In 1852, the English pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais made a painting depicting Shakespeare’s Ophelia from Hamlet in the minutes before her end. Ophelia is drowning, but in her state of madness and grief, she keeps singing while her dress filled with air keeps her afloat. However, eventually, “her garments, heavy with their drink, pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death”19
Ophelia’s pose has been compared with that of saints and martyrs, and for that reason also met criticism, when it was exhibited for the first time in 1852 at The Royal Academy in London. That said, Millais’ work has been praised for its accurate depictions of the flora, and the realistic semitransparent sensations of water.
In Lars von Trier’s interpretation, water lilies are framing the body of Justine as she floats. She is wearing a white bridal gown and her eyes are consciously fixed on an indefinite point. Is she looking at us like the mythological Medusa? Medusa was a victim of rape by the Greek God Poseidon, for which she was punished by his wife Athena who turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, but she is mostly known for her deathly gaze, capable of turning men into stone – an appropriate metaphor for a self-defense mechanism developed by a woman rebelling against patriarchy, like Justine, who is not afraid to oppose her brother-in-law, her husband and her boss.
Her hands are folded under her chest supporting the bridal bouquet imitating the traditional position of a dead body in a coffin. Her veil is adding a ghostly ambience to the image as it merges with the shiny, semitransparency of water around her body. Perhaps we are in fact witnessing a transformation not merely as tragical and fueled by revenge, as the myth of Medusa, but rather the poetical metamorphosis from nymph into hollow water reeds, as Syrinx was experiencing in her escape from Pan in Greek mythology.
As Ophelia’s garments are filled with water, she is slowly absorbed by nature, as if she voluntarily allows it to reclaim her. Unlike Ophelia, who dies as the world lives on, Justine does not have a choice as the planet Melancholia is approaching Earth. Whereas Ophelia’s eyes are blurred and distant, Justine is very much aware as she floats into eternity.
19 William Shakespeare: Hamlet, 1603
ARTvonTRIER
Author: Malou Lykke Solfjeld
Co-Author: Christian Kortegaard Madsen