Resumen de Gothic-Romantic Ecocentric Landscapes in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011)
A sense of impending global catastrophe and a critique of anthropocentric progress mark Lars Von Trier latestfilm, Melancholia (2011). At the light of Gothic-Romantic theory and aesthetics, as well as of recent ecocriticalapproaches to film, this paper explores the spatial settings and sensory landscapes of von Trier’s work. The feelingof melancholy was particularly present in Gothic-Romantic literature, fine arts, music, and philosophy. Originating asa reflection on the inadequacy of logical and discursive knowledge in a larger-than-human world, melancholy fusesthe experience of a heightened self-consciousness with the quality of a pessimistic gloomy feeling. Gothic-Romanticaspects of Melancholia’s cinematic landscapes include its settings (a castle with vast surrounding gardens); the useof the motif of the double in its characterization (two sisters: one light, one dark); its hyper-subjectivity, apparent notonly in the unsteady handheld camerawork but also in the overstated quality of its sound; its manifestly Romanticsoundtrack (Wagner’s overture of Tristan und Isolde); its melodramatic structure; its Pre-Raphaelite visual tableaux;its dystopian depiction of civilizational collapse in the intimate scope of family relationships; and its suggestionof the sublime (contradictory emotions of pleasure and fear) through supernatural phenomena. By invoking aGothic-Romantic aesthetics, Melancholia equally summons its pessimistic (albeit vitalist) philosophy, exposing thelimitations of an anthropocentric civilization and the fragility of its normative human bonds.
