie who has something to live for. Charlotte Gainsbourg is playing her part with less of exalted hysteria that seems to be her nature. However, our sympathy with her has its limits. From the false safety of her aristocratic house she is observing whether the Melancholia is approaching the Earth or moving away, measuring and observing again. Her sister Justine is not much of a help, dragging around the house, apparently resigned after the complete breakdown, dropping wisdom like: “Life on the Earth is evil!” sipping tea and eating her sister´s chocolate. The boredom is shortly interrupted by a nearly comic scene when Claire is trying to escape the forthcoming global catastrophe in a golf cart. Seriously, would critics leave something like that without a comment about director´s excessive pathos would it not be Trier?

If you have the impression that I have so far left out the male characters in the movie you are completely right. For they are almost non-existent.  What a bunch of sad sacks! We have the irresponsible father who even does not remember his daughter´s name, the groom for whom we have only the pity; he looks like a prototype of nice guy who always picks up the complicated woman he can nor handle neither understand and wears snow-white slips – this suspicion is confirmed when he takes of his wedding suit and we see him standing before Justine in vain hope to make love with her – the embarrassment at its purest. Then we have the boss, the typical ruthless villain, and his batman whose only task is to be used by Justine as a passive object of her sexual outburst, completely misunderstand it and hope for something more. And last but not least Kiefer Sutherland as John, Claire´s husband. He is boasting of his eighteen-holes´ golf ground, he is worried that the whole wedding fiasco is too expensive and he makes yet another one of countless failed attempts to throw out his subversive mother-in-law. When he discovers that the end is in spite of scientific theories inevitable he kills himself with his wife´s pills. Shortly, he is a coward and nobody misses him too much. The less room for men, the more for women, you would say. But even the two female characters which are supposed to be strong representations of the Fairy and the Mother did not resonate with me. The whole film did not resonate with me. It just passed by like the heroes of the film would have wished Melancholia would pass by the Earth.

Trier completely ignores the laws of physics and nature – let alone the fact that such a collision of an unknown planet with Earth is impossible, how the hell is it possible to ride a golf cart which runs on electricity completely during a blackout? Trier also completely ignores the laws of narration – story or catharsis? What outdated concepts! I think he simply profoundly dislike the mankind, including his viewers. So far so good  – he   can still be a genius. But Melancholia simply stops working after a bit, exactly like this unfortunate golf cart. However some will find hidden messages and signs. Like the one Trier´s fan who solved the mystery of nineteenth whole at the golf ground. Building upon the recent scandal, bad joke or whatever you might call it from Cannes he found the perfect explanation:first letters of Adolf Hitler´s name represent the first and the eighth letters of the alphabet, so this is the usual eighteen-wholes´ golf ground. The nineteenth whole is what comes afterwards. Had Trier known about this nearly mystic explanation he would probably be amused. As for me, whatever message he wanted to convey it did not reach me. The only true scene in this movie is when Justine is peeing with her wedding dress, a temporary relief for snobs, look the world is ending, but you can await it nonchalantly with the glass of wine on your terrace. “Shit!” says Justine to this idea of Claire but in the end it is precisely what she is doing. And the real problems are calmly rotting hidden under the hay in stables like the corpse of Claire´s husband.