{"id":282,"date":"2017-10-08T20:25:34","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T00:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=282"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:18","slug":"282","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/10\/08\/282\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Ending It All&#8221; Peter Szendy and Melancholia (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lars von Trier &quot;Melancholia&quot; - Ending scene\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fcZWZhUozr4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The 2011 film <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by director Lars Von Trier synchronizes it\u2019s ending with the end of the world, which runs the risk of overshadowing the characters and story of the film. Peter Szendy, author of the 2015 book \u201cApocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World\u201d, believes this ending is the true ending of apocalypse cinema. Szendy feels he \u201cdisappeared at the same time the last image [of the film] did,\u201d in which he became one with the last moments during the finale; The small planet Melancholia destroys the Earth with a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the music of Wagner\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tristan and Isolde<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (Szendy, 1). For Szendy, the ending embodies a \u201ctrue\u201d apocalypse genre theme: The end of the world should correspond to the end of the film itself. The majority of this chapter on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">in \u201cApocalypse Cinema\u201d spends a great deal of effort explaining the scene&#8217;s importance to him, but not it&#8217;s importance to the entire story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-283\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/71SKrnL8S4L-193x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"283\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/71SKrnL8S4L-193x300.jpg 193w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/71SKrnL8S4L-768x1193.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/71SKrnL8S4L-659x1024.jpg 659w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/71SKrnL8S4L.jpg 1098w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 283px) 100vw, 283px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Szendy praises the fact that that the film lets \u201cthe last image be the very last image\u201d of \u201call past present and future\u201d (Szendy, 2). Like the characters displayed in the film, the film audience too experiences a kind of \u201cdeath\u201d by cutting to black. Szendy\u2019s experience of being \u201cin the black screen\u201d the film plays tribute to how the audience shares existential finality of death here (Szendy, 1). Szendy calling this image \u201cpast, present, and future\u201d becomes erroneous in interpreting importance in Von Trier\u2019s film and Apocalypse cinema in genre. It is erroneous in that the impact of Apocalypse is still in the before and after of the story, not the apocalyptic event itself. If you took this last image alone, you would be missing out on the rich character dynamics of Justine (Kristen Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the sisters who hold hands with Claire\u2019s son Leo in the final scene. You would miss Justine as she sinks into a depression spurred by the stress of her dysfunctional family, her manipulative boss Jack, and cheating on her newlywed husband with Jack\u2019s nephew. That includes missing her apathetic- depressive personality as a result. You would not witness Claire panicking about Melancholia while her husband John dismisses her fears in a patronizing way. You would miss the confrontation in which Justine\u2019s acceptance of the end conflicts with Claire\u2019s fear of death. Each of these plot points reflects personal devastation within the characters themselves. The world is both literally and figuratively ending for Justine and Claire. If you, the audience, only took away the final moments of the film as Peter Szendy implies are most essential, you\u2019re missing 99% of the actual apocalypse conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-306\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/melancholia.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"213\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThe earth is bad, we don&#8217;t need to grieve for it, nobody will miss it.\u201d Justine concludes to Claire (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 2011). The fact that she been hurt by Jack, and has hurt by Michael affects her. The way she mentions &#8220;Earth is bad&#8221; gives evidence to how she has distanced herself from her own reality.\u00a0 Justine mirrors the dysfunctional attributes of her family from the earlier in the film in her difficulty in coping with the past and present. By bringing Justine&#8217;s depression into the story as a form of apathy for everything, Lars Von Trier juxtaposes depression to the apocalypse. Justine calls Claire\u2019s plan to spend her last moments together, \u201c a piece of shit\u201d with deadpan eyes, mocking the \u201cniceness\u201d of her gesture (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 2011).\u00a0Justine wishes Claire to stop caring, or to &#8220;grieve for it&#8221;. Her emotional and physical state are both facing annihilation.\u00a0 The arrangement of the scene has dim light, which only illuminate the each actresses\u2019 expressions. The soft classical music that transitions each scene gives the film a dream-like quality. Szendy calls the last image an \u201cend of cinema\u201d moment in which the film itself perishes when the world ends. Von Trier&#8217;s character and film form evoke emotions related to the apocalypse as well as\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-302\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/files\/2017\/10\/giphy.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"213\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Szendy&#8217;s point on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia\u2019s<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> final scene has merit, but his claim to it being the truest Apocalyptic film falls short by not imagining events that could complicate. A flashback would have been more meaningful. Keep in mind the ending of the ending of Matt Reeve\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cloverfield<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (2008), in which the ending cuts to a found-footage flashback from before the film. He compares Melancholia\u2019s ending to the ending of Ted Posts\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beneath the Planet of The Apes<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In Post\u2019s film, an atomic explosion ends the world, followed by a narrator dialogue explaining the world \u201cis now dead\u201d. The post-film exposition was only meant to set up a sequel and is therefore not as apocalyptic as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> according to Szendy. What\u2019s wrong with events happening after the end? Can\u2019t an apocalypse have a post-apocalypse?\u00a0 The point of an apocalyptic fiction\u2019s plot\u00a0 isto show us the events leading up to the end and of what happens after, not to gratify us with an explosion. There is more of a narrative to an apocalypse genre fiction piece than the scene where \u201cit all ends\u201d, since it should be widely known that \u201ctrue apocalypse\u201d fictions are also the ones in which the narrative leads up to and continues after the end. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sources:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Szendy, Peter. Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World. New York : Fordham <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">University Press, 2015.College Complete.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trier, Lars von, et al. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Melancholia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. 2011.<\/span><del datetime=\"2017-10-09T00:25:36+00:00\"><\/del><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Update:<\/p>\n<p>I wish I had a place to put this in the rest of the blog. After writing this piece, I found two other movie that fit into Peter Szendy&#8217;s definition of the &#8220;true&#8221; apocalyptic cinema. Go watch (or rewatch) <em>Miracle Mile<\/em> (1988) with director Steve De Jarrett if you have a chance. <em>Miracle Mile<\/em> has a similar &#8220;ending&#8221;, in that a nuclear weapon is dropped on LA in the last moments of the film. <em>Seeking a Friend For The End Of The World <\/em>(2012) is another film I had forgotten about until the last minute. Will Ferrell and .\u00a0 It&#8217;s unfortunate that I could not rewrite the entire post in time to discuss it further, but it adds to the point that Szendy&#8217;s concept is not unique to Melancholia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2011 film Melancholia by director Lars Von Trier synchronizes it\u2019s ending with the end of the world, which runs the risk of overshadowing the characters and story of the film. Peter Szendy, author of the 2015 book \u201cApocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World\u201d, believes this ending is the true ending of apocalypse &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/10\/08\/282\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Ending It All&#8221; Peter Szendy and Melancholia (2011)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}