I’ve been engaging in some intensive debate with the irreverent Sid Volter on Lars Von Trier’s latest cinematic offering: Melancholia. Sid is of the opinion that the film offers up one of the best portraits of a character with chronic clinical depression that he has seen at the cinema. While I am not inclined to disagree entirely with this sentiment, I remain hacked off with the fact that again and again, the mainstream media insists on portraying the depressed woman against a backdrop of glamour and affluence.
For those of you who have not seen the movie, check the trailer that I have posted here. Kirsten Dunst plays a passive aggressive depressive who manages to destroy her marriage on her wedding night and later comes to live with her affluent sister, where she plays out her illness against a backdrop of idle indifference and crystal chandeliers. The imagery constantly links women and nature as seen 1min into the trailer where Dunst is depicted naked, gazing skyward as a architypal reclining nude. There’s also a hefty stench of the Freudian hysteria stereotype attached to Dunst’s role as the promiscuous disobedient wife who fails to satisfy her husband’s need for sex on their wedding night. Yes the depression is quite convincing, but what a shame that is comes wrapped in gender stereotype and archaic cliche.
I’ve blogged here before about women like Sally Brampton and Emma Forrest who seem to embody the popular perception of the depressed female. I don’t at all discount their symptoms as genuine, but at the same time I’m not surprised when journalists such as Janet Street Porter (a generally ridiculous individual for all other intents and purposes) question links between gender, depression and affluence.
There must be some well crafted female depressive characters out there in film. Would anyone like to suggest one to cheer me up a bit?
Melancholia official trailer
