Richard Wagner. "Death of Isolde". (The end of the world.)

[medievalady2010]

Maybe fiction but it's also a possibility, as all is possible. Has anyone noticed, that some movies are intended to prepare or make people accept certain realities or concepts? There is only a slight line that seperates fiction from reality and as technology advances, what we thought of as fiction a hundred years back is now part of our reality today. Can't think of a specific exemple but I'm sure there are plenty.

[Mary219]

Who sings this? Is it Waltraud Meier?

[verdgner1]

ES el FIN DEL MUNDO,el PRINCIPIO de TODO, la HARMONÍA DE LAS ESFERAS...la MELODÍA MÁS HERMOSA JAMAS ESCUCHADA

[windstorm1000]

sublime music--not equaled in the entire oevre. Wagner--light years ahead of any other composer then--and now.

[Vlessgorian]

@windstorm1000 (please, I'm not angry, my comment is purely arugemntative) That's too strong a judgement to make, I am a composition student myself and I agree with you in that his music is beautiful and unequaled by anyone then or now (no one else has ever been Wagner), but there are other styles and musical voices that should not be forgotten, like John Adams or Philip Glass, Penderecki, the upcoming Alexander Prior, some Latin americans... the list is endless.

[DJCompoz]

@jimtrueblue99 I'm just not the kind of person who lets an inconsistency blind me from a rhetorical technique, which I believe is that the writer used the colliding planets as an unmistakable allegory representing the inevitability and impossibility mirrored by the main characters' situations. Plus, said message would not have made such an impact if it wasn't paired with impossibility. In literature, anything is permitted, contrary to scientific law. I think you confused the two as coequals.

[DJCompoz]

@jimtrueblue99 Whatever it is, it damn creative. I'm sorry you don't have an imagination outside of written, proven science. You must absolutely loathe Harry Potter, with those kids flying around on sticks without propulsion or upward force, at impossible angles. And Star Wars, with Jedi fighting with light sabers with a blade so hot, it would melt through it's hilt and burn anyone holding it because their hands are to close. What if the fiction in Sci-fi applies to the science, not the story?

[jimtrueblue99]

@DJCompoz I notice that my comments are slowly accumulating thumbs up from folks who think that fiction which offers itself as realistic should actually respect reality and its constraints. Harry Potter and Star Wars are light, inconsequential entertainments aimed at children. This movie aimed differently. The writer didn't have to include colliding planets; he could have written otherwise. But since he did, why couldn't he bother to get his facts right?

[rebekkar1979]

The planets are in love)

[jmillzz2]

Guess I don't have to watch Melancholia now.

[deadSIRENS]

@jmillzz2 It's a great film, but it is not for every one. Because sadly, there are many people who just won't understand it.

[jmillzz2]

@deadSIRENS I was joking. I like Lars von Trier.

Many people won't understand it? Really? I think anyone who has ever been seriously depressed would understand this movie.

[v0rt3x1705]

twas so well done that i simply could not pause to look away for even a second

[hawkDFTBA]

this is creepy as shit. but fascnating. (the video)

[shlomzion]

Excellent. The music fits so well.

[jimtrueblue99]

Planets can't just drift past each other like soapbubbles. Something would happen. Remember gravity? Why can't these silly film directors get the physics right? Wagner can't rescue an absurd scene that ignores basic laws of physics. A sci-fi film can be heavy on the fi part, but it's got to have a solid basis of genuine sci if it's not going to end up as a pretentious, frivolous, and ultimately risible fantasy flick.

[thebloads]

@jimtrueblue99 they actually collide in the end.

[jimtrueblue99]

@thebloads Long before the planets collided, mutual gravitational forces between the planets would have ripped the atmospheres from around the planets, drowned the land with tsunamis thousands of feet high, split the continents with earthquakes so powerful there's not even a Richter number to measure it, and disrupted the earth's orbit around the sun and the moon's orbit around earth. Nobody would have been alive to watch the planets collide. Put the sci back in sci-fi!

[crushthevicar]

@jimtrueblue99 It's not a sci fi film. It's about depression. He is scandinavian, that's what those chaps get up to.

[djfakt]

@crushthevicar Hear, motherfucking HEAR! I'm a HUGE physics and astronomy guy but the film IS about depression and how those who are depressed respond to dire situations versus mentally "healthy" peeps...And, YES, the Scandinavians do bleak like no one else!

[mangopajamas]

@jimtrueblue99 That's not what the movie is about. You should watch it again and pay attention to the story instead of nit-picking obvious scientific inaccuracies that have no bearing on the narrative or events taking place.

[jimtrueblue99]

@mangopajamas Suppose I make a movie about depression and set it during the Nazi invasion of Great Britain in 1940. Wouldn't you say, "Wait a minute? When did that ever happen?" Directors and screenwriters are entitled to tell their own stories but they are not entitled to their own facts. And if an inaccuracy is obvious, doesn't that mean that the director and screenwriter were too lazy to correct it?

[Stigmatainmypants]

@jimtrueblue99 I hate to say it, but you completely missed the point, buddy.This is a film that requires of it's viewer a certain suspension of disbelief. If you are an unable to do it, then it is quite simply not a movie meant for you. Move along.

[jimtrueblue99]

@Stigmatainmypants Read Coleridge, "Biographia Literaria," Chapter 14. He coined the phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" and applies it to characters, not situations. Characters need to be anchored in reality--real situations that respect the facts of existence--because that's how we the audience relate to them. If characters float around in make-it-up-as-you-go-along make-believe, why bother about them at all? They're just props in a bad fairytale.

[ErikAllenAwake]

@jimtrueblue99 - It's fiction, you dolt. If you wanted to make a movie about depression set in a Nazi invasion of GB in 1940 - that would be FINE provided it was established as fiction, like Melancholia is. If your movie started out with a block of text saying "THIS MOVIE BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS" you would have a problem.

You don't understand fiction. ITS FICTION.

[kiwiifalling]

@ErikAllenAwake dude, calm down. what you're talking about are two entirely different things. there can be an alternate reality in movies (flying in kung fu movies, for instance) and then there's the kind of sci-fi that presumes a grounding in true life physics, and melancholia is a bit of both groups. He's just pointing out the real-life physics of an event that could actually happen, and it's not supposed to detract from the movie in any way. Just enjoy the observation, the movie, and relax.

[amperro]

@jimtrueblue99 Not to mention that a planet the size and mass of Melancholia would have been discovered hundreds or even thousands of years ago by early astronomers.

[deadSIRENS]

@jimtrueblue99 I'm sorry but what has this comment got to prove? Sure, the collision is inaccurately portrayed, but it does nothing to detract from the pure work of art that is this film. The planets are meant to be, more than anything, a symbolic representation of the the two main protagonists. From the sounds of it, you haven't watch this film, nor would you be interested, because this is definitely not a sci-fi.

[jimtrueblue99]

@deadSIRENS Serious art (and this movie pretends to be serious) is above all TRUTHFUL. When directors and screenwriters don't care about facts or are too lazy to get the facts correct, they don't deserve to be taken seriously.

[alexzo1990]

@jimtrueblue99 U can always sue Lars von Trier for deliberately presenting the audience with a false picture of how gravitational forces work, especially if u're an American. I'm sure Sir Isaac Newton would be proud of you

[jimtrueblue99]

@alexzo1990 If the director and screenwriter can abolish inconvenient physical facts like gravity in the movie, why couldn't they also abolish inconvenient psychological facts like depression just as easily? Then we wouldn't have had to have the movie in the first place.

[bix16000]

@jimtrueblue99 it s not a sci fi movie you apoetical-common-sensed-morron

[ErikAllenAwake]

@jimtrueblue99 -Serious art is truthful to the emotions, themes and words that matter. Artists bend what is realistic ALL THE TIME. As long as the characters, their emotions and their interactions feel truthful - that's what matters.

If you came away from this movie and your first thought was a nerd-rage about how it wouldn't work that way, you've missed the point completely. Congratulations.

[JMillerBayRidge]

The end of Tristan might be one of the most wonderful things in life besides the ending of Parsifal!!

[zilchnilton]

a good choice of music to end the world with i'd say.

[crayonplane]

An epic experience. Thanks so much!