Abstract
This essay ventures a dialogue between Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun and Lars Von Trier’s film, Melancholia on the grounds that in each, melancholia (or narcissistic depression) is figured through planetary compulsion. Utilizing Kristeva’s singular approach to Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia to read the film, I argue that a particular form of depression characterizes the style of living (and dying) embodied in each of the two sisters who together form the film’s emotional center. Consideration of philosophy and film in dialogue yields a final insight into the phenomenon of melancholia as it relates to human temporality and lived finitude: melancholia demonstrates an extremity of psychic loss, underscoring that death is not merely the end; it is there in the beginning.
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Notes
- 1.
She acknowledges a terminological confusion of melancholia and depression that she deliberately “keeps alive” at the outset (Kristeva 1989, 9). In a first effort at resolution, Kristeva insists the terms “melancholia” and “depression” refer to a “composite that might be called melancholy/depressive, whose borders are in fact blurred” (10–11).
- 2.
Cf. Kristeva (1989, 22 and 97–103).
- 3.
Cf. Moondarksound (2011).
- 4.
Cf. Figlerowicz (2012, 24).
- 5.
Cf. Lechte (1990).
- 6.
Consider Von Trier’s ( interview) response, “When I…look at works of art that I like, they all contain melancholia to some point. I would describe it as being the salt you put in the food. You know, if you forgot to put it in, then you’ve got to have some melancholia at the table to make it become a real dish” (Bond 2016).
- 7.
Cf. White (2012, 17).
- 8.
“We saw the opening images very much as intricate paintings…the images are almost stills that have just a trace of movement…In general we wanted this sequence to have the expressive and emotional freedom that painting has” (White 2012, 20).
- 9.
Cf. Kristeva (1989, 13).
- 10.
Cf. McAfee (2004).
- 11.
Cf. Kristeva (1984, 25).
- 12.
- 13.
Of the three valences of the term: (1) despondency versus exultation as they wax and wane in frequency and intensity according to the symptomology of a particular form of depression; (2) the “generic term” under which all forms of depression whose affect or mood is sadness/despair may be subsumed; and (3) a specific, that is, narcissistic form of depression that differs clinically and nosologically from other forms of depression but shares with them two common structural elements (object loss and failure of the signifier, of language), the last, narcissistic depression , is not attributed to Freud. Rather, this specific melancholia was discovered in and through the treatment of narcissistic individuals, leading “modern analysts to understand another form of depression” (Kristeva 1989, 12).
- 14.
Cf. McAfee (2004, 59).
- 15.
Cf. Lechte (1990, 33–34).
- 16.
Cf. Kristeva (1989, 11).
- 17.
Cf. Kristeva (1989, 9).
- 18.
- 19.
Cf. Kristeva (1987, 10).
- 20.
Cf. Kristeva (1987, 9).
- 21.
Cf. Kristeva (1989), “The Thing is inscribed within us without memory, the buried accomplice of our unspeakable anguishes. One can imagine the delights of reunion that a regressive daydream promises through the nuptials of suicide” (14).
- 22.
Cf. also Kristeva (1989, 60–61).
- 23.
These images are, Von Trier insists, “previsions,” that show us the end at the beginning (cf. White 2012). Hence the Overture offers a prefiguration that is past in narrative sequentiality (the origin story always comes first) but future in its prophecy of what is to come. Von Trier explains that he wanted to make a film where the viewer knows from the outset how it will end but is nevertheless compelled to watch (Moondarksound 2011). This resonates analogically with the structure of mortality in human life: one knows death is inevitable yet invests in life nonetheless, riveted to its possibilities for meaning.
- 24.
Cf. Kristeva (1989), (20).
- 25.
Kristeva (1989, 4) (15).
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Elkayam, J.S. (2019). It Is There in the Beginning: Melancholia, Time, and Death. In: Haro, J., Koch, W. (eds) The Films of Lars von Trier and Philosophy. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24918-2_10
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