忧郁症2011

看影片前半段的时候就感觉到伯格曼扑面而来：一片绿地中的庄园，空旷大房子里冷漠的人情——姐妹之间，尤其是母女之间，以及，所有角色都像在给杂志拍照，静止，沉默，斜视45度，作

此时导演还没甩包袱，俺也沉浸在一知半解的快感中，直到末日和死亡的暗示越来越重，Justine说“世界充满邪恶，无人会留恋，地球是宇宙中唯一的生命载体。”这片就完全进入到伯格曼的语境，同时俺也知道，它很难引起观众情感上的共鸣，因为它违反了“神的第一定律”

所谓“神的第一定律”，当然建立在神客观存在，而且全能至善的假设。具体内容为：“不承认神或对神无意识的人一样可享神的恩赐。”

这条定律是必要的——假设有神而他就在你的面前，你如何确定呢——查看身份证，或让他拔出石头里的宝剑？

一个靠谱的神能预料到人的无知——对身份和生存意义的无知，而不是强调”不信就整你“，如同多数宗教的十不准上写的那样

理论上，理性上，逻辑上，一个无知的人就该像伯格曼或伍迪·艾伦，当他们意识到“生命的出现源自偶然，肉体的死亡即是尽头”的可能性，就会得出“生活无意义”的结论，类似于Justine，永远开心不起来

理论上，理性上，逻辑上，你无法在那样的前提下还让人相信“生活是值得为之奋斗的”，但在现实中，这些鬼扯淡的命中率极高，催尿励志无所不能。这是因为神为了实现第一定律而给人类打了“死亡防治疫苗”，于是在默认的无神论者泛滥的中国，也少见没病没灾就被死亡吓破胆的人

结果是，《第七封印》或《星尘往事》之类唬人的作品往往适得其反，没有人看完后会大喊：“给我跟上吊的绳儿。‘而是：”这他妈的太吊了。“（当然更多的还是表现为”我要去睡觉“）

俺捏着鼻子看圣经的短暂日子里，也有那么一两个晚上被死亡吓得屁滚尿流，就跟《怎样都行》里大喊”horror “的拉里·大卫一样，不过总体上还是吃嘛嘛香

总之，人们天生注意不到死亡的主题，天生不会承认生命的虚无（承认这个的基本都是为了勾引文艺女青年）

《忧郁症》也一样，里头搞得小行星撞击，还有女主角那个悲观厌世影响不到任何人——拉斯·冯·提尔是个连戛纳都敢驱逐的可爱而猥琐的胖子，凭什么与神的定律叫板呢

以上内容，不完全地解释了该片低分的原因~

当然，仅因为主题，俺就可以把它和《生命之树》选为最爱之一

除此之外，这片里真正有趣的是人对死亡的反应，Claire知道2012要到了，就带着孩子去Village，The Village有啥？奈特·希亚马兰吗（俺喜欢这个冷笑话），不还是一样死。但可以理解，要是我，也想找个人多的地儿，您想象一下——跟很多人一起等死舒坦，还是在无人小岛上等死舒坦

如果答案是肯定的，说明你也不是理性的动物，如果所有人都那么感性——我觉得，这来自超自然力量的人为设计的可能，要比只是偶然”进化“的可能性大得多

所以在内心深处我一直相信神的存在——不是”中国人需要信仰“那一类的比喻暗喻隐喻，神必须跟隔壁二大爷一样鲜活生动。当然，个人信仰从来不重要，因为答案在过去已经发生

也就是说，神已经存在了，哪怕你不承认



或者不存在，那可就倒血霉了

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.

今年戛纳影展参赛片的实力和阵容是历年少见的，好多位重量级大导演都拿出作品参展，包括比利时的达顿兄弟、土耳其的奴力-比格-锡兰、丹麦的拉斯-冯-提尔、美国的泰伦斯-马利克和伍迪-艾伦、西班牙的佩德罗-阿莫多瓦、以及韩国的金基德。然而这场盛宴最终却因为丹麦导演拉斯冯提尔一席关于“我同情希特勒，我是纳粹”的蠢话，而被搞得乌烟瘴气，不仅拉斯冯提尔本人难堪地被赶出戛纳影展，他的作品《惊悚末日》也被某些国家列为“不受欢迎”。

拉斯冯提尔是丹麦最著名的导演，虽然有张爱乱说话的大嘴巴，但他的作品确实非常出色，素来以强烈的个人风格和“惊世骇俗”著称。拉斯冯提尔偏好描绘极端的心理状态，包括丧偶、丧子、或即将失明的人所面对的绝望、疯狂、痴迷、或自弃的情绪。拉斯冯提尔擅长用手持摄影、长时间特写镜头、外加自然光线捕捉影片人物的痛苦感受。每当影片人物遭受意外打击或伤害时，拉斯冯提尔总不急着揭露打击或伤害的真相，而是透过慢悠悠的特写镜头，逼着观众“细细咀嚼”人物的表情变化，感染当事人的痛苦情绪或命悬一线的紧张氛围。

这种“心理虐待”的风格虽然让很多观众“不喜欢”拉斯冯提尔的作品，不过很少观众会对他的作品说“没感觉”。除此之外，这种用放大镜式手法仔细观察人物心理和情绪的个人风格，也让演出拉斯冯提尔作品的演员特别容易捧得演技奖项，例如2000年的《黑暗中的舞者》、2009年的《反基督》、和2011年的《惊悚末日》便先后捧出三个戛纳影展影后，她们分别是冰岛的比-约克、法国的夏绿蒂-甘博斯和美国的克丽丝-邓斯特。

拉斯冯提尔在2009年推出的《反基督》，可说惊世骇俗到了极致，也因此大家对于他的新作《惊悚末日》不免充满好奇。平心而论，相比于《反基督》，《惊悚末日》可用“正常”两个字来形容，虽然这部作品仍旧承袭拉斯冯提尔一贯的风格，对极端情况下的心理状态进行剖析和放大，但当中没有任何血腥之处，色调也明亮许多。《惊悚末日》的原文片名是“Melancholia”，意指“忧郁症”，这部电影被分成前后两个部分，而影片原名和中文译名分别指出这两个部分的主题：忧郁症与世界末日。

■乍看之下，忧郁症和世界末日是两件不相关的事情，但拉斯冯提尔却透过世界末日所带来的绝望与毁灭情绪，来捕捉重度忧郁症患者不为一般人所理解的心理感受。《惊悚末日》的第一部分叫做“贾丝汀”，第二部分叫做“克莱尔”，其中贾丝汀和克莱尔是一对姐妹，第一部分讲述的是贾丝汀婚礼上的事情，第二部分则讲述克莱尔在世界末日来临时的反应。

【贾丝汀】
这一天是贾丝汀结婚的日子，贾丝汀的姐姐和姐夫联手为她举办了一场极尽奢华之能事的盛大婚礼，贾丝汀那对已经离异的父母、上司、以及众多亲朋友好都来参加。这本该是贾丝汀最幸福快乐的一刻，但严重的忧郁症却困扰着她，让她做出种种令人费解的举动，最终毁了这场婚礼和自己的婚姻。

贾丝汀的父亲是个花花公子，老是四处勾搭女人。贾丝汀的母亲是个反对婚姻、刻薄严厉的女人。贾丝汀的上司则是个自私无情、只想着工作的人。这三个人即使在贾丝汀的婚礼上，也是依然固我地展现自己的丑陋性格。贾丝汀的姐姐一手操办这场婚礼，虽然看出妹妹的忧郁症已经发作，还是试着让婚礼顺利进行。贾丝汀的姐夫极其富有，虽然内心里很讨厌妻子的家人，但为了妻子，仍旧掏出大笔金钱举办这场风光的婚礼，他唯一的要求是贾丝汀要心存感激并因此开开心心。至于贾丝汀的新婚丈夫则沉浸在幸福里，虽然察觉贾丝汀的状况有些奇怪，但完全不知道缘由、更不知道如何应对。

贾丝汀的婚礼在一开场就不是很顺利，先是新人的礼车被困在路上，让宾客们苦等了两个多小时，之后是父母在婚宴上公开地恶言相向。随着这些事情发生，贾丝汀的情绪也从狂喜慢慢变成低落，各种奇怪的举动也一一浮现。她先是独自跑到草坪上晃荡、穿着婚纱在地上尿尿，又在大家等待新娘切蛋糕时躲在房间泡澡，后来还将新婚丈夫一个人留在房间、自己跑到外面和公司新来的员工做爱。在这过程中，贾丝汀的姐姐克莱尔一直试着让妹妹振作，也看得出来贾丝汀也有努力要维持清醒和正常，她试着找父亲、母亲等人谈话，但大家都忙着自己的事情，没空或不愿意与她一起坐下来。终于，所有人都在婚礼结束后离去，包括贾丝汀的新婚丈夫。

【克莱尔】
在婚礼过后，贾丝汀的状况非常糟糕，于是克莱尔将她留在家中照顾，但克莱尔自己的心情也非常恶劣。科学家宣布即将有一个名为“郁星”（Melancholia）的彗星会从地球旁边穿过去。尽管科学家认为“郁星”极不可能撞上地球，但是克莱尔就是不放心，始终担忧着世界末日就要到来，为此她还偷偷买了用以自杀的药。

克莱尔的丈夫和儿子对郁星穿过地球这个大事倒是颇感兴奋，还在院子里架设望远镜观察。不过克莱尔的丈夫虽然一再安慰妻子无需担忧，但他私下还是准备许多燃料和干粮以备不时之需。至于贾丝汀，她的状况刚开始还是很不好，不断陷于昏睡、不吃不喝。但她发现姐姐和外甥为郁星的到来而忧虑时，竟然有些恢复正常，开始能起身吃东西、甚至骑马。她说她一点都不怕世界末日，甚至说自己有特殊的能力，能“知道”一些事情，诸如郁星一定会撞上地球。

郁星终于如期而来，在越来越接近地球后便逐渐远离。克莱尔和丈夫都松了一口气，当丈夫举起酒杯祝贺生命时，克莱尔才知道丈夫说不担心其实是假的。然而，出乎意料的事情发生了，本该渐次远离的郁星竟然转向、正面朝着地球而来。克莱尔发现这个事实的时候，丈夫已经趁着自己睡着时吃药自杀。克莱尔虽然害怕极了，她是还尽可能地在儿子面前装作镇定，带着儿子往外逃跑。但逃到别墅联外的小桥那里时，却怎么样也过不去，她只好带着儿子又转回头。

唯一保持冷静的是贾丝汀，她静静地看者克莱尔的慌乱无措、嘲弄克莱尔关于喝红酒静待最后一刻来临的荒谬提议，她语带安慰地带恐惧的外甥去林子里劈砍树枝、然后在院子里搭起一个“神奇棚”。之后三人便一起钻进这个神奇棚，彼此紧握着手，直到郁星撞毁地球。

■就切入议题的方式和铺陈的架构来说，《惊悚末日》很容易让人联想到拿下本届戛纳影展金棕榈奖的《生命之树》，两者都是以一实一虚的方式来捕捉抽象的概念和感觉。《生命之树》是以来世的希望来烘托生命和死亡的意义，《惊悚末日》则是以末日的绝望来呈现毁灭和死亡的痛苦。在《惊悚末日》的第一部分中，呈现出贾丝汀这个重度忧郁症患者的行为举止，但却留下对内心状态的空白。但在第二部分里头，呈现的是克莱尔一家人面对世界末日时的情绪，同时也补充了前一部分里的空白。

当郁星将从地球旁边穿过的消息传来时，克莱尔就是没办法不去想到最糟糕的状况，她的丈夫虽然理性许多，但内心仍旧不免会有些负面的想法。然而当最糟糕的情况真的发生、当所有人都“知道”世界末日降临时，克莱尔的丈夫完全承受不了打击和恐惧，立即便选择自我了断。至于克莱尔，她虽然试着坚强、试着寻找出路，但终究还是陷入无路可走、无计可施的境地，于是情绪彻底崩溃，各种荒诞的想法、难以理解的行为也纷纷出现。

这样的心理状态和行为变化其实便是贾丝汀在婚礼上的状态。一个重度忧郁症患者常常不能自己地去想象最糟糕的情况，而这种想象其糟糕的程度和确定的程度，就如同克莱尔所面对的世界末日，给人带来最深切的悲伤和恐惧。处在这种状况下，要不是如同贾丝汀的姐夫那般以自杀的方式寻求解脱，便是如同克莱尔那样试着坚强并寻找出路。但是当世界末日来临时哪里有出路？这便是重度忧郁症患者常常感受到的绝望与无助，也因此患者常常会出现情绪崩溃的情况、甚至做出各种不可理喻、难以理解的事情。

在人处于彻底绝望的状况下时，大多都希望有所爱之人陪伴在身边，紧握住自己的手、分担自己的恐惧，因此在第一部分时，贾丝汀一直试着请求家人陪伴她，在第二部分时，她搭建所谓的神奇棚，让家人一同紧握住手，为的不是寻找得救的方法，而是试着在最后的一刻感受到爱与温暖，就像她对这个神奇棚的评语：你还能期望什么？

《惊悚末日》虽然是由两个部分构成，但在影片最开头还有一段八分钟的片段，用超慢速度和超现实手法呈现双脚陷于沙地、地球遭到星体撞击、手指放电等画面，仿佛是超现实画家笔下的绝望与毁灭感受。而这段画面又辅以华格纳以“爱与死”为主题的歌剧《崔斯坦和伊索格》，更凸显出来拉斯冯提尔对忧郁症和世界末日的理解与诠释：为什么会发生这事一点都不重要，重要的是，所带来的绝望让人痛苦到活不下去，当中那种无路可逃、绝无希望的毁灭之感还让人理智尽失、丑态尽显。在此之中，爱与温暖是唯一能缓解的止痛剂，但也只是止痛剂。

平心而论，重度忧郁症患者的内心感受很难真实地传递给一般人，但《惊悚末日》透过世界末日降临时的感受来迫近忧郁症患者的心理，让人深刻地感受患者们的绝望和痛苦。而借由《惊悚末日》这部作品，拉斯冯提尔更证明自己即使不用病态和阴暗的手法，也可以捕捉住人们在极端情况下的心理状态。他虽然是个很蠢的受访者，但无疑是个一流的导演。