重現憂鬱:拉斯·馮·提爾《驚悚末日》中的憂鬱圖像與繪畫

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學藝術史研究所碩士論文 National Taiwan Normal University Graduate Institute of Art History Master’s Degree Thesis. 重現憂鬱重現憂鬱: 憂鬱: 拉斯· 拉斯·馮·提爾《提爾《驚悚末日》驚悚末日》中的憂鬱中的憂鬱圖像與繪畫憂鬱圖像與繪畫. Melancholia Reimagined: Iconography and Paintings in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). 指導教授：曾曬淑教授 Advisor: Prof. Dr. Shai-shu Tzeng. 孫永貞 Yung-Chen Sun. 中華民國 106 年 1 月 January 2017.

(2) TABLE OF CONTENTS. List of Illustrations.……………………………………………………………………2 Abstract..………………………………………………………………………………8 中文摘要………………………………………………………………………………9 Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………10 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..11 When the End Begins………………………………………………………………...19 Chapter One: Melancholia: Title, State of Mind, and Rogue Planet…………………27 1.1 From Melancholia to Depression: A Shift in Perception………………..27 1.2 The Paradoxical Nature in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia…………….....36 Chapter Two: A Dialogue with Arts: Paintings in Melancholia……………………...48 2.1 Incorporation: Images as Vision and Emotion…………………………..48 2.2 Bruegel Revisited: Hunters in the Snow in Solaris and Melancholia…...71 Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………...77 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………………..83 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….84 Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………...93 Index………………………………………………………………………………...126. 1.

(3) List of Illustrations Fig. 1 Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I, 1514, engraving, 24 x 18.8 cm, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle ......................................................................................... 93 Fig. 2 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine slowly opens her eyes and dead birds start to fall from the sky like autumn leaves...................... 93 Fig. 3 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where the film title appears in the form of frottage at the end of prologue. ....................................................... 93 Fig. 4 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring a huge sundial situated in the middle of a garden where all elements cast two shadows. ......... 94 Fig. 5 Still from Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961), featuring a luscious garden with rows of bushes in geometric shape and the enigmatic shadows only cast by people. .................................................................................................... 94 Fig. 6 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine, Claire and Leo stand in a triple composition in front of the grand mansion. ............................. 95 Fig. 7 Still from Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961), featuring a grand mansion behind the luscious garden. ................................................................. 95 Fig. 8 Stills from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where the planet Melancholia appears four times, with each time getting closer to the Earth. ......................... 96 Fig. 9 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where the photo of “Empire Apples” given by Justine’s fiancé was left in the library. .................................. 97 Fig. 10 Stills from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where the camera pans instinctively as if a present guest at the wedding reception. .............................. 97 Fig. 11 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine dressed in a bridal gown wades through the forest while her legs entangled with cords, barely to move.................................................................................................... 98 Fig. 12 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Claire struggles to run through the golf course with her son Leo in the arms........................................ 98 Fig. 13 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine flees outside in the middle of the reception, places herself in a vast landscape, and contemplates 2.

(4) the stars. ............................................................................................................. 99 Fig. 14 Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1810, oil on canvas, 110 x 171.5 cm, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie .............................................................. 99 Fig. 15 Karel van der Pluym, The Philosopher, 1655, oil on panel, 55 x 42 cm, Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal ...................................................................................... 100 Fig. 16 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine sits face to face with Claire in the library. ................................................................................. 100 Fig. 17 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) that is burnt and curling from the edge. ................................ 101 Fig. 18 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine’s favorite horse, Abraham, falls back on the ground with northern lights displaying in the sky….. .......................................................................................................................... 101 Fig. 19 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring flurries of insects flying up from both sides of Justine in the night. ............................................ 101 Fig. 20 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where St. Elmo's fire is radiating from the fingertips of Justine. ........................................................... 102 Fig. 21 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where through the triple arcade and the window shows a bush in flames .............................................. 102 Fig. 22 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Leo whittles a wood stick in order to build the Magic Cave. ............................................................ 103 Fig. 23 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Melancholy, 1532, oil on canvas, 76.5 x 56 cm, Colmar, Musée d’Unterlinden.......................................................................... 103 Fig. 24 Stills from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring the geometric abstract paintings of Kazimir Malevich. .......................................................... 104 Fig. 25 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting, 1915, oil on canvas, 101.5 × 62 cm, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museuma ...................................................................... 105 Fig. 26 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition (with blue triangle and black rectangle), 1915, oil on canvas, 66.5 x 57 cm, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum .......................................................................................................................... 105 3.

(5) Fig. 27 Kazimir Malevich, Painterly Realism of a Football Player–Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension, 1915, oil on canvas, 70.2 × 44.1 cm, Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago .......................................................................................... 105 Fig. 28 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918, oil on canvas, 79.4 × 79.4 cm, New York, Museum of Modern Art .......................... 106 Fig. 29 Kazimir Malevich, Black Circle, 1923, oil on canvas, 105.5 × 105.5 cm, St. Petersburg, State Russian Museum .................................................................. 106 Fig. 30 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism: Self-Portrait in Two Dimensions, 1915, oil on canvas, 80 x 62 cm, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum .................................. 107 Fig. 31 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism (Supremus No. 58), 1916, oil on canvas, 79.5 ×70.5 cm, St. Petersburg, State Russian Museum ........................................... 107 Fig. 32 Stills from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring the geometric abstract paintings of Kazimir Malevich. .......................................................... 108 Fig. 33 Kazimir Malevich, Supremus No. 56, 1916, oil on canvas, 80.5 × 71 cm, St. Petersburg, State Russian Museum .................................................................. 108 Fig. 34 Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles, 1915, oil on canvas, 57.5 x 48.5 cm, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum ................................. 108 Fig. 35 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Hunters in the Snow (1565). ......................................................... 109 Fig. 36 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring John Everett Millais’ The Woodman’s Daughter (1850-1851) and Ophelia (1851-1852). ................ 109 Fig. 37 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Hans Holbein’s The Merchant Georg Gisze (1532), Bruegel’s The Land of Cockaigne (1567), and William Blake’s A Negro hung by his ribs from a gallows (1796). ................. 109 Fig. 38 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610). ................................................................. 110 Fig. 39 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Carl Fredrik Hill’s Roaring Deer (c. 1883-1911). .......................................................................... 110 Fig. 40 Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 79.5, Moscow, 4.

(6) The State Tretyakov Gallery ............................................................................ 111 Fig. 41 Viwe of Kazimir Malevich’s works at the ‘0.10’ eexhibition, 1915 .............. 111 Fig. 42 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood panel, 117 × 162 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum ......................................... 112 Fig. 43 John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-1852, oil on canvas, 76.2 × 111.8 cm, London, Tate Britain ........................................................................................ 112 Fig. 44 John Everett Millais, The Woodman's Daughter, 1850-1851, oil on canvas, 88.9 × 64.8 cm, London, Guildhall Art Gallery ............................................... 112 Fig. 45 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine dressed in a bridal gown with a bouquet of lilies of the valley in the hands floats slowly out of the frame. ..................................................................................................... 113 Fig. 46 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine takes a bath during the wedding reception........................................................................... 113 Fig. 47 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine baths in the blue light of the planet Melancholia. ....................................................................... 113 Fig. 48 Hans Holbein the Younger, The Merchant Georg Gisze, 1532, oil on oak, 97.5 x 86.2 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie .................................................................. 114 Fig. 49 Detail of Hans Holbein the Younger, The Merchant Georg Gisze, 1532, oil on oak, 97.5 x 86.2 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie................................................... 114 Fig. 50 Domenico Fetti, Melancholy, c. 1620, oil on canvas, 171 x 128 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre ............................................................................................. 114 Fig. 51 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, 1567, oil on panel, 52× 78 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek........................................................................... 115 Fig. 52 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring an image of female models sprawling on the ground. ..................................................................... 115 Fig. 53 William Blake, A negro hung by his ribs from a gallows, 1796 (made), engraving and etching on paper, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints & Drawings Study Room, level F, case TOPIC, shelf 4 ...................................... 115 Fig. 54 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where a wire instrument made 5.

(7) by Leo is used by Claire to measure the distance of the planet Melancholia. . 116 Fig. 55 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Claire holds the drug in front of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1504).............................. 116 Fig. 56 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), featuring Claire in the library. .......................................................................................................................... 116 Fig. 57 Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c.1504, oil on oak panels, 220 x 389 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado ......................................................... 117 Fig. 58 Detail of Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c.1504, oil on oak panels, 220 x 389 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado ...................................... 117 Fig. 59 Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, c.1610, oil on canvas, 125 × 101 cm, Rome, Galleria Borghese .......................................................................... 118 Fig. 60 Carl Fredrik Hill, Roaring Deer, c. 1883-1911, crayon on paper, 36.5 x 22.6cm, Malmö, Malmö Art Museum ........................................................................... 118 Fig. 61 Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504, engraving, 25.4 x 19.5 cm, Vienna, Albertina……………………………………………………………………….118 Fig. 62 Jacek Malczewski, Melancholia, 1890-1894, oil on canvas, 139 × 240 cm, Poland, Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu ......................................................... 119 Fig. 63 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where the image of Jacek Malczewski’s Melancholia (1890-1894) appears briefly on the computer screen when Claire searches for the information of the planet Melancholia. ............. 119 Fig. 64 Still from Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte (1961), where Giovanni Pontano and Lidia are walking across a golf course. ....................................... 120 Fig. 65 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine calmly sits and watches Claire wading across the golf course with Leo in her arms. .............. 120 Fig. 66 Still from Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte (1961), where a confrontation between Giovanni Pontano and Lidia in a sand trap leads to a reluctant intimacy. .......................................................................................................................... 121 Fig. 67 Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), where Justine has intercourse in the sand trap with Tim. ................................................................................ 121 Fig. 68 Still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), featuring the library. ............ 122 6.

(8) Fig. 69 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Wheat Harvest, 1565, oil on wood, 116.5 x 159.5 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art ......................................................... 122 Fig. 70 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Dark Day, 1565, oil on panel, 118 x 163 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum ................................................................. 122 Fig. 71 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with The Fall of Icarus, c. 1558, oil on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium ..... 123 Fig. 72 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on oak panel, 114 x 155 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum ................................................... 123 Fig. 73 Stills from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), featuring Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565). .............................................................................................. 124 Fig. 74 Still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), featuring the image of home video showing young Kris standing in the snow. ............................................ 124 Fig. 75 Stills from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), featuring Bruegel’s paintings during the levitation. ........................................................................................ 125. 7.

(9) Abstract In 2011, Lars von Trier (1956– ), the enfant terrible of Danish cinema, presented his film Melancholia at Festival de Cannes. The film is shaped by the filmmaker’s personal experience as a long term sufferer of depressive disorder and is blended with accumulations of quotations borrowed from art history, literature and cinema. A question arises when one considers the film title: why Lars von Trier chose melancholia instead of depression, a term with which we are more familiar today, as the title? The decision is well worth pondering and thus forms the starting point of argument. Through a discussion of melancholic genius, a paradoxical notion recognized by Aristotle (384–322 BC), glorified by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), and visualized by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), the thesis sets out to show how the paradoxical nature of melancholia, established as a key feature of its iconography, is pictured in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, and with an in-depth discussion of the paintings incorporated in the film to elucidate the artistic context out of which the notion is elaborated. Began with a historical retrospect of melancholia, chapter one explores how the whole piece is shaped by melancholia’s paradoxical nature. Chapter two focuses on a certain moment in the film when the protagonist Justine displays the art books in the library, endeavors to unravel the meaning denoted in the present paintings, and suggests a comparison with Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986)’s Solaris (1972) through the prominence of Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) in both films.. ＃key words: Lars von Trier, Saturn, Melancholia I, Albrecht Dürer, Hunters in the Snow, Solaris 8.

(10) 中文摘要在 2011 年的法國坎城影展上，丹麥怪才導演拉斯·馮·提爾（Lars von Trier， 1956– ）推出電影《驚悚末日》（Melancholia）。除了大量引用藝術史、文學以及其他電影作為素材，藏在這部電影背後的還有來自導演本身罹患抑鬱症的經驗。思考導演對於片名的選擇，不禁使我們想問，為何其所選用的是今日較為少見的憂鬱（melancholia）一字，而非常見的抑鬱（depression）。而對於這個問題的進一步探討，則開啟了整個論述。將憂鬱（melancholia）放在歷史的脈絡中來理解，可以發現它的矛盾性在於，作為一個病症或是情緒狀態，憂鬱被認為是與天才並列的。這一矛盾理念首次由亞里斯多德（Aristotle，384–322 BC）提出，在文藝復興時期受到馬爾西利奧· 費奇諾（Marsilio Ficino，1433–1499）的歌頌，並被杜勒（Albrecht Dürer，1471– 1528）以圖像具體呈現。本論文分兩大章，首先藉由探討憂鬱（melancholia）此一理念的形成與轉變，於第一章檢視拉斯·馮·提爾如何將其矛盾性體現在《驚悚末日》一片之中。並在第二章進一步探討導演於片中直接援引的畫作，這些繪畫出現在婚禮場景之中一個插曲，發生在新娘賈絲汀進到圖書室後開始重新擺放展示在書櫃上的畫作。而除了就繪畫的意涵進行分析並與電影整體理念相扣之外，其中拉斯·馮·提爾藉老彼得·布勒哲爾的《雪中獵人》（Hunters in the Snow），作為對安德烈·塔可夫斯基《索拉力星》（Solaris）一片的致敬，也將在論文的最後一章節中提出，作為電影援引同張繪畫的比較，結束整個論述。. ＃關鍵詞：拉斯·馮·提爾、土星、《憂鬱Ｉ》、杜勒、《雪中獵人》、《索拉力星》. 9.

(11) Acknowledgement. 對於這本論文得以完成，首先要向我的指導教授曾曬淑老師致上最誠摯的謝意。這一路上，如果不是曾老師花費極大的時間與心力，不厭其煩地悉心提點及指引，我恐怕也無法如此順利地抵達終點。再次，向老師表達我由衷的感謝。此外，亦感謝口試委員 Prof. Valentin Nussbaum、林志明老師以及許綺玲老師，在百忙之中仍抽空閱讀，並提供寶貴的意見。每個建議與指正都使這份論文得以更加完善。最後，謝謝一直以來總是溫柔陪伴在身邊的家人和朋友，願意將耳朵、眼睛和心借給我，使我在書寫憂鬱的路途上，仍能保有一絲快樂的靈魂。. 10.

(12) Introduction Tracing out a total extinction of the world, Melancholia is a 2011 film written and directed by Danish director Lars von Trier. Premiered and nominated for Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, 1 Melancholia is a visually beautiful but psychologically terrifying apocalyptic fiction that recounts the doom, both internal and external. Divided into three parts,2 Melancholia begins with a prologue and two parts named after two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The two major bodies of the film tackle respectively a disastrous wedding and a real coming disaster when a planet named Melancholia threating to collide with Earth. Filming the doomsday, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia might seem to be derived from a more or less cliché motif, an asteroid collision, but when the camera is in the hands of the unpredictable director, he will never fail to impress or get under the skin of his audiences. Blended with family melodrama and disaster, Melancholia pictures a catastrophe growing from an internal state of mind to an external threat of planetary collision. The collision previewed in the prologue through the eyes of a melancholiac declares that the world is destined to doom and breaks intentionally the hope of being redeemed. Apart from the cosmic motif, the total absence of conventional formulas established in a disaster genre piece, for example, an indispensable saviour, separates Lars von Trier’s Melancholia from Hollywood imagination.3 Such is the divergence that challenges the eyes which have accustomed to the standard apocalyptic films. Therefore, Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic imagination is not to offer the spectators a path of redemption, but a way completely opposed and extreme in order to experience, 1. Melancholia has won 32 awards and received 86 nominations since its release. For the full list of awards and nominations, see: IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/awards?ref_=tt_awd. 2 The same approach to present a story as divided is also applied in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the waves (1996), Dogville (2003), Antichrist (2009), and Nymphomaniac (2013). 3 Andrei Simut, “The Apocalypse according to Lars von Trier,” in: Ekphrasis 2, 2011, p. 78. 11.

(13) to face with, and to embrace the fear and anxiety when confronted with the end of all, as the director’s comments on his work: “to me it's not so much a film about the end of the world, it's a film about a state of mind”4 and “there is more horror in seeing a face watching the end of the world than in showing it.”5 Lars von Trier’s approach to the end of the world is not born in a standard formula but is rather indulgent to the pieces of materials that can be found in the history of art, literature, and cinema. As a creative and resourceful filmmaker, Lars von Trier not only looks for inspirations from art history but also makes it present by the inclusion of paintings in Melancholia. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to exam in detail the artistic context out of which Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is shaped and sensed. Given the field in which I have been trained, I am attentive to the elements that the filmmaker borrows from art history and try to articulate how such different sources are integrated. The relationship between Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and art history goes beyond the mere quotation and as the thesis title suggests, it unfolds in two significant ways: one is manifested conceptually through the influence of melancholic iconography; the other is more directly through the inclusion of painting. Therefore, two full chapters are devoted to elucidating these two aspects. Additionally, at the beginning and the end of the thesis are two shorter chapters entitled “When the End Begins” and “Epilogue”. The former serves to clarify how things were structurally framed on-screen by analysing the film’s narrative, mise-en-scène, music, and camera movement, and the latter concludes the thesis with a discussion of suggestions for 4. Quoted from Eugene Hernandez, “Lars Von Trier: "When I make comedies they become very melancholy",” in: Film Society of Lincoln Center, 2011, https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/lars-von-trier-when-i-make-comedies-they-become-very-melancholy/ (accessed April 7, 2016). 5 Geoffrey Macnab, “Lars Von Trier: 'If I am an idiot in the eyes of the world, so be it',” in: Independent, online at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lars-von-trier-if-i-am-an-idiot-in-the-eyes-of-the-w orld-so-be-it-2346972.html (accessed December 8, 2016). 12.

(14) future research. As the middle work in Lars von Trier’s so-called Depression Trilogy,6 Melancholia continues to deal with the core idea featuring in the trilogy, the sensation of depression, and reflects the subject-matter literally on the title. The question then arises: why Lars von Trier chose the old term melancholia instead of the word depression with which we are more familiar today? The decision is well worth pondering, and thus forms the starting point of discussion in the first chapter. Subsumed under the comprehensive title “Melancholia: Title, State of Mind, and Rogue Planet” as Chapter One, two sections anchor the film with the notion of melancholia in historical context. The word melancholia, as Jean Claire (1940– ), the French art historian who curated the exhibition Mélancolie: génie et folie en Occident,7 suggests, encompasses such bipolar concept and is embodied in so many works “from Albrecht Dürer to Edvard Munch, from Domenico Fetti to Giorgio de Chirico” and “from ancient steles with their grief-stricken mourners, hands tucked under arm-pits, down to Rodin’s Thinker, sunk in his black thoughts” that constitutes “an ideal museum of melancholy”. 8 Therefore, as I will argue in this chapter, melancholia, the complex notion once believed to be the muse of artist, plays a dominant role in shaping Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. By making a historical survey of melancholia from Hippocrates (c.460–c.370 B.C.) to Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) addressed in medical, theological and philosophical 6. The state of mind is a recurring trait lurking in Lars von Trier’s so-called Depression Trilogy, which begins with Antichrist (2009), followed by Melancholia (2011), and completed by Nymphomaniac (2013). The three films of Depression Trilogy, all driven by female characters who are constantly struggling with their mental illness, deal with the sensation of depression as major theme and manifest in its own way. Compared with the extreme violent and erotic scenes in the other two films, Melancholia seems to be the most reserved one rendered tenderly, but the discomfort and psychological shock it causes is no less. 7 Jean Clair, Mélancolie: génie et folie en Occident, exhibition catalog, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris (10 Octobre 2005–13 Janvier 2006)―Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (17 Février–7 Mai 2006), Paris 2005. 8 Ibid., pp. 82-83. In regard to the quotations used, I take the English translation from Jacky Bowring, A Field Guide to Melancholy, Harpenden 2008, p. 141. 13.

(15) literatures in the first section “Melancholia to Depression: A Shift in Perception”, I attempt to clarify how the perception of melancholia is shaped and redefined during different periods and what is the difference between melancholia and depression. Another major concern in this section is how the painter and writer picture the contour of melancholia. The discussion will be developed around Albrecht Dürer (1471– 1528)’s engraving Melancholia I (1514) (Fig. 1), a remarkable work that changes fundamentally the pictorial representation of melancholia. In the second section “The Paradoxical Nature in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia”, I will articulate how the iconography of melancholia bears on the shape of plot in Lars von Trier’s film. This section is concerned essentially with how Lars von Trier understands the notion of melancholia and what source materials he uses to shape it in the film. To understand what is borrowed and what is director’s innovation with regard to the notion of melancholia can throw new light on the artistic merit of the film. Chapter Two “A Dialogue with Arts: Paintings in Melancholia” is also divided into two sections and examines the meaning generated by the incorporation of paintings in Melancholia. Focusing in particular on the library scene, where we are presented with different paintings. These paintings that are arranged by the female protagonist Justine are the subject of close analysis in the section “Incorporation: Images as Vision and Emotion”. As a means of expression to speak for her in a subtle way, the paintings that have neither temporal continuity nor subject consistency juxtaposed in the library scene, as I argue, when considered in a combinatory way, can contribute to a collective message echoing and elaborating the meaning of melancholia in the film. Furthermore, apart from the pictorial dialogue, the film also has a multiple conversation with cinematic predecessors. Among them is Andrei Tarkovsky (1932– 14.

(16) 1986), the Soviet heavyweight who also shapes his film largely with art. The explicit reference to Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) in Melancholia draws an arguably inevitable link to Tarkovsky‘s Solaris (1972), a film featuring largely the paintings of Bruegel.9 Thus, the respective meaning of representing Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow in the two films is the focus of discussion and will be analysed in the last section “Bruegel Revisited: Hunters in the Snow in Solaris and Melancholia”.. State of Research Lars von Trier’s Melancholia has been explored in a number of ways by film critics and scholars as well. Although often mix in approaches, they can be largely divided into three groups: those that read the film from a more auteurist perspective by touching upon the constant characteristics recurring in Lars von Trier’s films; those that focus on how Melancholia disturbs generic expectations; and those that analyse melancholia and its representation in the film. Being one of the most polarizing filmmakers nowadays, the word controversy never escapes when talking about the films of Lars von Trier. His female protagonists, who are often, almost routinely placed in a suffering situation, whether under physical or mental stress,10 are the centre of focus that his camera chases for, and therefore, feminist interpretation is often brought into discussion of his works. The one that engages in auteur theory often discusses Melancholia in conjunction with Depression Trilogy and explores Lars von Trier’s treatment of female characters, such as Catriona. 9. Lars von Trier states that Tarkovsky’s Solaris is a great inspiration for Melancholia. See: Romain Le Vern, “La dernière interview de Lars Von Trier avant l’apocalypse,” in: Chaos Reigns, 2014, online at http://www.chaosreigns.fr/la-derniere-interview-de-lars-von-trier-lapocalypse/ (accessed September 30, 2016). 10 Through an overview of Lars von Trier’s filmography, it is almost the women as leading characters that drive the narrative: from Bess (Emily Watson) in Breaking the Waves (1996), Selma (Björk) in Dancer in the dark (2000), Grace (Nicole Kidman) in Dogville (2003), “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the Antichrist (2009), Justine and Claire in Melancholia (2011) to Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stacy Martin as young Joe) in Nymphomaniac (2013). 15.

(17) McAvoy’s “Gentleman, You Can’t Fight in Here”: Gender Symbolism and the End of the World in Dr. Strangelove and Melancholia11 and Christopher Sharrett’s Woman Run Amok: Two films by Lars von Trier published in Film International.12 The one conducted from the perspective of genre focuses on the representation of apocalypse. Featuring the end of the world, the apocalyptic film is a sub-genre based on the narrative structure of disaster film and complemented by the spectacle of science fiction.13 Rooted deeply in Western cultures, the concept of the end of the world is derived from the Revelation of St John the Divine, also known as the Apocalypse.14 The fear of doomsday and the imagination of it have never ceased, even fanatically at certain times. The end-of-the-world scenario as we imagine rarely exceeds the visions St. John described in the Revelation, and as a source of inspiration has flourished for thousands of years from artistic and literary to cinematic representations.15 Today, in the time of Hollywood dominance, different versions of Apocalypse emerge on the big screen. In the Hollywood interpretation, the climate change, the nuclear crisis, the pandemic virus, and the aliens justify the calamity of earthquake, fire and flood, wars, famines and persecutions recounted in the book of Revelation.16 While diverse reinterpretations they become, one crucial point stays still and never changes is the notion of redemption, and thus at the end of such apocalyptic fantasies, we are always promised a way out.. 11. McAvoy’s ““Gentleman, You Can’t Fight in Here”: Gender Symbolism and the End of the World in Dr. Strangelove and Melancholia,” in: Karen A. Ritzenhoff, and Angela Krewani (eds.), The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World, Maryland 2015, pp. 61-76. 12 Christopher Sharrett, “Woman Run Amok: Two films by Lars von Trier,” in: Film International 10, Issue 6, 2012, pp. 11-36. 13 王勝興，《末日來臨時-當代（1996-2011）好萊塢末日災難類型電影研究》，淡江大學大眾傳播學系，碩士論文， 2013 年，頁 2。 14 Frances Carey (ed.), The Apocalypse and the shape of things to come, Toronto and Buffalo 1999, p. 6. 15 Ibid. 16 鄭運鴻，〈末日‧科幻‧啟示錄〉，《科學月刊》，第 43 卷第 1 期， 2012 年 1 月。Available online in: Pan Sci, http://pansci.asia/archives/12363 (accessed April 20, 2016). 16.

(18) That Melancholia presents the end-of-world scenario in a way Hollywood features will deliberately avoid to is the argumentation, for example, of Andrei Simut’s The Apocalypse according to Lars von Trier publiahsed in Ekphrasis,17 Danielle Verena Kollig’s Filming the World's End. Images of the Apocalypse in Lars von Trier's Epidemic and Melancholia published in Amaltea. 18. , and Siobhan Lyons’ The. Dialectics of Crisis: The Romanticised Apocalypse in J.G. Ballard´s The Drowned World and Lars von Trier´s Melancholia published in Diffractions.19 Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis in regard to the evolution of apocalyptic imagination in cinema can be found in the conference anthology entitled The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World, in which the study of Melancholia’s apocalyptic vision involving psychological aspect is presented by Pierre Floquet20 and technical aspect by Andreas Kirchner.21 Finally, as one of the most enigmatic and frequently visualized mental state, melancholia and its paradoxical character related to the divine insight is brought into discussion with Lars von Trier’s film by Briohny Doyle’s Prognosis End-Time: Madness and Prophecy in Melancholia and Take Shelter published in Altre Modernità,22 Iulia Micu’s Wandering in the Apocalyptical Schlaraffenland: Symbols, Tropes and Motifs in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia published in Ekphrasis,23 and. 17. Andrei Simut, “The Apocalypse according to Lars von Trier,” in: Ekphrasis 2, 2011, pp. 77-84. Danielle Verena Kollig, “Filming the World's End. Images of the Apocalypse in Lars von Trier's Epidemic and Melancholia,” in: Amaltea 5, 2013, pp. 85-102. 19 Siobhan Lyons, “The Dialectics of Crisis: The Romanticised Apocalypse in J.G. Ballard´s The Drowned World and Lars von Trier´s Melancholia,” in: Diffractions, Issue 1, 2013, online at http://www.diffractions.net/issue.php?cd_issue=1 (accessed May 18, 2016). 20 Pierre Floquet, “Melancholia and the Apocalypse Within,” in: Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Angela Krewani (eds.), The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World, Maryland 2015, pp. 91-104. 21 Andreas Kirchner, “Painting in Time: On the use of Digital Visual Effects in Melancholia (2011),” in: Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Angela Krewani (eds.), The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World, Maryland 2015, pp. 191-202. 22 Briohny Doyle, “Prognosis End-Time: Madness and Prophecy in Melancholia and Take Shelter,” in: Altre Modernità 9, 2013, pp. 19-37. 23 Iulia Micu, “Wandering in the Apocalyptical Schlaraffenland. Symbols, Tropes and Motifs in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia,” in Ekphrasis, Issue 2, 2012, pp. 117-130. 17 18.

(19) Marc Cerisuelo’s Ce que nous apprend Melancholia published in Critique. 24 Unfolding with another aspect of melancholia’s paradox that identifies it as the character of creative genius, Marie-Camille Bouchindomme’s La mélancolie des images (Melancholia de Lars von Trier) compiled in Les œuvres d’art dans le cinéma de fiction25 discusses the present paintings in the film. The prominence of bipolarity in the trait of melancholia, as a key concept in Lars von Trier’s interpretation of a fluctuating state of mind, though has been mentioned by the aforementioned articles, an in-depth research focusing on its connection with the film’s plot shaping and visual representation has not been observed. Therefore, the thesis aims to tackle the influence of melancholic iconography on Lars von Trier’s film and the incorporated paintings, providing a different way of reading the film from the perspective of art history. In arguing the bipolarity of melancholia addressed to premodern and its pictorial tradition, I frequently refer to Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl’s study of Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melancholia I published in 1964 under the title of Saturn and Melancholy.26 Since their pioneering publication, the groundwork for exploring the visual representation of melancholia has been well laid. The development of melancholic iconography is clearly outlined, and Melancholia I is marked as a pivotal landmark of representing afflicted genius in the history of art. The influence Dürer’s engraving exerts on the succeeding visual representation on the theme of melancholia is profound, long-term and far-reaching. Therefore, it is almost impossible to discuss melancholia without referring to Dürer’s Melancholia I.. 24. Marc Cerisuelo, “Ce que nous apprend Melancholia,” in: Critique 68, No. 783, 2012, pp. 766-774. Marie-Camille Bouchindomme, “La mélancolie des images (Melancholia de Lars von Trier),” in: Antony Fiant, Pierre-Henry Frangne et Gilles Mouëllic (eds.), Les œuvres d’art dans le cinéma de fiction, Rennes 2014, pp. 205-217. 26 Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, Nendeln 1979. 18 25.

(20) Instead of characterising resemblance between Lars von Trier’s Melancholia with Dürer’s engraving in a restrictive way, I propose an alternative approach to see the engraving’s influence on the film. It is not rendered specifically, but apparent in a multifaceted way that touches upon the characterisation, the mise-en-scène, the music, and the incorporated pictorial art. From individual to ambience, all of them follow a pattern related to the paradoxical nature of melancholia as two sides, destabilizing the film. Furthermore, for the discussion in regard to the director's motivation in using such sources to shape the film, the primary sources drew from the Cannes Press Kit and the published interviews of Lars von Trier and Manuel Alberto Claro, the cinematographer for Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, are of vital importance to support my argument.27. When the End Begins “Henceforth no end to the yearning, longing, rapture, and misery of love: world, power, fame, honor, chivalry, loyalty, and friendship, scattered like an insubstantial dream; one thing alone left living: longing, longing unquenchable, desire forever renewing itself, craving and languishing; one sole redemption: death, surcease of being, the sleep that knows no waking!” Richard Wagner, Prelude to Tristan und Isolde28 Serving as the prologue, a sequence of slow motion shots unfold with the prelude to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.29 In the beginning there is nothing but silence. Then, the silence is broken by the Tristan chord, whose dissonance sets an unsettling tone that persists throughout the film, and the first shot emerges gradually from the 27. See the primary sources listed in the bibliography. Robert Bailey (ed.), Richard Wagner: Prelude and Transfiguration from Tristan und Isolde, New York 1985, p. 47. 29 To open a film with sequence in slow motion accompanied with opera playing on the soundtrack was already applied by Lars von Trier in the previous film, Antichrist, though rendered in monochrome. 19 28.

(21) darkness as if the spectators are opening their eyes and project their gaze onto the screen, on which shows a close-up of Justine’s face. She slowly opens her eyes and looks directly back to the viewers, while dead birds start to fall from the sky like autumn leaves (Fig. 2). Justine’s sight reveals an ominous sign, and through which the catastrophes are prophetically presented to the viewers in the subsequent shots involving the main characters and the film’s visual motifs. The prologue epitomizes the whole story by sixteen shots, and each of them represents a specific moment revealed later in the narrative and implies the ultimate destruction.30 Following Justine’s close-up, the second shot shows a huge sundial situated in the middle of a garden, and on the sides are rows of bushes. All the elements in this scene cast two shadows (Fig. 4). Later in the eighth shot, which is perceived from the opposite of the garden, shows a grand mansion and in front of which Justin in her bridal gown stands in a triple composition with her sister Claire and nephew Leo. The uncanny double shadows projected on the ground which we now learn come from the intrusion of the blue planet Melancholia dominating the night sky right above the head of Justine (Fig. 6). Interspersing among the opening sequence, the planet Melancholia appears four times, with each time getting closer to the Earth (Fig. 8). Along with Wagner’s endless melody, the intense “dance of death”31 between the Earth and the planet Melancholia starts. The growing intensity felt emotionally in the symphonic orchestra prelude to Tristan und Isolde is visually reflected on the fatal closeness between the two planets, and at the climax of the music is the final catastrophic collision. Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde, according to Lars von Trier, is referred to. 30. Stéphane Delorme, “La douceur de la mélancolie. Entretien avec Lars von Trier,” in: Cahiers du cinéma, No. 669, juillet-août 2011, p. 40. 31 The “dance of death” as called in the film indicates the trajectory of the planet of Melancholia around the Earth. 20.

(22) as “the perfect work of art” by Marcel Proust (1871－1922) in À la recherche du temps perdu (1913－1927).32 The piece is used in the opening sequence to coordinate with the film in structure, and the relationship between the prelude and the opera is replicated by Lars von Trier in Melancholia.33 The way by placing a seven minutes prologue before the main body of the film to introduce the main characters and specific moments revealed later in the narrative is similar to the function of operatic prelude, as the one to Tristan und Isolde, where the prelude introduced by the Tristan chord consists of important musical motives that will recur throughout the opera.34 More significant than this structural matching is the affective meaning that the Tristan chord’s dissonance brings into Melancholia’s prologue is prolonged, suspended, and lasting throughout the film. The longing for resolution is endlessly extended, and one must be infused with anguish until the last minute.35 The emotion that the music continuously seizes is rather oppressive and intense, and whenever the music is heard, the feeling of disturbance and the longing for resolution is spread in the air. As the film progresses, the segments of prologue flash back to the beholder. The more we are aware of it, the closer we are to the ultimate end that is premised in the beginning. The anxiety that comes with the flash-back stimulates our desire for being redeemed at the end. But the redemption can by only reached in death. When the collision occurs and the planet Melancholia devours the Earth, it is as Tristan and Isolde, who, according to Susan Sontag (1933–2004)’s remark, “seek to fuse with 32. Stéphane Delorme, “La douceur de la mélancolie. Entretien avec Lars von Trier,” in: Cahiers du cinema, No. 669, juillet-août 2011, p. 38. 33 “Je voulais ouvrir Melancholia comme un opéra, où chaque tableau annonce la fin du monde tout en exprimant des sentiments très forts.” Quoted form: Romain Le Vern, “La dernière interview de Lars Von Trier avant l’apocalypse,” in: Chaos Reigns, 2014, online at http://www.chaosreigns.fr/la-derniere-interview-de-lars-von-trier-lapocalypse/ (accessed September 30, 2016). 34 David Larkin, ““Indulging in Romance with Wagner”: Tristan in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011),” in: Music and the Moving Image 9, No. 1, Spring, 2016, p. 50. 35 Susan Sontag, “Wagner’s Fluids,” in: Where the stress falls: essays, New York 2001, p. 203. 21.

(23) another is, […] to seek the annihilation of both.”36 The attraction between the two lovers can be so strong that they decide to renounce the world and seek for the fulfilment of love in death. This is implicitly paralleled with the relation between Justine and the planet Melancholia, and a further discussion in regard to it will be made in the first section of Chapter Two. Titled with Justine, part one begins with a bourgeois but disturbing wedding in a luxury mansion surrounded by an expansive garden and a golf course with a full 18 holes. The title character Justine is a beautiful woman who tries to be a happy bride, but it seems like that the moment when she is late to her own wedding, her inner world fails to catch up with the outside world, and from the interval grows the gloominess that even the splendid reception can’t illuminate. Melancholia here is reflected as a temperament concealed under Justine’s white dress. At the reception are a variety of activities: guessing bean lottery, making a toast, dancing with music, cutting the wedding cake, releasing the sky lanterns, and throwing the bouquet. All these multitudinous wedding rituals piled up by the fortune and vanity of Claire’s husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland), do not lead Justine to her happiness but instead, progressively drag her back to the mire of melancholia. Everything she does is to adjust to others’ standards and expectations, but the effort is doomed to failure. An undercurrent of conflict and turmoil pervading the wedding reception is gradually surfacing. The praise of Jack (Stellan Skarsgård), the bride’s employer, is nothing but a cunning attempt to ask for a tagline; the blessing of the parents during the toast section becomes a tit for tat; the wish of John for Justine being happy is only a pretext for emphasizing the huge amount of money he has spent for the wedding. The photo of “Empire Apples” given by Justine’s fiancé, Michael (Alexander Skarsgård), who desperately desires her affection, implies the contented 36. Ibid., p. 202. 22.

(24) life he promises to provide (Fig. 9). When the photo is deliberately forgotten by Justine, the sugarcoated “happily ever after” marriage is smashed into pieces. Her mental instability is gradually revealed as the uneasiness, contradictory and discrepancy swirling around her about to reach its climax. She abandons both her marriage and promising career by having intercourse with her employer’s nephew, who is forced to get the tagline from her, and by accusing publicly her employer of being a despicable, power-hungry little man. Eventually, no one can get away from the enormous swirl of chaos and the wedding ends in disaster. Nevertheless, the end of the disastrous wedding is only the beginning of an ultimate catastrophe. The inner collapse of an individual is expanded to an outer destruction in the second part. 37 With the title Claire, part two opens with Justine’s return. Her condition has worsened since the wedding. She can no longer stays on her own, so Claire takes on the responsibility of taking care of her. Meanwhile, an approaching planet named Melancholia now threatens to obliterate the life on Earth. Compared with the numerous guests in the first part, the absence of other people in the second creates an isolating atmosphere and makes a few characters the centre of focus to magnify their different reactions to the approaching planet. Although the experts claim that the collision won’t occur, Claire is still in extreme panic. On the other hand, her husband John, a strong believer in science, shows great confidence in the scientific calculations that the “real” experts have made and is eagerly waiting to witness the once in a lifetime scene when the blue planet passes by the Earth. But when John realizes that the planet is not just going to pass by but turns straight back to hit the Earth, he commits suicide immediately. The death of John is rendered rather equivocal by showing his dead body found by Claire in the stable.. 37. Iulia Micu, “Wandering in the Apocalyptical Schlaraffenland. Symbols, Tropes and Motifs in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia,” in Ekphrasis, Issue 2, 2012, pp. 117-118. 23.

(25) At this point in the narrative, much of the action centres on the reversed mental state of the two sisters. In the face of the impending annihilation, the perfect mannered Claire is totally discombobulated. On the contrary, the closer the planet Melancholia approaches, the calmer Justine becomes. In the last scene, Justine, Claire and Leo sit together inside the tepee-shaped Magic Cave, an imaginary refuge that Justine proposes to make in order to soothe Leo’s fear of the approaching planet. Equability can be perceived on the faces of Justine and Leo. They hold each other’s hands and close their eyes, except Claire, who is too frightened to close her eyes and withdraws her hands at the moment when the planet appears from the horizon. As the enormous volume of the giant blue planet rises from the horizon and gradually occupies the sky, we hear the crescendo of Wagner’s music and the intense noise. Then, a burst impact carries the denouement of the film into an oppressive silence in darkness. The dark screen seems to turn full circle back to the beginning, before the Tristan chord is heard, before a succession of visions is foreboded through the eyes of Justine, and before we, the spectators, are informed the inevitable collision. Eventually, we are back to where we start, the end. The fantasy to present an imagination of disaster in film, according to Susan Sontag, is to reflect world-wild anxieties and serve to allay them.38 Lars von Trier, however, decides to go in a total opposite direction in Melancholia and assures us that at the brink of extinction there is no way to escape, only to embrace the death. The trivial matters seemingly irrelevant to the narrative are important factors that draw forth the emotions hidden within the protagonists, and they surface one by one when confronted with two similar yet quiet dissimilar situations: marriage as the tomb of love and doomsday as the tomb of all human being.. 38. Susan Sontag, “Imagination of Disaster,” in: Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York 2001, pp. 209-225. 24.

(26) In the face of the forthcoming annihilation, the planet Melancholia is like a mirror reflecting the deepest part of everyone. Fragile and strong are significantly juxtaposed through the constant confrontation among the protagonists. The little boy, Leo, who seems the most fragile is the calmest, while his father John, the one who should be the strongest is the most cowardly. Whereas the previously calm and rational Claire becomes agitated and erratic, the depressed and distant Justine becomes composed and caring. The two title characters, as Thomas Elsaesser points out, are in fact living and suffering in each other's world.39 Although it is entitled Justine, the first part traces out the ostentatious and bourgeois world of Claire, in which Justin is disinclined to join and sunk in despair. The second part, which is given the name of Claire, yet shows the saturnine world of Justine which now plagues Claire and progressively swallows her in. The torture to the viewers never ceases, and we suffer in the threat of death inside out: from a deathly still inside of Justine to a total extinction of the outside world. With the transition from part one to part two, the spectator's empathy shifts from Justine’s suffering to Claire’s. Even till the very end, the director refuses to offer a way out, and we become intimate with the feelings of Claire, panic and despair. The dark screen lasting for a while after the final impact iterates Justine’s assertion “When I say we are alone, we are alone. Life exists only on Earth, and not for long (01:32:47-31:33:03).” The road to the uncanny apocalypse is paved by Las von Trier with continuous contrast, both mentally and visually. Compared with the static long shot in the prologue, the camera in the wedding scene is restless. The previous stillness is violently interrupted by the use of hand-held camera. As co-founder of Dogme 95, a 39. Thomas Elsaesser, “Black Suns and a Bright Planet: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia as Thought Experiment,” in: Theory & Event 18, Issue 2, 2015, from Project MUSE database, https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed September 26, 2015). 25.

(27) cinematic movement aimed for simplicity and authenticity, Lars von Trier continues the Dogme essence in favor of hand-held approach.40 The focus is quickly changed and pulled from one figure to another. The jerky style of the hand-held camerawork does more than sustain a presentational performance and makes the film more documentary, or in a sense more realistic. 41 The roving intimacy by using the hand-held camera creates a physically close relationship between the actor and the viewer, allowing us to observe the slightest flickering change of their facial expression. The camera pans instinctively as if we are present, being one of the guests standing among them and watching the family melodrama (Fig. 10).42 The continual use of hand-held camera in Melancholia creates a sense of vibration, imbalance and uneasiness, unsettling the narrative flow.43 The conflict is enhanced by the visual difference in two halves of the film. The extensive use of yellow lighting in the night scenes creates a bustling atmosphere,. 40. In 1995, together with Thomas Vinterberg (1969-) and other Danish directors, Lars von Trier presented a manifesto for a new cinematic movement which they called Dogme 95 and said their vows of chastity: “I swear to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by Dogme 95: 1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found). 2. The sound must never be produced apart from the image, or vice-versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.) 3. The camera must be handheld. Any movement or mobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place.) 4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera). 5. Optical work and filters are forbidden. 6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.) 7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.) 8. Genre movies are not acceptable. 9. The film format must be Academy 35mm. 10. The director must not be credited.” Quoted from Andrew Utterson (ed.), Technology and culture, the film reader, London and New York 2005, p. 88. 41 Lars von Trier and others tell about Melancholia's visual style at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAMOR898yyc (accessed December 2, 2014). 42 The impromptu realism is intentionally demanded by the director. See: Rob White, “Interview With Manuel Alberto Claro,” in: FILM QUART 65, No. 4, summer, 2012, p. 18. 43 Richard Lippe, “Lars von Trier and Melancholia,” in: Cineaste 86, 2011, p. 63. 26.

(28) which sharply contrasts Justine’s mental state and her indifference to the wedding. A sequence of shots interweaving the reception’s boisterousness and her somber state of mind parallel the emotional fluctuations and reinforce the misfit. Stylistically different from the overly yellow tone in the first part, the lighting in the second part is colder and more naturalistic by the use of dark, ashy blue. The emotional resonance could be perceived through the different tone created by lighting, as the feeling of warm and happiness is replaced by gloom and oppression.44. Chapter One: Melancholia: Title, State of Mind, and Rogue Planet 1.1. From Melancholia to Depression: A Shift in Perception “La mélancolie est peut-être ce qu'ont de plus spécifique les cultures de l'Occident. […] réfractée et reflétée par les situations et les oeuvres les plus diverses, elle est l'écharde dans la chair de cette modernité qui depuis les Grecs ne cesse de naître mais sans jamais en finir de se dégager de ses nostalgies, de ses regrets, de ses rêves.”45 Yves Bonnefoy (1923–2016). In present time, depression is generally considered as a disturbing and undesired state, but it does have a desirable predecessor, in the name of melancholia. The elusive dark side of melancholia makes it attractive to not only physician but also creator. The former seeks for the way to illuminate the darkness; the latter goes deeper to find its greatness. Melancholia, both as clinical symptom and cultural significance, marks an intersection where medicine and art collide. Once believed to be the spring 44. Manuel Alberto Claro, cinematographer of Melancholia talks about the different visual style in the two halves of the film: “We’ve gotten some very like yellow, very warm, very warm-feel…kind of…trying to make a happiness… feeling of happiness and party, and then in the second part of the film, we’ve gotten more blue… more melancholic.” Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAMOR898yyc (1:08-1:31) (accessed December 2, 2014). Also see: Rob White, “Interview with Manuel Alberto Claro,” in: FILM QUART 65, No. 4, summer, 2012, p. 18. 45 Jean Starobinski, La Mélancolie au miroir: Trois lectures de Baudelaire, Paris 1997, p.7. 中譯：憂鬱可能是西方文化最具特色的東西。…被各種情勢和最為不同的作品折射與反應，它是那種自希臘人以後不斷產生但從來也不曾擺脫懷舊、遺憾和夢想之現代性的核心內容。摘自：讓.斯塔羅賓斯基，《鏡中的憂鬱：關於波特萊爾的三篇闡譯》，上海，2012，頁 52。 27.

(29) of inspiration that nourishes art, today it becomes rather a stigma. How does the perception of melancholia shift from a mental state to be declared loudly to a mental illness to be concealed silently? In order to shed light on the transformation, it is, therefore, necessary to track the genealogy of melancholia and the complex factors that have largely shaped its perception. With a long etymological history, melancholia cannot be understood as a single but rather composite concept. The term melancholia has its roots in ancient Greece and literally means black bile (melaina chole), a concept embedded in the context of the humoral theory outlined by Hippocrates.46 In the Hippocratic writings, the concept of four bodily humours―blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile―as crucial elements to constitute a state of health was incorporated with four temperaments and further linked to four seasons, four primary Empedoclean elements (air, fire, earth, and water), and Four Ages of Man.47 Each humour was associated with a paired combination of qualities, and as the essential factor in the pathogenesis of melancholia, black bile was associated with the qualities of coldness and dryness.48 Becoming more systematic in the writings of Galen of Pergamum (c. 130 AD–c. 201), the court physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180), the notion of humoralism was one of the most commonly held views concerning human body in Europe and retained the popularity for centuries till the advent of modern science in the second half of the seventeenth century.49 In the Middle Ages, predominantly framed under the Christian faith, melancholia was often bounded with acedia as a form of sloth in the seven deadly sins.50 Such 46. Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, New Haven 1986, p. 4. 47 Ibid., pp.7-8. 48 Ibid., p. 31. 49 Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, New Haven 1986, pp. 104-115. 50 Clark Lawlor, From melancholia to prozac: a history of depression, Oxford 2012, pp. 37-39. 28.

(30) moralistic interpretation in relation to melancholia persisted in the preface of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), in which Robert Burton (1577–1640) declared to his reader “I write of melancholy, by being busie to avoid melancholy. There is not greater cause of melancholy then idleness, ‘no better cure than business,’ […].”51 To counteract the danger of idleness, writing was regarded as a means of labor against the author’s melancholy. While reference to moral theology was crucial in regard to the interpretation in the Middle Ages, the interpretation in Renaissance turned substantially to another direction. Religion was no longer the mere factor that needed to be taken into account and the once eclipsed classical literature and learning now shined again in the revival of antiquity. A longing for ancient Greece and Rome brought the classical studies to light in Renaissance and resuscitated the close connection between genius and melancholia in the Aristotelian discourse, Problemata (c. 2nd century B.C.).52 In Problemata XXX.I, the paradoxical nature of melancholia was put forward: “Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic, and some to such an extent that they are infected by the diseases arising from black bile, as the story of Heracles among the heroes tells?”53 The frenzied, prophetic, and creative abilities associated with black bile authoritatively asserted by the author of Problemata were accepted and largely repeated by subsequent writers, particularly the Neo-Platonists during the Renaissance. In fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Florentine Neo-Platonists revitalized and advocated this close linkage between melancholic state and intellectual achievements of genius which seemed to have been deserted and forgotten in the Middle Ages, and the most influential one among them was Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the renowned 51 52 53. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, London 1800, p. 7. Jennifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford 2000, p. 55. Ibid., p. 57. 29.

(31) reviver of Platonism in the Renaissance. 54 Ficino read Aristotle through Plato’s theory and fused the divine inspiration with superior melancholic disposition in his De vita libri tres (Three Book on Life) (1482–1489) to stress the conception of melancholia as a force of artistic creativity.55 In De vita, a work on health and its association with intellectual life, the entire filed of medicine was considered in its relation to astrology.56 As a man of melancholic disposition who considered himself to be born under the sign of Saturn, Ficino, then, crowned the planet Saturn as the ruling sign of the afflicted genius.57 The absolute positivity which melancholia regained in the Renaissance and its relationship with Saturn, according to Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968)’s potent argumentation, was masterly rendered on Albrecht Dürer’s pivotal engraving of 1514, Melancholia I (Fig. 1). The work of Dürer does not have an explicit medical purpose. Instead, it is made informative for cultural significance and revolutionary in the pictorial representation of melancholia. In his examination of melancholia in historical context, Panofsky sees Dürer’s Melancholia I as a watershed that distinguishes it from the older representations.58 The greatness of Melancholia I lies in its innovation in combination of different conventions. Before Dürer, the pictorial representations of melancholia are miserly and sinful, but after Dürer, it is spiritually empowered. The image of melancholia in Dürer’s reinterpretation is shifted so thoroughly that it becomes the privilege of the afflicted genius struggling between. 54. Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, New Haven 1986, pp. 100-101. 55 Ibid., p. 100. 56 Jennifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford 2000, p. 87; Margot Wittkower and Rudolf Wittkower, “The Saturnine Temperament ,” in: Born under Saturn: the character and conduct of artist: a documented history from antiquity to the French Revolution, New York 1963, pp. 102-103. 57 Erwin Panofsky, “Melancholia I,” in: The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton 1955, pp. 165-166. 58 Erwin Panofsky, “Melancholia I,” in: The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton 1955, pp. 158-168. 30.

(32) active imagination and debilitating inaction.59 With left hand under the jaw and the gaze lost in distance, immersed in thought, the downcast figure characterized by Panofsky is also believed to be a spiritual self-portraiture of Dürer, echoing the Aristotelian discourse that justifies artist as a visionary genius.60 The importance of Melancholia I in the history of art is ineffable, for the image of Dürer’s angelic figure has henceforth been referred to in numerous artistic representations of melancholia, whether the creator is aware of it or not. A consistency in the subsequent visual representations on the theme that is portrayed as a seated figure with its eyes cast down and a hand supporting the head can be perceived.61 The image of a soul trapped in his thought continues to populate the portraits of scholars and artists in the centuries after Dürer’s declaration in his Melancholia I.62 In the literary representations, melancholia occupies a large amount in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, a period ranging from the second half of the sixteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century.63 The melancholic Dane in Hamlet (1603) by William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is probably the most representative literary character that interprets the paradoxical antagonism between illness and genius. The vogue of references to melancholia and regarding it as a divine inspiration in this period “from the fifteen-century philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, through the etchings of Dürer and the poetry of Tasso, culminating in the seventeenth century with the tragic character of Hamlet and the publication in 1621 of Robert Burton’s 59. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 171. 61 For the research on the visual reception of Dürer’s Melancholia I (1514), see: Andrea Bubenik, Five centuries of melancholia, exhibition catalog, The University of Queensland Art Museum, Australia (30August–30 November 2014), St Lucia, Qld. 2014; Jean Clair, Mélancolie: génie et folie en Occident, exhibition catalog, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris (10 Octobre 2005 – 13 Janvier 2006)―Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (17 Février–7 Mai 2006), Paris 2005. 62 For a detailed discussion on the conventional posture of melancholia in the portraits of scholars and the self-portraits of artists, see: Laurinda S. Dixon, The dark side of genius: the melancholic persona in art, ca. 1500-1700, Pennsylvania 2013, pp. 81-142. 63 Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan malady: a study of melancholia in English literature from 1580 to 1642, East Lansing 1951, pp.73-74. 31 60.

(33) monumental and encyclopedic Anatomy of Melancholy”, as Juliana Schiesari defines, was “great era of melancholia”.64 At the end of the Renaissance began the scientific revolution, which emphasized evidence and direct observation as a means to acquire knowledge instead of accepting that from the early times uncritically.65 If Christian theology was the first major obstacle to the concept of melancholic genius in the medieval times, the rise of New Science in the late seventeenth century that turned to investigate nature directly would be the second one.66 The humoral explanation inherited from Hippocrates continually lost ground when confronted with a new set of medical understandings such as new chemical or mechanical explanations.67 The scientific revolution bloomed in the eighteenth century as the movement of Enlightenment. The embrace of modern science and medicine during the Enlightenment marked the first detachment of melancholia from the long-standing humoral theory. Although once restored its former glamor in the nineteenth century Europe when the Romanticism reiterated the idea of creativity derived from a suffering mind and the notion of melancholic genius became so fashionable again that the middle and upper classes vied to claim afflicted by68 and was conspicuous in the literary works such as John Keats (1795–1821)’s Ode on Melancholy (1819) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1932)’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) 69, it was still on the brink of obsolescence with the development toward the. 64. Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, Ithaca and London 1992, p. 2. 65 Clark Lawlor, From melancholia to prozac: a history of depression, Oxford 2012, p. 74. 66 Ibid., pp. 37-39, 73-74. 67 Ibid., pp. 74-87; Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, New Haven 1986, pp. 115-116. 68 Roy Porter, A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane, New York 2002, pp. 80-88. 69 Allan Ingram, Stuart Sim, Clark Lawlor, Richard Terry, John Baker and Leigh Wetherall Dickson, Melancholy experience in literature of the long eighteenth century: before depression, 1660-1800, Basingstoke 2011, pp. 51-53; Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, Nendeln 1979, p. 236. 32.