avicii was in about a boy…

you already know though

i have been thinking a little bit about melancholia. one of my good friends absolutely hated it. he found the film to be boring, self-indulgent, and trite. i disagreed. i thought his complaints were better suited for tree of life (a film that would have been good had it come out some 40 years earlier; the film was basically a remake of 2001). 

melancholia was dazzling. the imagery was often quite beautiful, which is something mr. von trier has long withheld from audiences. yes i am thinking mostly of dogme 95 but many of the danish director’s other films have this sort of washed-out palette that matches up well with the dark themes his films cover. but back to melancholia. the beauty is a statement on superficiality to a certain extent. these rich people can buy anything they want and they buy a big house and a big wedding and all this other nice beautiful shit. but at the end of the day they are not happy. the natural world is then a reflection of the human world. it is beautiful. the planet of melancholia itself is quite beautiful. yet underneath the facade it is all terrible and sad and destructive. 

kirsten dunst plays claire. claire is different than everyone else. she is suffering from this debilitating form of depression. she can’t marry the man who loves her because of this condition even though he is the beautiful alexander skarsgård and he is so sweet to her! the wedding sequence is von trier’s attempt to push the conventional audience away. he wants passive the audience to hate claire and to want to walk out of the film and he wants those who stay on board to be working. is that modernism or postmodernism?

okay, so we think about the film in that light and what do we get? well the end of the world and the approaching planet are a metaphor for melancholy. i’m being facetious but not really. this is the world though claire’s eyes. that of a deeply depressed individual. while it was heartbreaking to watch her from the perspective of others when we see the world through claire’s eyes we start to understand mr. von trier’s commentary. claire stands in for him in this sequence to an extent - he has had some bouts with depression thoughout the years - and soon we understand. without sadness life would not be worth living; happiness is insignificant without the existence of depression. nothing is beautiful without the hideous.

that’s what i learned from melancholia. i walked out of the film with a greater appreciation for the good in the world and a greater respect for the bad.

I RECENTLY WATCHED MESRINE TOO! vincent cassell plays the most badass gangster since ‘91 (that’s a goodfellas reference). and this woman in the photo! one of the most beautiful ladies i have seen on screen in a while. she does that shy but flirtatious spanish rose thing that penelope cruz taught us all about over the last 20 years. anyways everybody loves a cool movie about a really bad person with a strong moral code. and guns.

what terrible news. hung was one of the best shows on television the last few years. i’m pretty bummed.

i’m steady mobbing to bruce and eating bagels like you don’t even know and walking around new york city late at night cause it’s fun. the weather also happens to be gorgeous.

hot hot hot 80s flavor

a hot track from yung jake. max barbaria did the cool beat.