That which the science trusting John says “will be the most beautiful sight ever” turns out to destroy the world. Claire is obsessed with being happy and will spend any amount of money to achieve it on behalf of her little sister, Justine.
Justine is so utterly depressed that she can’t bring herself to bathe, to embrace her husband on her wedding night, or take the promotion offered to her at the advertising agency where she is a feted success. Yet he is the only one, who cries over her favourite meal, sobbing “it tastes like ashes” that is able to face the cataclysm when it comes.
This is so perfectly the anti-Tree of Life that it boggles the mind that it was made at the same time. It could easily be taken for a tedious bore. It deals with questions of what reality is for, if anything at all. But while Malick’s movie is about the dance of grace with her children, Von Trier’s movie is about the dance of death of a hostile universe, where “the earth is evil, we don’t need to grieve for it, no one will miss it”.
Justine’s childhood involved a love for Abraham, a horse, her steadfast companion. At marriage, she forskaes him for her husband, who promptly leaves her. He cannot fulfill her after all. He has become hard to maneuver and irrelevant. She must be shouted at to even take the horse out, she takes to beating him in her frustration.
Grace can still be found, in the flight and song of birds and the fall of blossoms but it means nothing. Abraham, family, marriage… nothing provides a framework that allows sense to be made.
In the middle of Tree of Life we see the violence that creates the world. At the end of Melancholia we see violence as the world is destroyed. In Tree of Life, the world is made new and harmony is achieved. In Melancholia, the world is destroyed and the illusion of harmony is finally obliterated. Only the Justines of the world could see life for what it is.
Your Correspondent, Super-gay horses are one of the signs of the apocalypse!