Melancholia 08 review (spoilers ahead)

Art to me is above all, at its best, a means of pure expression. It's a way to make the intangible tangible, bring emotions and ideas to life. All my favorite pieces of art, from music to poetry to cinema, were able to capture feelings and concepts close to me - like they reached into my heart and ripped those feelings straight out for me to view with fresh eyes. Things like White Ferrari by Frank Ocean, or the season 3 finale of Bojack Horseman, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that move me so much in ways I couldn't possibly describe. Things you just have to experience, and they either connect with you or they don't. Things that submerge you into your past, your memories, and make you relive some of the most emotional experiences or fantasies you've ever had. Like dreams you thought you lost suddenly piecing back together, shaping into a reality that fulfills everything you didn't remember. Those dreams became whole again, after years and years. That's what Melancholia is to me. It's a piece of me, where I came from, and how it follows me to where I'm at now. 

It's important to mention, since it plays a major role in how I took the film, I'm half-Filipino. I've only visited the Philippines a few times, but the times I have were all life-changing. It's such an emotional thing to look back on; interacting with that side of my family, experiencing the culture, absorbing their atmosphere. I'm stranger to the humidity in Vegas. It was so beautiful, driving through Manila's crowded streets at night. Some roads were lined with sari sari shops while others deeper in the city towered with large billboards, I think advertising a popular Filipino soap opera. The place felt foreign, yet kind of familiar. It really is bittersweet to me. 

And Melancholia encapsulated a lot of what I experienced there.. which is baffling, that anything could reflect those memories. It's so deeply Filipino, yet simultaneously it's universal. Everybody knows the gestures, everyone knows the feeling.

My favorite scene in the film, the one which encapsulates everything I love about it, is where Rina confronts Alberta about the program. It's a moment where words kinda fail me, to talk about. 

Ive felt it. All of it. At that point, it felt like I was watching real people, any sense that it was an illusion or performance dissipated. It felt like I was watching myself. I saw myself in Rina, Alberta, and even the camera -standing off by the wall, observing quietly, helpless to do anything despite the overwhelming desire to. Just like Alberta, just like I would. Rina's uncertainty about the program, and whether a cure even exists for the immense suffering she's going through, it's so palpable. It's visible; everything she chokes back, bursting at the seams. Alberta wants to comfort her so bad, so so bad, because she feels the same. And there's this denial of plain reality that even Alberta herself can sense. She knows. Yet she distantly tries to convince Rina it's working, and by extension, herself. Although they occupy the same room, there's an aching wall between them. There's so much fear, uncertainty, desperation, and utter hopelessness that fortifies itself in their hearts until they can't feel beyond it. It's barely even living. It's coming to life as your own shadow in the darkness of night, being soaked in the cold rain of day as the sun hides behind massless, yet impenetrable clouds. They constantly embody someone else to escape themselves, to forge a new identity and move on in a year. Before it can be tainted by the same sorrow all their previous ones have.. But they can't escape. You'll never get better by running away from your reflection, or trying to feign a new one under other people's smudges. You can't escape yourself. 

"My face is scattered all over the Philippines"

The same melancholy exists everywhere, it underlies most things. But especially there, in the Philippines, I felt it. I felt an authentic connection that was walled off by something, just like Alberta and Rina's. Maybe it was something in my family, something in me, something in the humid air. But there were so many things I wish I could've expressed, those feelings are bittersweet. The shop owner reminds me a lot of my family. A genuinely good, pure person. The one beacon of light and hope in this entire movie. That whole sequence where Alberta stays the night at her house is really, really beautiful. They have a genuinely warm conversation, and the shop owner relieves Alberta's intense stomach pains almost magically. Yet lurking around the corner.. always, it's still there. An uneasy feeling remains in the pit of your stomach. 

They talk about how excited they are to see each other again, how Alberta would love to come back in the future. And we never see the shop owner again for the rest of the film. Damn, that fucking hurts. 

We watch a band drone on eternally with loud incomprehensible noise. We hear a concert roar in the background as a girl wanders the night alone, aimless across the wet streets. Near the end of part 2, Julian crawls the jungle ground with barely enough strength to drag himself along. He consumes a raw mushroom and collapses - there is nothing but pure defeat. It all occurs in a stream of consciousness manner. Some events just come when they feel right, whether they progress the plot or not. I don't know exactly what the page eating/mirror shattering scene means, but it's unsettling as hell. I don't think it even needs explanation. The feelings touched upon are hard to elaborate as it is. Similarly, when Rina finds that mother singing to her baby in the rain. She stands there, watching on. Eventually, she leaves. No asking for donations, no grabbing her attention. No words. The feeling doesn't need to be elaborated on. How could you? 

Before I continue that train of thought though, I can't go without mentioning how gorgeous the visuals of this movie are. It's all rough, lofi digital footage which gives it this almost voyeuristic feeling. What you're looking at is so raw, the camera just sits and watches as people live. It has this authentic quality that could've never been achieved with crisp HD and high quality sound. We hear the pitter patter of rain hitting the camera, the grain and white noise of a character's room. Things normally considered flaws suddenly become massive strengths. I don't even understand it myself honestly,

Melancholia feels like watching a shadow of the world we live in. Everything is black and white, blurry, obscured in darkness. It embodies an immense sadness around us, and inside us. Pretty much every other movie I've seen feels like it's in its own universe. Its own space separate from mine. As much as I may connect with the content of most films, there's always something triggering a personal disconnect. Melancholia crossed over that barrier. It didn't inject me with a separate sorrow coming from the film's universe. It lifted real feelings out of me, ultimately confronting me with my own reflection. And over nearly 8 hours, I couldn't run away

.

Where am I? In there, behind all the ideas of myself, concepts of what I could be. I am Smart Monkey, I am ________, I am ape, I am human, I am male, I am female. Why sometimes is it so hard to say my name? What am I trying to escape from? I don't know, but I love the ending of this movie. There's something strangely comforting about it, how these feelings could create a work of art so beautiful.

"I am not Julian." repeats eternally...
I'm tired of running away