The West has two scenarios: death or liberal fascism.

August 4 2011 4

For Europe and the West as a whole, the end of times is coming. This is sensitively caught his "Melancholy" Lars von Trier. But this concerns us directly as well, since as a result of “integration into the developed world” since the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, over the past quarter century we have been completely tied to the Euro-Atlantic.

The West now has only two scenarios: death or liberal fascism, which will ultimately bear the same death. And in "Melancholy" the end of the world from the collision of the planet Melancholy with the Earth means not the most terrible way out. Leaving everything as it is and finally losing the human is much worse. And this, following the artistic discovery of Trier, the Norwegian Anders Breivik also proved a week and a half ago.

What is Russia? Will this situation remain hostage to the West? Or will it embark on an alternative scenario: development organizations, a new civilization breakthrough and recovery in the interests of the majority of the population?

To realize and understand the above is not easy. But necessary. Especially since the socio-economic end on a global scale is very close and will come no later than 2014.

It is indicative that the overwhelming number of responses to Melancholy by Lars von Trier is about the fact that the director supposedly aestheticizes, ironic or even trolls. This insensitivity to the keen vision of a Danish filmmaker is a diagnosis. Well, if this is irony, then the slaughterhouse that seemed to have been unexpectedly arranged by Breivik should be considered as irony. By the way, the day before yesterday, Breivik said that his favorite film is just one of Lars von Trier's paintings “Dogville” - with just as blond as the main heroine of “Melancholy” Justin, Nicole Kidman in the lead role.

After what happened in Norway, von Trier’s scandalous statements at the Cannes Film Festival are perceived in a completely different way. Let me remind you that when asked by a journalist about his German roots, Lars von Trier, brought up in a Jewish family, said that “he considered himself a Jew for a long time and was very happy,” but he recently discovered that he was “in fact a Nazi. My ancestors were Germans. It gave me an unusual pleasure. I think now I understand Hitler. And I sympathize with him a little "...

It is also worth remembering that the last film of von Trier, the director, by the way, is Nordic in all respects (the film was made by northern Europeans: Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France ...), built around the magnificent music of Wagner, which was not only Adolf Hitler's favorite composer, but also seen with Nietzsche as the spiritual forerunner of German Nazism and fascism.

Of course, the point is not what the real beliefs of the liberal von Trier are, and certainly not about the next grinding out of the fascization of Europe from the great Wagner. The thing is different. Something has ripened in Europe, and now it can be realized at any moment. Here they themselves want to perceive what is happening as the beginning of a new fascism, since they see no other alternative to decay and extinction.

Liberal fascism means the organization of a corporate state or mega state (in this case, a united Europe or Euro-Atlantic world), receiving energy and sources of life at the expense of the rest of humanity as nature, that is, material, resources, an object of unlimited exploitation.

Breivik is a great example, the very fascization morning star. But this modern neocon- “crusader” is not much different in essence from Bush Jr., occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, or organizing the rape of Libya by Sarkozy.

Here the task is to survive, and it is possible to survive solely through force, therefore it is in force that is true. And for this, like Breivik, there are unexpected, at first glance, alliances of the “white Nazi” with the Jews of Israel. But do not be deceived. At any moment, the main enemies will not be Muslims, but the same Jews or Slavs.

Europe and the West today are pregnant with fascism as the only way for them to avoid direct death.

The point, I repeat, is not in the artists who talentedly diagnose the era and point to the end times that are common and comfortable for most times, that is, the established ways of being and living. Approximately the same situation was in Germany at the end of the 1920-x - the beginning of the 1930-x. And the entangled Europeans, in despair, not wanting to obediently wander for slaughter, do not see any alternative to the new fascism.

Already in non-artistic reality, there are less and less those who hope for the “fly by” - this is the “Melancholy” used such a wonderful word that means the span of the planet Melancholy past the Earth. But it is quite possible to translate and as "maybe blow over!".

Will not carry. Span not. Life is exhausted, evaporated, decayed. And merely the demographic extinction and the intensive replacement of the indigenous population by visitors from afar is more than a talking symptom of the extinction of the entire Western civilization. It is no coincidence that the credo of the main heroine of "Melancholy" Justin: "Life on Earth is evil." Of course, this is not about life in general, but about life next to Justin, when people forget about the basic conditions of their existence, about death, about the fact that after death - and such a life becomes evil, unlife, causes undead.

In general, in this regard, the best works of Western cinema today are desperately and sometimes brilliantly exploring the problem of meeting with death and entering death. And this shows the Russian degradation, where Dostoevsky's “damned questions” or the epic grandeur of “The Quiet Don”, beginning with the death of Grandma Grigory Melekhov of Turkey, were completely replaced by provincial handicrafts for the lumpen-bourgeois.

“Melancholy” by Lars von Trier stands here alongside another great Hollywood film of recent years - “The Mysterious history Benjamin Button, where dying and preparation for death are also played out, right down to hard procedural ritual drawings.

A fragile transparent shalashik (a “cave”, as it comes up in the dying minutes for his little nephew Justin), which is folded from the poles, is a kind of Ark of our times already. Here, in the specific situations of the unfolding global catastrophe crisis, new notions of human and human are being developed - for example, as in the “Mysterious History of Benjamin Button”: “We are created to lose loved ones. Otherwise, how do we know who really matters to us? ”

A new ability for us to live and a new desire to live fully will be born from a newfound ability to die with dignity and remember death, to enter death.

Lars von Trier's latest work gets its completeness and something close to perfection in the last seconds, when at the moment of the catastrophe the moments are set aside, and everything is instantly clear without the usual physiological horrors of modern cinema. And film critic Andrei Plakhov is right that before us is “one of the most piercing finals in the history of cinema, which can be called an apocalyptic happy ending”.

The life of people is revealed in the circumstances of their death. "My sorrow is bright ...". They are people, they burn, they annihilate before our eyes, at the same time reviving the human and the desire to live. And preparing a new art to live with death and prepare for death, rather than hiding from death, killing life.

In the worthy death of the heroes of "Melancholy" there is no vitality. Just the opposite. Humanity degenerates and becomes extinct through the abandonment of respect for death and the problem of death as such, when “memento mori” (“remember about death”) turns into humor of circus tent, “Momento die.” The type of catastrophe chosen by Lars von Trier is a collision with an unknown new planet Melancholia - the most vivid, for the convenience of the viewer, because it is still difficult to understand the other. How else is it available for the mass viewer to tell about the end? And it is important to show two things: a look at Western life as spent and meaningless, at the end of time and, secondly, a state of readiness to die. However, the actual end will not come from the planets and other natural elements. In nature - only that in the people.

The coming collapse is exclusively social-spiritual and civilizational. Make about this massive film is almost impossible. Therefore, they frighten us, unwise, with natural disasters. The death of Western civilization does not come at all from the rotten "multi-stump" - multiculturalism. The roots and the ability to reproduce themselves and culture have decayed - and foreigners invading quiet Europe from the south and east only emphasize the self-destruction of the “white person”.

We, living in Russia and rapidly losing population and space, inventing the tripling of Moscow and the further devouring of the whole country by Moscow - we are still incapable of the opposite, and no “multi-cult” has anything to do with it.

The wedding of the protagonist, written by Trier, is superb and so appropriately long and detailed for the exact end of times. Justin’s uprising against conventions and norms is not because she’s spoiled and capricious, whimsical, but because these conventions and norms no longer work, and the wedding, due to be the pinnacle of the girl’s happiness, in fact turns into funerals of conventions as time ceased to work. The end of time.

Every time of every person, community, social stratum, class, place and country has its beginnings and ends. And the end of time is the end of all habitual existence, inertia, that bunch of experience, habits and knowledge, which by life are knocked together and put together at a specific time.

On the one hand, “the times are not chosen, they live and die in them,” as Alexander Kushnir wrote at the very peak of Brezhnev's stagnation. But what if you didn't die in your times? What if your times have ended prematurely, have failed, and you still live? ..

Lars von Trier is blamed for the abundance of quotations and direct allusions, hints in the film. However, this is not a secondary, but an accuracy. Even an indication of Trier’s “Tarkovism” is not about that, not about the largely artificial “Sacrifice”, but is used to show the fundamental fact that the happiest Europe and a separate happiest palace in northern Europe (the film’s events take place there) are now the same dead zone, as in the "Stalker". And the pictures of old masters exposed on the walls are a convulsive attempt of the heroine and the director himself in the broken and broken times and spaces to find at least some points of stability, the reference points of real life.

In the Dane Trier in the new situation is reproduced and "The tragic story of Hamlet, the prince of Danish." And the signal here is not only Denmark, now a small country, but never forgetting that it is the birthplace of the Vikings. Here we need pictures of Justin in the creek, with lilies of the valley in their hands — as if Ophelia was laid down after her rambling speeches: “... She tried to hang her wreaths along the branches; the treacherous bitch broke, and the grass and she herself fell into a sobbing tide. Her clothes, spread out, carried her like a nymph; she meanwhile sang songs as if she didn’t smell trouble or was a creature born in the element of the waters; this could not last, and the clothes, heavy uplifted, unhappy from the sounds carried away into the bog of death. "

And most importantly, as it was then, 400 or 1000 years ago, “time is out of the grooves” (“The time is out of joint”, other translations into Russian are also eloquent: “dislocated”, ”“ loosened ”,” "," The connection of times has fallen, "the thread has been torn off for the days," "our time has broken off its loops," "time is in disarray and confusion," "the world is upset" ...).

And to cure time and restore the times or build new characters and authors of the film is not able to. In this situation, for the little nephew, Justin is the most sensitive and aware of the end of time, Justin stands Steelbreaker, that is, the iron field marshal, the commander-in-chief of the army of iron giants in the Warcraft computer game (Crafts War), which is obsessed with today millions of children and teenagers. He calls her “Aunt Stilbreaker.” By the way, Breivik was also an avid player in these games, and several Norwegian retailers even had to temporarily stop selling them, while World of Warcraft was also on the list.

It is also indicative that Steelbreaker leads his army to death in the name of a certain Yogg-Saron - one of the “old gods”, tyrants-villains from the world of similar games. But for the 6-7 child of years, he, it turns out, can only set the adequacy of the situation, makes it possible to look at the world soberly and realistically, to prepare for the moment of death - to become, in the person of aunt, a sherpa in Hell or Heaven.

It is clear that there is a terry pseudo-religiousness here, but this is another point at the end of time, because in a mortal situation the child relies on “Aunt Stillbrecker”, he has not been taught another. Of course, this Steelbreaker is not a decree to us, we ourselves have a mustache ... but does this mean, in particular, that even the clergy have ceased to perform their task, and they, too, have yet to find, with everyone, a capable new time? ..

By "Melancholy" can not be treated down. This is a film-diagnosis, a film-a symptom of the end of time.

And it is about the technological need for a change of mind, that is, repentance, metanoia. Not Lars von Trier's film is dark or aesthetic: we do not understand and do not want to see the obvious.

Boss Justin during the wedding is seeking from her, the advertiser, the next new day-worthy slogan for his company. The paradox is that the whole behavior of the heroine is such a single big slogan, but there is no one who could read it, but even start to guess that it is a slogan, a formula for the future, clearly and visibly presented here and now, right in front of you.

The film is accused of wanting to drive the viewer into depression. But here - not this, but melancholy, the meaning of which — not at all to suppress oneself and others, but that sanguine about the end of time is inadequate — means to be “cheerful rickets”, as we teased strange guys in childhood .

For Russia and Russians, this film is extremely important.

Do we need to continue to return, as the Russian politicians in the first years of the new millennium loved to say “lovingly” to the civilized family of European nations? Take a ticket to a fancy "Titanic"? Or go your own way? Build a development society, convert a gangster state into a project one, start living a full-blooded large-scale life, and not send the cult of non-existence from day to day, surrendering your country?

And, going its own way, perhaps, to save the world.