Dance of Death (event)

The **Dance of Death** (A.K.A. **Earth and Melancholia: Dance of Death**) is a

    apocalyptic depiction of the planetary dance of death between *Melancholia*, a rogue planet with the size of Saturn, and *Earth*, combined with an ironic introduction to the history of art. The soundtrack of the intro is provided by Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde, a post-Romantic manifesto which proposes the clash and the final union between two opposing principles, love and death. Here the music symbolizes the astronomical (and perhaps astrological) clash of the two planets over end of the two worlds. The intro is shot in slow motion, almost as an MTV Wagner music video, and it could be seen as an abstract of Melancholia, summarizing the whole movie.

## About Dance of Death

If the alliance between love and death, and the subsequent destruction of the principle of love, are the atmospheric message of von Trier’s intro, the nihilistic motto of the whole film would be: “The Earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it” (Justine). This attitude is reminiscent of gnosticism, seen as a forerunner of modern nihilism by scholars such as Hans Jonas and Ion Petru Culianu. Its first principle was that the world of matter (or the Earth) is evil, and that humankind is the damaged creation of an evil divine power. The nihilism proposed in the 20th century by various writers, such as Cioran, Marinetti and Gottfried Benn, draws the similarly disturbing conclusion that because of our inherent defects, human beings must be destroyed – adapting one of the four noble truths of Buddhism, that suffering must be annihilated by nirvana (which means ‘snuffed out’). Lars von Trier illustrates a similar destructiveness, in both his earlier Antichrist (describing the apocalypse of a relationship) and in Melancholia, in depicting the noche oscura (‘the dark night of the soul’ – St. John of the Cross) of a human being (Justine) together with the universal night of St. Bartholomew (the death of the world). As we shall see, the personalized dark night of the soul may be even more significant than the dark night of the world.

   Justine’s own noche oscura begins at her wedding party, organized by her rich and arrogant brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). Lars von Trier’s impression of the hypocritical and artificial atmosphere of the bourgeois celebration reminded me of the satirical movie *Festen* (1998), the first Dogme 95 film, directed by Lars’ colleague Thomas Vinterberg. Justine is visibly distressed by her mother Gaby’s (Charlotte Rampling’s) disturbing speech (“Enjoy it while it lasts. I myself hate marriages”), and her aura of self-control begins to shatter. This speech is particularly significant because it claims that marriage is something despicable, something to be loathed and feared. Justine is afterwards confronted by her sister Claire, who hints that the shadow of Justine’s depression could further ruin the party.

Her controlling attitude contrasts with Justine’s passive and guilty response. The sisters give the suggestion of a sadomasochistic couple or of the feed-back dynamics between a psychiatrist and reluctant patient. It is interesting that at the end of the movie this relationship is reversed. Justine’s doubts about the marriage (which may be existentially flawed, as Gaby suggested) become visible as she becomes more withdrawn, taking a nap and later a bath, ruining the schedule of the wedding. More important, she experiences the demise of her marriage from day one, firstly by dismissing her husband’s (Alexander Skarsgård) project of curing her ‘sadness’ with the picture of a tranquilizing apple orchard, and secondly by rejecting him and having sex with the first man available.

Many people find out that their relationships or marriages are collapsing after months or perhaps years of invisible fragmentation. Justine finds this out the hard way, on her wedding day, her illness making her almost prescient.

In a twist which reminds me of Lawrence Durrell, the second part of the movie focuses mainly on Claire. One of the most important features of this section is its portrait of John, Claire’s husband. “The real scientists, all of them agree: Melancholia is gonna pass just in front of us and it’s gonna be the most beautiful site ever” is John’s initial statement. He is the archetype of the rational scientist; but he ends as a Stoic philosopher. His creed might be: pereat mundus et fiat scientia! (‘Though the world perish, let there be knowledge!’)

## Apocalyptic literature

   The end of the movie brings back the Wagnerian motif, as the two sisters and Claire’s young son Leo (Cameron Spurr) face the apocalypse in a ‘magic cave’ (a shelter made of wooden sticks) constructed at Justine’s suggestion to comfort Leo. Claire breaks down completely while her melancholic sister keeps calm, suggesting the theory that mentally ill people face external catastrophes more easily because they’re more accustomed to traumas and intense psychological imbalances. This could make intelligible the idea hinted at by the film that noche oscura (the nihilistic night when I inwardly die, descend into hell and cannot imagine a return from the inferno – when my entire world dies inside me) is even scarier than the night of St. Bartholomew (the sense of cosmic death). This thesis would be absurd if considered from a rationalistic perspective: how could the spiritual death of one individual count for more than the demise of mankind?

## See also

* Dramaverse
* *Melancholia*