Hiding Behind the Sun: Melancholia
“The final sequence of the film, however, involves something like a recuperation of ritual, of collective ceremony. Claire’s husband tells their son there will be nowhere to hide if the planets collide. But what he forgets, Justine reminds her nephew, is “the magic cave.” The somewhat menacing tableau at the beginning of the film—a boy carving a branch while a woman with a dire expression approaches from behind, wielding a stick—is in fact a premonition of its most tender scene: Justine distracts her nephew from the coming catastrophe by helping him construct a small teepee in which he and the two sisters will await their death. Whatever comfort remains at the end of the world has nothing to do with the comforts of modernity: the electricity fails, the phone is dead, the car won’t work, a golf cart shuts down. Rather, all that remains is nature and myth: not a glass of wine on the terrace, but the magic cave.”
(Source: distributioninsensible)
