“...she resembled the angel in Dürer’s Melancholia, steadfast among the instruments of destruction, her response was that the apparent chaos surrounding her represented in reality a perfect kind of order, or an order which at least tended towards perfection.”

“For the character born under the sign of Saturn, time is the medium of constraint, inadequacy, repetition, mere fulfillment. In time, one is only what one is: what one has always been. In space, one can be another person.”

film · lars von trier's masterpiece melancholia is far more than a film about the end of the world. throughout the two acts, time and space, relationships and reactions are entirely warped and, ultimately, demolished by the sheer force of melancholia.

paintings i · kazimir malevich's suprematist works appear in our film signifying pure, abstract feeling derived from the search for bare essentials void of perspective and representation.

words i · from w. g. sebald's novel, rings of saturn referring to the subject of albrecht dürer's melencholia etching from which von trier undoubtedly drew inspiration from.

painting ii · von trier visually references john everett millais' ophelia painting in the opening sequence of our film. the astounding detail of the botanicals reminds us of the refutable power of nature.

music · pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky's final symphony, symphony no. 6 in b minor, op. 74, also known as the pathétique symphony. he died just over a week after its premiere.

words ii · in her essay under the sign of saturn, susan sontag considers the possibility of the melancholic genius as personified by walter benjamin.