And Now, A Movie Review of Lars von Trier's Melancholia By Someone Who Actually Has Melancholia

Let's say you have diabetes. It's not really front and center in your mind, but it affects your lifestyle. Sometimes you can't do all the stuff you want to do because hey, diabetes. And every now and then you wish you didn't have to deal with it. Now imagine you see ads for a new movie called Diabetes, filmed by some weird Nazi-loving misogynist and about diabetes as a metaphor. You'd want to see it, right? You have a personal stake in it so it matters to you. Naturally this wouldn't apply to a lot of diseases (nobody would line up to see Erectile Dysfunction and talk about the deeper meaning of floppy dicks) but you can see why I figured it was worth a night's rent from Redbox.

Melancholia is actually a very specific and rare form of depression that is whollydue to a chemical imbalance. Unlike other forms of depression, people with melancholia eat less, sleep less and usually degenerate into sea slugs. When left untreated people can become catatonic, sometimes unable to talk or even move. Melancholiacs are at an extremely high risk of suicide provided they have enough energy to pull the trigger. Because it's purely chemistry, it can't be treated with therapy or lifestyle changes, so they rely exclusively on medicine. The weird counter-evolutionary concept of innate depression is of great interest to brain docs, so if you're willing to skip meds and ruin your life for a few months you can make a handsome sum as a test subject at NIH.

In a conventional review the writer tends to give the bottom line up front, then loosely describe the plot and his opinions. I can't do that here. Melancholia is too weird to even rate. I recommend it while also acknowledging that as a movie it mostly sucks. You will want to throw shit at the screen while you watch it and yet it's kind of compelling. I don't even know. So bear with me as we wander around for a bit.

The first eight minutes of this movie are the only ones you need to see. No, really. They're stunning. It's a composite of scenes with motion so slow it looks like still frames, and some of the shots are just amazing. I don't even give a shit about cinematography and I was impressed. You also get a nice overview of the story: people runnin' around and doin' stuff while the world ends around them, all set to the love and death theme from Tristan and Isolde. This is basically the entire movie, only better, and if you are impatient you might as well quit. I wish I had.

So you've been pleased with the introduction and you're all settled in to watch a drama about the end of the world---but first, an hour of meaningless bullshit about Justine (Kirsten Dunst) getting married. It starts with some genuinely touching scenes of Justine's inexplicably British-accented sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourhgougrhgouh) trying to get Justine out of bed. Whatever sympathy you might have evaporates as the director forgets about the "melancholia" title and decides to make Justine a complete raging bitch. She stomps around, sulks, calls her boss an asshole, throws shit, gets drunk, and neglects her husband to rape a guy on the lawn. This isn't depression, it's sociopathy, and it's seriously half of the entire movie. You have spent one whole hour of your precious time on earth following the intricate shenanigans of total douchebags for no narrative purpose. If you tried to pull this shit in a book somebody would chop your hands off. Just to drive home the "total waste of time" thing, 90% of the characters are neither seen nor mentioned in the second half of the movie. You could be watching something else entirely except for the weird red star in the sky. Every time we see this star, it's accompanied by the music from Tristan and Isolde, which might be tolerable except that there is no other music in the entire goddamn movie. I think it lost its dramatic punch somewhere around the 235th time they played it.

The second half of the movie is about Claire and takes place at some undefined length of time after the first. There are only four characters left: Claire, her husband, her son, and Justine. By this point the red star, apparently dubbed Melancholia, has been discovered to be a planet destined to come perilously close to Earth. Claire's astronomer nut husband is thrilled to watch it but it creeps Claire out. Meanwhile, in addition to wife and mother she has also become a full-time nursemaid to Justine, who is too ill to do anything but sleep. There are a couple parts here that are so genuine I fucking hate to admit he got it right: Justine sobbing at the dinner table and not being able to take a bath is absolutely 100% accurate. Yes, in the middle of this train wreck of a movie he delivers something truly moving. Fuck you, Lars.

This is where the movie starts to get kind of good, or at least suck noticeably less. The depictions of Melancholia are inspired. There are a number of shots that are just lovely, like Justine stretching out naked by the creek and the double shadows on the bushes. Unlike the petty first half that's like a bad soap opera, the second half of the movie is obviously more open-ended and imaginative. At times it's beautiful to look at. It is decidedly less beautiful to hear---oh look, there's the love theme a-fucking-gain and holy Christ this dialogue is so stilted it's embarrassing---but it's somehow enjoyable. Claire is still bothered by Melancholia despite her husband's reassurances that the planet will fly by Earth. Eventually Claire conducts an ominous Internet search in the most hilariously literal sequence ever made. She types "Melancholia" like someone only minimally familiar with a keyboard and goes through two pages of Google results that, to the best of my knowledge, are the actual Google results for "melancholia". Don't you think that if a giant planet were to come dangerously close to earth, it might warrant a news article or two? But no, there's nothing on the first page of these Google results, so Claire searches more until she finds something about the planet Melancholia. The results come from what appears to be a Geocities site circa 1999, complete with 12-point Times New Roman and black and white MSPaint graphics. The page says Melancholia is going to spin close to earth, turn away and then come back for a collision. And this is another moronic thing about the movie: why the fuck was this sequence even necessary? If he had gone full-on artsy and metaphorical, I could buy the fantasy estate in the middle of nowhere. When people are symbols they don't need to be real. But he somehow feels the need to make it kind of real, if not wildly implausible (they have a computer but no TV or cell phones? radios? other humans?) and in doing so he ruins all of it. Whatever. 

The basis of all this is that as the planet comes closer, Claire basically freaks out and Justine gets better. She regains her sense of self and is actually pretty psyched about Melancholia wiping humans off the face of the earth because, in her words, "people are evil" and Claire's desire to be happy is "total bullshit". If you have a hard time buying the depressed act at this point rest assured you're not alone. Most depressed people are filled with self-loathing; melancholiacs in particular are distinguished by their extremely disproportionate feelings of guilt. Lars von Trier said that part of his point is that depressed people are better at dealing with crisis than normal people...but Justine isn't depressed. She's a psychopath who enjoys needling her increasingly fragile sister. If this is Lars von Trier's idea of depression, then he's probably a psychopath himself. Actually, that would explain a lot of this movie. If you really want to get simplistic then this movie is about two women who suffer horribly in their own way until they die horribly. It's like psychological torture/snuff porn. Anyway, Melancholia is indeed going to hit Earth, and we have some more gorgeous scenes for a while in between what little narrative elements remain. Claire's husband swallows a bottle of cyanide capsules and Justine ends up being the one to protect Claire's son as Claire sobs uncontrollably. The planet hits (another artsy thing; I guess everyone dying months before due to the effect of a new planet approaching Earth's orbit is a lot less romantic than fiery explosions) and everyone dies. The End.

I just don't know how to rate this movie. So much of it sucks! It totally fucking fails to say anything about depression in a remotely meaningful way. Anybody with any kind of depression, melancholic or not, is probably going to be offended or even more depressed at such a wack-ass portrayal. The violent end of life as we know it could be such an interesting exploration of people's attitudes and the director totally whiffs it. Having said that, it's still a really beautiful movie. At least some parts of this should be excerpted in amateur filmography classes. It doesn't hurt that the theme of the movie is so interesting that no amount of suckage could make it totally dull. I also thought it was neat to see how many people have gotten different things out of it. When I went through reviews I saw people focusing on the story, the (nonsensical, poorly defined) symbolism, the nature of relationships, and so forth. Watching this movie with a date or a group of friends would definitely lead to some good discussions. I wish I had a better way to sum it up or something even remotely witty to say but I'm just done. This movie is pretty and baffling and frustrating as hell. Watch it or something, I guess. Oh, and Kirsten Dunst's tits are fabulous.

The Black Arts of Solipsism, or “Why Do I Keep Bumping Into Shit and Getting Flipped Off by Joggers,” or “Why Can I Only Breathe Through My Mouth,” or “Why it’s My Fault that Brian B. Just Ran Me Over.”

sol·ip·sism, noun

1. Philosophy. The theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.

2. Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

DC drivers and pedestrians are apparently ardent followers of the black arts of solipsism. In fact, I don’t know who I hate more, and frankly, they can all go choke on a gigantic engorged diseased walrus cock for all I care. Solipsism is every bit as fundamentally narcissistic and vain as its local practitioners, the majority of whom lack self-awareness to the degree that they’d be startled by their own reflection were it not already their second favorite person in the whole world. I can honestly say that I’ve almost been run over by cars, tripped, tackled or forced to violently circumvent aimless brain-dead pedestrians (in some cases unsuccessfully) about 150 times in the past 18 months, and that’s a conservative figure. The bottom line is this: people just don’t think it’s necessary to pay attention to where they’re going or to be aware of the world around them even in the most basic sense. Apparently these folks believe that they’re the only souls walking this big blue marble we call Earth. It is therefore my distinct pleasure to de-program these dim-witted dolts. Where’s my megaphone? Ah, alright, there it is. “Calling all fucktards.” “Come in, fucktards.” Great! Now that you’re all here, put down those bags of paint chips you’ve been snacking on and listen up.

First of all, if you're stupid enough to go jogging while wearing headphones with your shitty Coldplay blasting, then you're too stupid to realize that it's your fault when I run you over because you weren't paying attention. Have you not seen the way people drive around here? Do you think that your fat ass is the fastest in DC which justifies you to run right down the center of the sidewalk with no expectation of being passed? If I yell at you to get out of the way and you can't hear me, and if I can't get around you, then you know what, buddy? I'm going over you, and it will be your fault when your face goes sliding across the asphalt. Speaking of which, Coldplay? Really??? They sucked the day before they became a band.

If you're stupid enough to walk shoulder to shoulder down the sidewalk while I'm out jogging, then you're stupid enough to make me reinforce my theory that you think that you and your friends are the only people alive. I mean, why would anyone be out jogging in DC? It's not like 600,000 residents plus 250,000 visitors are here at any given time or anything. I'm obviously not going to run into traffic on my left to pass you, you self-absorbed, undeserving, sense of entitlement having idiots, and there's a fence on my right, so I guess I'm just going to have to run you assholes over because you weren't paying attention.

If I see you painting your fingernails while driving one more time, I'm going to pull you out of your car by your ear lobe, strip you down, hog tie you and leave you in the street because you weren't paying attention. Then I'm going to snatch your fingernail polish because Zoya LA Pops with iridescent glitter and a slight green flash goes great with my skin tone and it's quite lovely, really. 

By the way, I know something you don’t: turn signals come standard on your piece of shit Kia. That means use 'em, you paste eaters! The next time I'm forced to wait at an intersection thinking you're going straight because your left turn signal isn't on, only to see you make a left turn anyway despite the fact that I could have gone 10 seconds ago had you not been so goddamn lazy, I'm going to track you down, rip out your epiglottis, urinate on your grandmother and bury you alive because you weren’t paying attention. And fuck you, I know that was a run-on sentence, douche nozzle!

Hey, do you see that stop sign in front of those two parallel white lines? It’s called a crosswalk, and they’re often found at intersections. Repeat after me: “in-ter-sec-tions.” I realize that it’s difficult for you to pronounce polysyllabic words, but even your dumb ass can conceptualize this simple concept. We’ve already established that you think there was some sort of cataclysmic event which wiped out all of mankind except for you, but please humor me and stop your car anyway. I weigh 160 lbs soaking wet after eating a four egg omelet at Waffle House, and your piece of junk, rusted out "I'm gonna die a virgin" Isuzu weighs two tons. Trust me, stopping will prevent you from killing innocent joggers at crosswalks, and let’s face it: your bony ass is way too delicate to survive any significant prison time. I don’t care if you’re too poor to pay attention! Get a toxic high interest attention loan and pay it!!

And folks, why are you still driving while talking on your phones, you jack-asses? Not only is it selfish, stupid, illegal and dangerous, there's nothing going on in your useless lives that is so important that it can't wait until you get back to the trailer park. I mean, it's fucking 2012 already! Find Doc Brown, install the flux capacitor, speed up to 88 mph and get the fuck out of 1985, you imbeciles! If I see you do this again I'm going to ram your piece of shit Camaro, burn all your Merle Haggard 8 track cassettes and take a piss on your Smokey and the Bandit posters, Jethro!

Too bad you weren’t paying attention, but at least there’s one less solipsist to worry about.

Chivalry: how do we roll?

Hi, I'm Julia. Justin is a good friend of mine and he recently invited me to do a little writing here, so I thought I'd freestyle for a bit. Rather than making a statement or arguing a point I'll just pose a question: what's the point of chivalry, and what does it say about us? Not that this is very original---I bet if you did a quick search you could find hundreds of results on a similar theme in just the past few days. But it's worth talking about for what it means for ourselves and our culture.

For the purposes of this discussion chivalry is a collection of behaviors that have historically been used to honor women. It's offering your jacket, pulling out chairs, walking closest to the street, and so on. Granted, chivalry isn't just about women either. The practice of chivalry began with the noble classes, and centuries later it's still something associated with the with the wealthy. Really, all manners are related to social status; even basic table manners signify some level of refinement. It probably never crosses our minds, but we were taught to practice these things because not doing them is rude (ignorant) and we want to be polite (well-bred). This is useful to remember but isn't directly related to our conversation.

So now that we know what chivalry is, why is it so controversial? What's the objection to a harmless gesture? The primary objection is that it's an insult to their own self-sufficiency. Women have spent the past hundred years trying to prove they can operate independently of men, and it's pretty aggravating to be be treated like a delicate flower who can't manage anything for herself. These women might not interpret chivalry as respect but rather an act of dominance. Certainly there are some men who see it this way; we've all been on a date with someone who assumed buying dinner entitles him to certain favors. In this case, chivalry becomes something decidedly less gallant and more akin to hostage-taking. It's another meaningless tradition that lingers from partriarchal, less enlightened times. And many women simply prefer to open their own damn door.

On the other hand are the women who prefer or even require their men to exhibit chivalrous behavior. They like feeling special when he opens the door. It can also suggest that this is some kind of actual courtship, not just a quick one-night stand or ambivalent companionship. I personally tend towards this camp: it's not like you have to open doors for me, but I'm a total sucker for little things like offering your arm when I'm wearing high heels on bad pavement. Personally it makes me feel respected on a more basic level, like I'm being appreciated as a lady and treated accordingly. It tends to make me feel more comfortable as well. If you're taking me seriously I'll take you seriously too. I would also like to offer the completely irrational, subjective and quantitatively worthless assessment that it's super charming.

Are these stances mutually exclusive? Does letting a guy pull out your chair out make you a Bad Feminist? Does chivalry or the lack thereof affect your relationships? My immediate answer is "no, of course not", because I don't feel my status depends on it. And yet I've consciously refused many chivalrous gestures from men who I disliked. What am I saying when I do this? Is it I don't need your help, or I don't want your affection? I'm not sure. It does seem like there's a level of trust involved, a trust I reserve for family, close friends and significant others. So as much as I want to say chivalry doesn't matter I need to acknowledge it does. Somehow.

There are women who choose to assert themselves by stubbornly ignoring chivalry, and that's their prerogative. There's no wrong answer to this question as it ultimately comes down to what makes you feel respected or not, which varies from person to person. I am sure there have been lots of contentious conversations between women who feel bad when he opens the door and men who feel bad when they don't.

Like I said, I don't have any stunning insights to offer here, just a few words to help clear our own heads. Where are you? How do you feel about this sort of thing in an age where no manners are more common than any manners at all? What does it mean to you to offer or accept it? Does it make you feel closer to people? I guess my stance on this isn't as clear as I thought, which tends to happen when writing. I am a capable, financially independent and self-sufficient woman who takes pride in paying for herself. It seems absurd to judge a man based on things like that. But I find it means something to me because I'm picky about when I want it and from whom. Yet I do like being cared for in that way, and makes me more likely to reciprocate said caring.* What are your own sentiments? Where did they come from? Are you chivalrous because you view all women a certain way or because Mom would scold you if you didn't?

(Closing note: Where do we stand on picking up the check? I think nowadays it's difficult to associate this with chivalry as people's financial circumstances are so variable. Now that women have jobs of their own there's no need for a man to pay all the time. Likewise, if I'm dating a guy in graduate school, I would never expect him to pay for me. A special occasion is different but otherwise who cares? If you're in similar positions you can skip the hassle of splitting checks and take turns each time...I'm not the only one who does this, right?)

　

* = if you know what I mean, GET IT?! oh god I'm going to die alone

Offal: Oddly Familiar

My visit to the newly opened Green Pig Bistro in Arlington over the weekend called to memory a subject that I’ve been fond of for quite some time but never had the venue to talk about, until now. Offal means very different things to every individual, some hate it, some revere it, some don’t even really grasp what all is encompassed by it. You may love some offal dishes and not even realize they could be classified as such.

The offerings at Green Pig were all very approachable, as far as offal goes, which is really at the heart of what I where I would love to see this genre go in the future. They take things like ox heart and turn it into a Reuben, and create a snail dish with toast that escapes the stereotypical escargot role. There’s also chicken liver pate, similar to what you can find all over DC at places like Cork on 14^th Street, or its lesser seen cousin rillettes, a great rendition of which can be found at Three Little Pigs up in Petworth. And those are just from the snack list! The appetizer and main course options are admittedly more limited in their eccentricity, although you can find the obligatory pork belly (yes, this is considered offal) and sweetbreads, an item which I am routinely displeased with on restaurant tasting menus, even at places like the venerated Gary Danko in San Francisco.



[Braised Veal Breast with Pistachio Crusted Sweetbreads, Mushroom Ragot and Spinach from Gary Danko in San Francisco]



The recurring theme throughout their dishes though is commonality with the palate, and taking unusual ingredients and making them friendlier for everyone.

This new way of cooking stands in stark contrast to the offal techniques of yore, which essentially consisted of cooking the hell out of difficult ingredients until everything just broke down and they became soft enough to eat. Pig’s feet, which you can find in a few Southern themed DC establishments like Mr. P’s and Henry’s, are a perfect example of this and are commonly just boiled and then baked, although occasionally you will find them with some seasoning such as Old Bay in this area, or hot sauce and/or BBQ sauce further South.



[Pig's feet from Mr. P's in DC]



A favorite of mine growing up in North Carolina was livermush, a product most closely similar to the more well-known scrapple, which is made from pigs liver, the head, and cornmeal, and has become such a part of the culture that the little city I was born in actually holds a festival for it every year.

Asian cultures definitely know how to embrace offal, and are probably the most well known for it (perhaps because they’ve been doing it longer than European dishes like haggis or the popular Latin dishes like goat’s head stew). Any visit to a traditional Chinese dim sum for a weekend lunch will reveal more types of animal parts than you ever knew existed. One of the most popular in our area, Mark’s Duck House, has a huge variety to pick from, including beef tripe and tendons, and chicken feet in a black bean sauce.



[Chicken feet in black bean sauce from Mark's Duck House in Falls Church]



Tendons and tripe are also extremely common in pho, the Vietnamese soup, although you rarely see white folk like me eating anything other than the regular cuts of beef. I think this all boils down to texture though, more than familiarity, as Asian cultures seem to respond much more to unique textural elements than Westerners do. Take for example my good friends who not only eat their chicken wings, but suck every bit of marrow off the bone, often crunching them down til it barely resembles anything more than discarded lead from a pencil. Or the love of eyeballs (usually from a fish), often presented as a sign of respect to the guests of a house, which are certainly not a friendly texture to eat, but are hailed as the loftiest of prizes.

Finally there is the king of the offal offerings, foie gras, the gourmet goose (or duck) liver which has been fattened (either by force in France, or naturally outside of it), and the subject of controversy throughout privileged parts of the world.



[Pan roasted New York foie gras with syrah, fresh cherry and mint compote from Meritage in Boston]



If you find yourself arguing about the production of foie gras, on either side, then suffice it to say your problems in life probably aren’t very dire. This type of offal, of the exclusive variety rather than necessity, is one that I do enjoy but I wouldn’t mind seeing phased out. No, I’m not pushing for the abolition of foie gras as you see in California or formerly in Chicago, I would just prefer that fine dining restaurants adopt a new champion, or at least work in a few lesser known items in its place. I’m starting to see this happen with kama (or fish collar) at the more seafood centric places, and I’m really loving the trend. There are so many fabulous types of parts out there that for years have been turned into petfood, or even worse discarded, that over time begin to be culturally accepted by Americans. My motto is to always try any food dish once, but so often it takes the skills of these master chefs to produce the ingredients in a way that they become favorites for the diners. That is unless you want your uni prepared by a person who would be more likely to step on the sea urchin and get mad than crack it open and savor the deliciousness inside. If you're lucky, you'll find a place like New Rivers in Providence, where they not only embrace offal, but feature an entire menu of it, from cock's combs to lardo.

Well, hello there...

And here we are, at the beginning, you'll have to forgive me for showing up late again. I've been writing, reviewing, and blogging (although we didn't call it that then) online since the mid-90's, but always for someone else and never on my own. So why now? No reason in particular... I'm a little worn out with the same format I've been doing, and my ADD is starting to kick in. Plus I wanted to do something with my friends, to give us all a place to write outside of our usual outlets, and hopefully find some readers who enjoy what we have to say. Hope you'll stick around and see the good stuff to come.

As for what you can expect to read on these pages, there will be a little bit of everything. Per my usual fascination you can expect to see plenty of discussions on food and drink in DC and wherever else I happen to travel to, but in more of a monologue/editorial fashion than simply reviewing places. There will be plenty of thoughts on dating and male / female interactions in general, with more stories than I can probably ever get around to telling. My compadres will have open license to write about whatever they choose, but I've chosen some folks who always have something interesting to say as fellow contributors, so I eagerly await their content even more than my own!