Robert Sinnerbrink
Planet Melancholia: Romanticism, Mood, and Cinematic Ethics
Key words: Melancholia, von Trier, film-philosophy, film aesthetics, mood
Lars von Trier's Melancholia offers a fascinating exploration of cinematic romanticism and the aesthetics of cinematic moods. It presents a devastating portrait of melancholia, dramatizing the main character Justine's [Kirsten Dunst's] experience of a catastrophic "loss of world" that finds its objective correlative in a sublime cinematic fantasy of world-annihilation. In this article, I analyse some of the aesthetic and philosophical strands of Melancholia, exploring in particular its use of romanticism and presentation of cinematic mood. Von Trier explores not only the aesthetics of melancholia but its ethical dimensions, creating an art disaster movie whose sublime depiction of world-destruction has the paradoxical effect of revealing the fragility and finitude of life on Earth.
Robert Sinnerbrink
Planet Melanholija: Romantika, razpoloženje in filmska etika
Ključne besede: Melanholija, von Trier, filmska filozofija, filmska estetika, razpoloženje
Lars von Trierjeva Melanholija ponudi fascinantno raziskovanje filmske romantike in estetike filmskih razpoloženj. S pomočjo dramatizacije katastrofične izkušnje »izgube sveta« glavne junakinje Justine [Kirsten Dunst's], nam predstavi uničujočo podobo melanholije, ki najde ustrezni konec v sublimni filmski fantaziji izničenja sveta. V pričujočem članku analiziram nekatere estetske in filozofske sklope Melanholije, še posebej Von Trierjevo raziskovanje uporabe romantike in predstavitve filmskega razpoloženja. Von Trierer ne raziskuje namreč zgolj estetike melanholije, temveč tudi njene etične razsežnosti, s čimer ustvari umetniški film katastrofe, katerega sublimna upodobitev uničenja sveta ima paradoksni učinek razkritja ranljivosti in končnosti življenja na Zemlji.
330 Knox Peden
Cube-Shaped Planet
Key words: Anthropocene, Paul Bowles, Immanuel Kant, space, time, aesthetics
References to the Anthropocene and the ontological shifts it has putatively wrought abound in humanities scholarship today. This essay looks at several works of fiction and criticism - chiefly Paul Bowles's 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky - in order to advance a series of claims about the difficulty of representing the relationship between nature as a domain of causality beholden to natural laws and another, nominally human or rational domain comprising actions, intentions, and variously justifiable or unjustifiable reasons. It is mainly interested in exploring the desires that motivate efforts to represent this rela-