And in a steep turn, a two-hour walk from the ranch, the small disaster: the limousine stacks. On the narrow dirt road it cannot take the turn!

It is there that Justine’s face lights up.

Looks like she’s having a blast. She becomes loving and intimate towards her husband.

In maneuvering the car, when Justine is behind the wheel she pretends stepping on Michael!

And so they arrive at the ranch by foot, after a two hour delay. Justine has her shoes in her hands, she’s a bit tired, but in a good mood.

She is careless and playful.

But Claire is waiting for them, in a restrained frantic mood. She is holding the schedule at hand showing to her sister what was missed up to that point, what havoc had been created:

This is very much not my project. OK?

Justine looks like a small child been scolded.

Anyhow, before rushing to the crowded hall where the guests have been kept waiting for her, first she makes her way to the stables, to see Abraham, her favorite horse, to say hello and hug him.

The story begins in an atmosphere of extreme positivity: the all-white limousine, like a bride itself, in its snugness the couple sways gently, the chauffeur wearing a uniform and taking them to the beautiful ranch, where a perfectly organized and extravagant celebration is waiting; and everything promises them a rose garden. The size and luxury of the limousine symbolize exactly that, the superlativity (in Greek: υπερθετικοτητα: super-positivity) of the situation.

And what happens here? Infarction. Like a blood clot in the artery, the limousine, this over-sized luxurious vehicle, while moving on the narrow road, stacks.

One way of seeing what is going on here leads us to the story of Oedipus. Oedipus asks from the oracle to learn about his parents. The prophecy doesn’t reveal to him who his parents are. But it does say that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus, in an attempt to avoid his fate, leaves from Korinthos, where he was living adopted by the King, whom he considered his father, and goes to Thebes. He runs fast towards his fate. Not only does he kill his father and marries his mother. Through his own questions, through his own way to interpret whatever he hears, he ends up recognizing the guilty one - himself.

Lets get back to Melancholia. A modern oracle would warn the couple that the road ahead for the ranch and the wedding reception would be difficult to cross, arduous, with unforeseen occurrences. What does our couple do? They take extra care so that they avoid the difficulties, the tiredness and those unforeseen occurrences. And how exactly are they doing that? How else, other than hiring for their move the best, safest and most comfortable limousine that is available. And it is in this exact way that the oracle’s prediction is fulfilled!

Right from the start, the two sisters, when faced with this small disaster, exhibit the exact opposite response. The infarction, as we have seen, brings to Justine exaltation, her face lightens up, she comes out to fresh air, actually and metaphorically. On the Contrary, Claire is outraged with the program’s rapture: This is very much not my project, OK? She faces the small disaster with an arrogant attitude. She won’t tolerate for any disruption of her plans. There is no excuse!

These of course don’t come out of nowhere. The two of them are very different people. Justine is somehow weird. From sparse references throughout the film we learn that she is awkward, she creates “scenes”… She is not completely from this world. That is exactly why she sees things that others don’t. So:

> She is the first one to notice the planet Melancholia that will hit and destroy earth in only a few days.

> Justine "knows things". A dialogue with Claire:

Justine: The earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it.

Claire: What?

Justine: Nobody will miss it.

Claire: But where would Leo grow?

Justine: All I know is, life on earth is evil.

Claire: Then maybe life somewhere else.

Justine: But there isn't.

Claire: How do you know?

Justine: Because I know things.

Claire: Oh yes, you always imagined you did.

Justine: I know we're alone.

Claire: I don't think you know that at all.

Justine: 678. The bean lottery. Nobody guessed the amount of beans in the bottle.

Claire: No, that's right.

Justine: But I know. 678.

Claire: Well, perhaps. But what does that prove?

Justine: That I know things. And when I say we're alone, we're alone. Life is only on earth, and not for long.

For the weird one, for him who carries a madness, earth is something evil, because the absolute fixation with it, the “worm’s life”, as Hölderlin writes referring to Germans, is hell. The weird suffocates in it. Ancient Greeks, Hölderlin continues, are given the “fire of the sky”. Something of that fire has marked Justine. Her hands don’t end with her fingertips but tend, with their own fire, towards that of the sky.

And so this heavenly body, planet Melancholia, is something like an unknown friend from the past, whom she, without even suspecting it, had been expecting all her life, and now here it comes and it will overrun earth. Justine in the film’s “erotic scene”,

could speak to the sky’s fire that comes closer through Arethusa's lips: “It is for thee that my body was born”.

The giving, her nakedness towards it, which to clarify, is not by her own will, but it rather happens to her, starts by stripping off those things that held her bound to earth:

> When during the wedding ceremony, she cannot participate and despairs, she asks her parents’ help, their support, a last holding, and they abandon her.

> She resigns from the company where she worked, when a while ago her boss had made a toast announcing her promotion: Nothing is too much for you, Jack. I hate you and your firm so deeply I couldn't find the words to describe it. You are a despicable power-hungry little man, Jack.

> The meaningless sexual encounter, more like a spit, with one of the company’s employees she met that night. She ridicules the sexual act, she gives it the coup de grace, so to speak, she waves it goodbye.

> The man, who doesn’t mean anything to her anymore, leaves the same night.

Michael: So I guess … we'll take off now.

Justine: Yes.

Michael: This could have been a lot different.

Justine: Yes, Michael, it would have been ... But, Michael, what did you expect?

Michael: Jeah...You're right.

> A deep depression follows.

She can't even take a bath. Claire prepares here favourite dish. Justine tastes it:

It's like ashes. VIDEO

he depression will thin out once she surrenders to the erotic encounter with Melancholia.

And the last night she sees the planet rising. Bliss.

> Melancholia is going to fall on the earth shortly. Claire wants to spend the last moments with a glass of wine on the terrace.

Claire: I want us to be together when it happens. Maybe out- outside on the terrace. Help me Justine. I want to do this the right way.

Justine: You'd better do it quickly.

Claire: A glass of wine, together, maybe.

Justine: You want me to have a glass of wine on your terrace?

Claire: Yes. Will... will you do it, Sis?

Justine: How about a song? Beethoven's Ninth. Something like that? Maybe we could light some candles. You want us to gather on your terrace to sing a song, have a glass of wine, the three of us?

Claire: Yes. That would make me happy.

Justine: Do you know what I think of your plan?

Claire: No. I was hoping you might like it.

Justine: I think it's a piece of shit.

Claire: Justine, please. I just want it to be nice.

Justine: Nice? Why don't we meet on the fuckin' toilet?

Claire: Then let's not.

Justine: You're damn right, let's not.

Claire: Sometimes I hate you so much, Justine.

> Right after Justine talks with Claire’s younger son, Leo, who is scared. Here Justine has her own answer to how spend the last moments.

Leo: I'm afraid that the planet will hit us anyway.

Justine: Don't be. Please.

Leo: Dad says there's nothing to do then. Nowhere to hide.

Justine: If your dad said that, then he's forgotten about something. He's forgotten about the magic cave.

VIDEO

The odd, the otherworldly, the alien of the disaster nests in the otherness of the mythical world, of the magical, “spiritual world”. The worm has assimilated heaven’s fire.

Franz Kafka writes in one of his Aphorisms:

The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us from hope and gives us certainty. (62)

And now Claire.

She is completely attuned with the way of the worm. Her main concern is balance, affluence and security. It is two or three times in the play, when faced with her sister’s oddities, and even the discordant comments that she will throw to her like another modern Cassandra that Claire will respond:

Sometimes I hate you so much, Justine.

The wedding ceremony is now happening. Luxury is yet again so evident:

As Claire’s main concern is that everything is smooth sailing and no negativity will creep in, notices Justine’s low mood. He takes her to the net room.

Listen to me! We agreed that you weren't going to make any scenes tonight.

The celebration is over and right to the forefront comes Melancholia.

That stupid planet,

says Claire at some point, and for a while she is left assured by John, her husband, who is an amateur astronomer and buries his head in the sand, for his own sake and even more to calm Claire down. She nevertheless keeps being restless. She finds herself in a defending mode as she focuses on all those things she is about to lose. One night, she looks at Melancholia through the telescope with a sheer and mute terror on her face:

She looks for information in the internet. John calms her down once more. But not for long. She comes back from the village with some pills. John realizes her intensions:

Trying to kill us all?

Which means that they are communicating in another level as well; a level more sincere, from what their talk gives away: Suicide as the utmost flight before the disaster; its ultimate negation.

The last night. Melancholia rises. Everyone comes out at the terrace. Justine:

Claire:

For one last time John will reassure Claire with a lie during one of her panic attacks, that Melancholia is allegedly moving away. The planet simply starts its last circle before it falls on earth, as shown in a print Claire downloaded from the internet:

The last dawn. Claire wonders why the servant hasn’t come to work. In one of her talks with Justine she insists, although not with absolute certainty:

Claire: It will pass us by tonight. John is quite calm about it.

Justine: Does that calm you down?

Claire: Yes, of course … I don't study things as the scientists.

Justine doesn’t study either. But, in the dialogue presented above she says: I know things. She doesn’t study because she knows. She moves along a different field from that of knowledge. Pablo Picasso allegedly said once: Je ne cherche pas; je trouve. I do not search; I find.

Claire comes down to the terrace with her coffee, feeling relaxed and in a good mood since the worst is over, as she believes, and finds herself a cozy corner under the sweet sun. John on the other hand, looking rather gloomy, watches through the telescope with tension. Claire closes her eyes for a while. When she opens them up John is no longer there. They will find him dead, later on, next to the pack of pills that Claire had bought earlier. In the meantime she realizes that Melancholia has grown and closes in:

In an act of desperation: she grabs her child and runs for the village, the car lets her down though; she returns carrying her child in her arms and on her shoulders:

The dialogue with Justine follows. Claire wishes to spend the last few hours before the end on the terrace with a glass of wine, candles and music. Even for this time she wants things her way. But as we have seen Justine will blow off Claire’s plans.

And we reach the magic cave, where, holding hands, they are expecting the end:

The serenity of one and the desperation of the other. The one who on the face of disaster surrenders herself to the turn and all that this turn reveals. The other, who is facing the turn and all that will be lost in it with sheer desperation.