忧郁症

我承认我是被世界末日这个幌子吸引进来的...

结果是讲一个本来有忧郁症厌世而且很有可能自杀的女人因为真的人类要团灭而“恢复正常”的事情，独特的视角和思路；

看了一堆评论，没人注意到地球才是那个小行星，撞到抑郁星里嘛？

         我不认为加入那些所谓的艺术画面就可以描摹出复杂的人物情感。同样的，设计一个逻辑上的必定结果也一样。
        导演的主旨是当不可否定的结局来到的时候，那些悲观主义者反而会得到解脱，因为他们的一直预想的结果终于来到了，他们反而会坦然的面对，这种表面化的解读，太他妈幼稚了！按照这个逻辑，是不是说，那些饥饿的非洲儿童该更开心？他们的问题迎刃而解了。
       《银河旅行手册》里，有个科学家建立了一个房间，为了教育他的老婆。他老婆进入这个房间里看到宏大的广袤无垠的星系和自己渺小的卑微的形态，地球就像是一粒沙，而自己根本就不存在。于是最后她自杀了。本片似乎就是在给大家呈现这个房间：首先设定一个不可辩驳、不可逆转的结尾，仿佛把观众绑架在一个十字架上，然后逼迫着观众去悲观。
        主角贾斯汀有抑郁症，她对一切事物都保持着悲观的预期和对自己无法把握现实的无力感。这种无力感被导演以一颗小行星撞地球的方式表现出来，导演无非想提出一个问题：如果！你明天就要死了，这种结局是无法改变的，那么你也会感受到抑郁症者的内心。
         “如果！”。关键的问题是，没有如果。没有一个庄园，有精心剪裁的园林、蜿蜒起伏的高尔夫球场、黑缎带一样皮肤的骏马和一天完全不用操心的起居餐饮。甚至到了世界末日，还有佣人为他们奉上精美的早餐，打扫马厩和修剪杂草。当小行星真的要撞地球的时候，大多数人是在污秽的空气、肮脏的街道、大喊大叫的拥挤人群和没完没了悲天悯人的电视节目下度过的。
          当世界末日来到的时候，一个人是健全还是残缺，是正常还是不正常，任何区别都不重要了。影片最后，一家人跑到一个假想的保护之下相拥而死，抑郁症患者找到了自己的人生使命，这重要吗？无论此时，你是和家人一起还是你正在监狱里，还是你正在被癌症折磨，还是你刚刚结婚，还是你正在被强奸，你的内心、你的情绪、你的所有的一切都不重要。这就是那个科学家老婆看到的，因为你对于宇宙来说如此之渺小。
         那回到导演提出的问题，当世界末日来临的时候 ……抑郁症患者……。当地球被毁灭时……小蘑菇……
          至于创新性，本片导演之前的《反基督者》就有类似的油画电影的手法，一用再用，作为一个艺术家应该感到羞耻。如此费尽心机的去呈现人的情绪变化，我都为那些美丽的油画的作者扼腕惋惜。《问诊》只用了2个演员，一个房间，单纯的对话就可以呈现人内心中的痛苦和困境和人与人之间的理解障碍。

        2011，“世界末日”前夕，拉斯•冯•提尔携强大的演员阵容，献上末世情怀隆重的《忧郁症》，搞的电影界一片争议，也有一片肯定，再到戛纳电影节，因为“亲纳粹”言论被逐出电影节，拉斯•冯•提尔的2011足够丰富难忘。当然，尽管他的言辞给自己带来麻烦，电影界还是对事不对片，整体而言，《忧郁症》在欧洲获得了很大肯定。我个人也对这片表示赞赏，解读提尔的电影向来麻烦，又向来简单，因为最导演个人的东西，也常常最可让我等观众去各自解读，何况这片从心理到外在，从个人到社会，从末世大事到日常生活，涵盖多种层面，可谓一个肆意汪洋扯淡的良好平台。

        总体而言，这部电影就是贾斯汀和克莱尔两姐妹的舞台，提尔的设计很巧妙，前半段以贾斯汀为中心，后半段以克莱尔为中心，而两人的表现又呈现截然不同的差异性，更妙的是两段故事又以末世临近前和临近时分开，社会的脆弱与分裂得以充分展现。在第一段故事中，贾斯汀表现出“非常态”，她是个忧郁症病人，在新婚来临之际，表现出异常的烦躁和不安，以至于把自己的上司、亲人到郎君得罪个遍。而克莱尔和参加婚宴的众人则表现出“常态”，难道新婚之夜不该是兴致勃勃，载歌载舞吗？克莱尔对妹妹的关心；克莱尔丈夫的成功人士形象；贾斯汀老板的世故商人表现；贾斯汀父亲的玩世不恭；贾斯汀母亲的婚姻悲观态度，这一切难道不是“常态”的人间百态吗？提尔这点很强大，在一场婚宴把整个社会的主要阶层人物典型都囊括进来，只有贾斯汀显得格格不入，而这一切为后面的反转式剧情埋下伏笔。

        贾斯汀真是“非常态”的吗？是孤独的吗？其实不然，与她一样“非常态”的是大自然，那些动荡不安的动物们，还有那渐进的神秘星球，说白了就是，这个世界已经非常态了，你们这些人还故作常态做什么？在大灾难来临之际，往往现代人类感知能力最弱，反倒是蝼蚁这样的生物有更早的感应。而身患忧郁症的贾斯汀，倒是免去了对世俗功名和所谓幸福的感知，更自然，更正常的与世间生灵一道感知到了危机的来临。而前一段表现“常态”的克莱尔夫妇则在第二段故事走向崩溃，克莱尔作为一个女人，比丈夫更直接的表现自己的不安，末日行星将来，世间已是众说纷纭，动荡不安，但是人们又往往强作笑颜，掩饰内心的慌张。那些非高等生物们，往往最先感知危险，又秩序井然的逃难，而对于即将到来的灾难，它们无助中又显得淡然，不会有更多挣扎和追求。但克莱尔们不同，感知的最少，知道的又最多（实际上是现代信息社会，让我们以为自己知道的很多），恐惧渐渐吞噬心灵，无力的哭泣和颤抖。而更接近世间普遍生灵的贾斯汀却淡定的面对死亡，她心理上病了，却超然于已经被末日折磨的大病的现代社会的恐惧反应。片中还有一个重要角色，就是克莱尔的丈夫，这是现代社会楷模式的典范，他们事业有成，生活富裕，世界往往由这个阶层的人士运转和操盘，而平日里他们也充满自信，认为自己掌控局势。于是，克莱尔丈夫的变化，正是这个社会支柱阶层崩溃的过程，他出钱操办婚礼，他极力维持失控的婚礼，他一面安慰妻子的恐惧，一面又准备可能灾祸降临的生活储备物资。然而，最终，当一切已成定局，最需要他顶住的时候，他选择以死亡逃避，我们无法说他懦弱，但是却可以看出，这个有序的社会是多么脆弱。

        作为Dogma95的起草人之一，拉斯•冯•提尔倒是练就了一身用简单设备和手法制造出色叙事和个性化镜头的好本领。所以，哪怕他开始有了变化，但是这种风格依然不变，倒是让他的镜头更加多样。在《忧郁症》中，从第一部分的不安的镜头，到第二部分冷峻风格的画面，都极好的烘托出影片的氛围和主题。特别在末日将来的那十几分钟，神奇的自然现象，贾斯汀冷静到底的安然，克莱尔绝望到底的歇斯底里，这一切让这个故事充满强烈的代入感，让人身临其境般的感受一种恐惧。而最后一幕，姐妹俩与克莱尔的儿子，在几个树棍搭起“山洞”中，等待末日的到来，这显得无形的“山洞”让人感到给心灵包裹坚强的外壳才是最好的自我保护。最后一刻，拉斯•冯•提尔献上了极具末日美感的镜头，那越来越近的火红的行星不再是末日的主题，而是背景，三个人影，充满殉难般的神圣感觉，美好转瞬即逝，这是命运，需要的只是不同心态的面对。

        《忧郁症》的出色还在于演员的集体发挥，克斯汀•邓斯特的表演在戛纳获得了肯定，拉斯•冯•提尔的片子向来要让女主角脱衣服，这次也不例外。然而，克斯汀•邓斯特在河边的一段全裸镜头，却充满安详宁静的美感和神圣，而克斯汀•邓斯特整部影片都很好的刻画着人物的细微神情。凭借《反基督者》，夏洛特•甘斯布已经拿过戛纳影后，本片的表演，她表现的更加立体，从开始的充满亲和力的姐姐，到不安的母亲和妻子，到最后，她已经是一个绝望的人类一员，她在尘雨中痛哭一幕极具爆发力，一个女人对生命的不舍，对无法保护儿子的绝望，被这个敏感的女演员演的动人极了，让人心疼极了。由于基弗•萨瑟兰拯救美国已经救的手软，所以他在片中出现，我还隐隐希望“小强”拯救地球。然而，这一次，他是一个中上层阶层的代表，他的成功依托于现代社会的秩序，当一颗行星到来，这个社会破碎了，他也就无处安放自己的位置。萨瑟兰将这个角色演的很典型，他的个人魅力也很突出，一个极力维持秩序的家长，一个令人依然尊敬的“失败者”和“逃兵”。

        2011已经过去，想想《忧郁症》带来的末世情怀，难免让人也忧郁那么片刻。然而，我们还是更多将2012的末世预言当做一个玩笑，一份谈资，一种调侃，一次商机。拉斯•冯•提尔看起来也“投机”了这个题材一把，不过，这只是抓住了一个合适的载体，表现的依然是他个性化，极端化，内省与批判的导演才华。

http://hi.baidu.com/doglovecat/blog/item/de2abb1134962a60cb80c418.html

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) stages an interesting reversal of this classic formula of an object-Thing (an asteroid, alien) that serves as the enabling obstacle to the creation of the couple. At the film’s end, the Thing (a planet on a collision course with Earth) does not withdraw, as in Super 8; it hits the Earth, destroying all life, and the film is about the different ways the main characters deal with the impending catastrophe (with responses ranging from suicide to cynical acceptance). The planet is thus the Thing-das Ding at its purest, as Heidegger would have it: the Real Thing which dissolves any symbolic frame – we see it, it is our death, we cannot do anything. The film begins with an introductory sequence, shot in slow motion, involving the main characters and images from space, which introduces the visual motifs. A shot from the vantage point of space shows a giant planet approaching Earth; the two planets collide. The film continues in two parts, each named for one of two sisters, Justine and Claire.

In part one, ‘Justine’, a young couple, Justine and Michael, are at their wedding reception at the mansion of Justine’s sister, Claire, and her husband, John. The lavish reception lasts from dusk to dawn with eating, drinking, dancing and the usual family conflicts (Justine’s bitter mother makes sarcastic and insulting remarks, ultimately resulting in John attempting to throw her off his property; Justine’s boss follows her around, begging her to write a piece of advertising copy for him). Justine drifts away from the party and becomes increasingly distant; she has sex with a stranger on the lawn, and, at the end of the party, Michael leaves her.

In part two, ‘Claire’, the ill, depressed Justine comes to stay with Claire and John and their son, Leo. Although Justine is unable to carry out normal everyday activities like taking a bath or even eating, she gets better over time. During her stay, Melancholia, a massive blue telluric planet that had been hidden behind the sun, becomes visible in the sky as it approaches Earth. John, who is an amateur astronomer, is excited about the planet, and looks forward to the ‘fly-by’ expected by scientists, who have assured the public that Earth and Melancholia will pass each other without colliding. But Claire is getting fearful and believes the end of the world is imminent. On the internet, she finds a site describing the movements of Melancholia around Earth as a ‘dance of death’, in which the apparent passage of Melancholia past Earth initiates a slingshot orbit that will bring the planets into collision soon after. On the night of the fly-by, it seems that Melancholia will not hit Earth; however, after the fly-by, background birdsong abruptly ceases, and the next day Claire realizes that Melancholia is circling back and will collide with Earth after all. John, who also discovers that the end is near, commits suicide through a pill overdose. Claire becomes increasingly agitated, while Justine remains unperturbed by the impending doom: calm and silent, she accepts the coming event, claiming that she knows that life does not exist elsewhere in the universe. She comforts Leo by making a protective ‘magic cave’, a symbolic shelter of wooden sticks, on the mansion’s lawn. Justine, Claire and Leo enter the shelter as the planet approaches. Claire continues to remain agitated and fearful, while Justine and Leo stay calm and hold hands. The three are instantly incinerated as the collision occurs and destroys Earth.

This narrative is interspersed with numerous ingenious details. To calm Claire, John tells her to look at Melancholia through a circle of wire which just encompasses its circular shape in the sky, thus enframing it, and to repeat this 10 minutes later so she will see that the shape has become smaller, leaving gaps within the frame – a proof that Melancholia is moving away from the Earth. She does this, and grows jubilant when she sees a smaller shape. However, when she looks at Melancholia through the frame some hours later, she is terrified to see that the shape of the planet has now expanded well beyond the frame of the wire circle. This circle is the circle of fantasy enframing reality, and the shock arrives when the Thing breaks through and spills over into reality. There are also wonderful details of the disturbances that happen in nature as Melancholia approaches the Earth: insects, worms, roaches and other repellent forms of life usually hidden beneath the green grass come to the surface, rendering visible the dis-gusting crawling of life beneath the idyllic surface – the Real invading reality, ruining its image. (This is similar to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, in which, in a famous shot after the father’s heart attack, the camera moves extremely close to the grass surface and then penetrates it, rendering visible the crawling of micro-life, the repelling Real beneath the idyllic suburban surface.)

The idea for Melancholia originated in a therapy session von Trier attended during treatment for depression: the psychiatrist told him that depressive people tend to act more calmly than others under extreme pressure or the threat of catastrophe – they already expect bad things to happen. This fact offers yet another example of the split between reality – the social universe of established customs and opinions in which we dwell – and the traumatic, meaningless brutality of the Real: in the film, John is a ‘realist’, fully immersed in ordinary reality, so when the co-ordinates of this reality dissolve, his entire world breaks down; Claire is an hysteric who starts to question everything in a panic, but nonetheless avoids complete psychotic breakdown; and the depressed Justine goes on as usual because she is already living in a melancholic withdrawal from reality.

The film deploys four subjective attitudes to-wards this ultimate Event (the planet-Thing hitting the Earth) as Lacan would understand them. John, the husband, is the embodiment of university knowledge, which falls apart in its en-counter with the Real; Leo, the son, is the cherubinic object-cause of desire for the other three; Claire is the hysterical woman, the only full subject in the film (insofar as subjectivity means doubts, questioning, inconsistency); and this, surprisingly, leaves to Justine the position of a Master, the one who stabilizes a situation of panic and chaos by introducing a new Master-Signifier, which brings order into a confused situation, conferring on it the stability of meaning. Her Master-Signifier is the ‘magic cave’ that she builds to establish a protected space when the Thing approaches. One should be very careful here: Justine is not a protective Master who offers a beautiful lie – in other words, she is not the Roberto Benigni character in Life Is Beautiful. What she provides is a symbolic fiction which, of course, has no magic efficacy, but which works at its proper level of preventing panic. Justine’s point is not to blind us from the impending catastrophe: the ‘magic cave’ enables us to joyously accept the End. There is nothing morbid in it; such an acceptance is, on the contrary, the necessary background of concrete social engagement.

Justine is thus the only one who is able to propose an appropriate answer to the impending catastrophe, and to the total obliteration of every symbolic frame.

……………………..

Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us, a vision of what would have happened if humanity (and only humanity) were suddenly to disappear from the earth – natural diversity blooming again, nature gradually overgrowing human arte-facts. In imagining the world without us, we, humans, are reduced to a pure disembodied gaze observing our own absence, and, as Lacan pointed out, this is the fundamental subjective position of fantasy: to observe the world in the condition of the subject’s non-existence (the fantasy of witnessing the act of one’s own conception, the parental copulation, or of witnessing one’s own burial, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn). The World Without Us is thus fantasy at its purest: witnessing the Earth itself retaining its pre-castrated state of innocence, before we hu-mans spoiled it with our hubris. So while The Tree of Life escapes into a similar cosmic fantasy of a world without us, Melancholia does not do the same. It does not imagine the end of the world in order to escape from family deadlock: Justine really is melancholic, deprived of the fantasmatic gaze. That is to say, melancholy is, at its most radical, not the failure of the work of mourning, the persisting attachment to the lost object, but their very opposite: ‘melancholy offers the paradox of an intention to mourn that precedes and anticipates the loss of the object’.

Therein resides the melancholic’s stratagem: the only way to possess an object that we never had, which was from the very outset lost, is to treat an object that we still fully possess as if this object is already lost. This is what provides a unique flavour to a melancholic love relationship, such as the one between Newland and Countess Olenska in Wharton’s The Age of Innocence: although the partners are still together, immensely in love, enjoying each other’s presence, the shadow of the future separation already colours their relationship, so that they perceive their current pleasures under the aegis of the catastrophe (separation) to come. In this precise sense, melancholy effectively is the beginning of philosophy – and, in this precise sense, Justine from Melancholia is not melancholic: her loss is the absolute loss, the end of the world, and what Justine mourns in advance is this absolute loss – she is literally living in the end time. When catastrophe was just a threat of catastrophe, she was merely a depressed melancholic; once the threat is here, she finds herself in her element.

And here we reach the limit of event as re-framing: in Melancholia, the event is no longer a mere change of frame, it is the destruction of frame as such, i.e., the disappearance of humanity, the material support of every frame. But is such a total destruction the only way to acquire a distance from the frame that regulates our access to reality? The psychoanalytic name for this frame is fantasy, so the question can also be put in the terms of fantasy: can we acquire a distance towards our fundamental fantasy, or, as Lacan put it, can we traverse our fantasy?


Zizek, S. (2014) Event: Philosophy in Transit. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

《忧郁症》
    
    来自拉斯·冯·提尔的作品，导演来自丹麦，因坚持“十诫”拍摄电影，并且拍出不少杰出作品和他的许多出格言论而出名，不过这都是后话了，因为在《忧郁症》之前我并没有看过他的作品，而《忧郁症》也只是偶然在电影杂志上看到介绍，被它的主题和主演所吸引才会关注到它。
        故事以一颗忧郁星将撞毁地球为背景，分别以两姐妹克莱尔和贾斯汀为主两个部分讲述。患严重忧郁症的贾斯汀如何在自己的婚礼抑制不住情绪，做出许多反常行为，面对忧郁星的到来却反应平常；而没有患忧郁症的姐姐克莱尔因为世界末日而充满焦虑，十分痛苦。
        如果没有片名的铺垫，大概一开始就被它长达八分钟的慢镜头片头打败了，片头大多从片子中剪出了一些镜头慢放，加上色彩和音乐的铺垫，将该主题沉闷的气氛渲染，色调和人物表情更加表现了全片的恐惧，挣扎，痛苦的氛围。
        全片用忧郁症患者眼中看到的和想看到的世界呈现，虽然生活并没有那么不可理喻，但是在她们眼里，自己的生活何止是一团糟。
        第一部分：贾斯汀 婚礼
        除了一个美满的家庭，贾斯汀似乎拥有了所有，看起来爱自己的丈夫，花大笔钱为自己操办婚事的姐姐，工作上又刚被提拔的艺术总监，但是她的每一部分都像是畸形的。
        懦弱的丈夫，因为娶到一位漂亮的妻子而十分开心，但是却完全不了解贾斯汀，对于贾斯汀的心中的困难完全无法体会；
        本该给与母爱的妈妈加比，也只是一味的要求她像往常一样，对于她的的恐惧完全没有起到一点帮助，大概加比已经是一个忧郁症患者（从她与前夫的关系来看，她并不是憎恨爱情，看到前夫和别的女人嬉闹时很不满意，其实不过是因为得不到而已）
        而父亲，即使在贾斯汀十分需要他时也依然对他置之不理。
        刚提拔自己的上司，在新婚之日依然逼迫贾斯汀工作，甚至用解雇提姆相要挟。
        这样的现实就像忧郁症患者对于身边的一切都不满意一样，许多时候事实并非如此，但是在她们看来，亲近的人都不亲近，拥有的东西也都是虚妄，于是生活就变得索然无味，意志日渐消沉，极端的忧郁症患者，甚至幻想让世界毁灭来结束这一切反而来得好一些，反正生活已经如此，那我们还有什么活的必要呢，继而第二部分呈现，世界要毁灭了……

        第二部分：克莱尔 忧郁星fly by
        本拥有美好生活的克莱尔，因为忧郁星的到来而慌乱不安，“如果地球要毁灭了，我的孩子该去哪里长大”。
        带着对毁灭的恐惧，克莱尔一边努力帮助贾斯汀走出困难，一边安抚自己的恐惧，也许克莱尔扮演的就是现在生活中一个忧郁症患者身边不断帮助他的人，所以全片两次出现“justin ,sometimes i hate you so much”其实是她有时爆发的对忧郁症患者的无法忍受。
        忧郁症患者贾斯汀看着姐姐一家对于世界毁灭的反应，或安慰，或讽刺，或置之不理，仿佛在说世界就要毁灭了，你们还有什么可忙碌的，还有什么好担心的，不如将这个可怕的星球结束吧，但是她自己却也是挣扎的，忧郁症患者和一般人需要爱也拥有爱，看到自己小侄子的天真，最后她们用仅有的一点温暖，手牵手结束在世界末日中。
        导演说自己曾患过忧郁症，大概正是自己的亲身实感使他从一个忧郁症患者的角度看世界，同样将电影的故事情节用患者眼中的世界呈现。才将忧郁症患者的内心的痛苦挣扎表现出来。