The Melancholy Tree

"Tree of Life" and "Melancholia" Juxtaposition Two Contrasting Ways of Looking at the World - One Focused on God and Others, Experiencing the World as Light and Life, Looking forward to an Eternity of Communion - The Other Focused on Self and the Futility of Fleeting Emotions, Experiencing Pleasure as Pain and Welcoming Inevitable Destruction

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

Two Films. Two Worldviews. Two Meanings of Life in Agreement. 

I watched the Brad Pitt film "Tree of Life" not too long ago, and was struck by the way in which a sleek, reductionist, strikingly modernist (factory and blueprint) version of the American experience was expressed in Catholic terms. Here, life was a symphony of praise, and the discord of sin only proved its original beauty. Light was a metaphor for salvation, and the universe was filled with it, filled with the gateways of mystery that glowed with angelic invitation. The glory of God was depicted on the velvet vaulted chasms that actually hide the face of the Creator, natural icons of light within the universe, the things that are showing the things which are not, even the eternal power and godhead. Life begins after death, just as growth begins after the embrace of faith. Hope flows from a heart that affirms mystery, and life is beautified by those who see love in suffering. 

Mid-Century American Catholic Boys Climbing a Tree Towards the Sun, a Central Metaphor in "Tree of Life"

In "Melancholia", which I just finished, another worldview arose. One in which a talented, beautiful, beloved woman throws away her life in one night, her wedding night. She is cursed by her tormented mother, a foolish father, and consoled by an equally faithless sister. She falls into despair, takes a bath, cuts a wedding cake, and looses all hope for love, since she realizes that she truly is "all alone". She rejects her new husband on the wedding bed, choosing instead to have meaningless sex with a throw-away assistant assigned to get "that byline for the picture of girls lying, like they're dead". She tells her boss of her hate for him, telling him "nothing is too deep for you." The throwaway makes a noble attempt to save the situation, a thick skinned vulture who knows that he has to settle for something other than love. Her boss drives away, her new husband drives away, and she is left in the darkness in her wedding dress. The wealth and beauty of the meaningless woman's situation provides nothing more than an element of texture. She does not enjoy it, and neither do we. 

A planet called "Melancholia" has hidden from mankind behind the sun. Now it is in full view. Experts say that it will pass, but a few say that it might come back to destroy the world. They watch it come, and anxiously await it to fade, when it does, the scientific congratulate themselves with toasts "to life". Melancholia passes, reminding people of their complete alonness and is a thing of beauty... The Romance of life almost destroyed, and the knowledge and appreciation this brings. When the planet comes back, however, the brave and logical commit suicide, leaving the emotional mother and the fearful child to be consoled by the Dark Bride, who had the foresight to see that "life is evil...everything on earth is evil", "we are completely alone", "there is no other life, nowhere", and "drinking wine and lighting candles while listening to music is crap." The death of the Romance passed, but returned to destroy everything in something far less beautiful - the Nihilism of our age. 

The Hopeless One gives hope in the last moments of humanity's existence by telling a "magic" lie to the boy, building a house of sticks, and sitting with them calmly as they are obliterated. Darkness falls. The credits roll. 

What we just saw was a story of culture, of history, of criticism, of philosophy. We just witnessed the reality, hidden behind the light, dawn on the West and terrorize it with the possibilities of extinction. The first pass of the planet resulted in exultation and much hand-shaking, as the modernists stood up and the romantics sighed a deep sigh of relief that their doom and gloom had resulted in beauty, not extinction. But that dreadful end, that self-ending resignation to nothing, did not go away. We had another day in the sun, only to have it smash into us and finish our existence forever. The West fell with the rise of Melancholia, the belief that humanity is all alone, which makes man pull away from each other, and ends in complete despair. 

Watching both movies, I now know that light can be depicted in different ways. The same glimpses of primal beauty and absolute insignificance can be interpreted in two completely different perspectives. "Awe" is close to "fear", only tempered with the presence or knowledge of love. You may interpret the nebula then "whispered prayers from the mouths of mothers", or as evidence that we are "absolutely alone", a floating speck in a mass of accidental beauty. Those who feel they must pull themselves to heroic realism by their own veritable bootstraps should do well to remember - names will not roll after the blackness descends, if they are right. 

In "Tree of Life" there is a Palpable Hope for Eternity 

In "Melancholia" there is Dread of an Impending and Meaningless Death

All I see from the life of Justine, happily named after the Law, is death. She was dead while alive. Her life was meaningless, and she tried to extract a meaning from that "specialness", from her ability to "know things" (she was convinced she had a supernatural ability to know the truth). She was self righteous, despising the throwaway sex partner, the "small man boss", and the self-confident coward brother-in-law. She found her meaning in not having meaning; yet she was ill - her body could not hold up under the pressure of what she acknowledged as truth. She only found happiness once the end was in sight - once she knew she would end her suffering quickly, she comes alive and eats jam with her fingers. She had murdered every day by believing she was alone, but now that the day was murdering her, she was relieved. Justine passes judgement on herself, and shows us the truthful and necessary fruits of a philosophy in which wine, candles, and music are pathetic. 

Postromance 

This generation has recovered from the modern shock of discovering the vastness of the universe

The fact we are a speck of dust hanging in the middle of fifty thousand football fields means nothing

Why does that change anything? 

It doesn't 

We have seen the relativity of space and size

Infinity is an excuse to find a nonexistent zero

We say that a bang blew into an unbounded space, forever growing

We do not know the center of anything, our own included 

Why is a speck of dust unimportant? 

The mother nanite that destroys the world and turns it into a glob of intelligent goo will be far less

Man, in the midst of sun and moon, in the gap between atom and universe

Still must decide on meaning

And to choose against meaning is to decide to embrace void

And void is the closest thing to God

But impossible for intelligence to penetrate 

And so, meaning finds us, even when we run!