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The Optimism of Melancholia | Slavoj Žižek | Big Think

Big Think | March 26, 2026



The Optimism of Melancholia
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The philosopher on why Melancholia is actually an optimistic movie.
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SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept.

Žižek received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He has been called the “Elvis of philosophy” and an “academic rock star.” His work calls for a return to the Cartesian subject and the German Ideology, in particular the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Slavoj Žižek’s work draws on the works of Jacques Lacan, moving his theory towards modern political and philosophical issues, finding the potential for liberatory politics within his work. But in all his turns to these thinkers and strands of thought, he hopes to call forth new potentials in thinking and self-reflexivity. He also calls for a return to the spirit of the revolutionary potential of Lenin and Karl Marx.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Slavoj Zizek: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, I think, it’s a basically, I’m not kidding, optimistic film, even as we know at the end the planet Melancholia hits the earth, we all die. But I find something beautifully poetical in the attitude of the main person, Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, no, this inner peace, how she accepts this.

I claim that we should not read this as kind of a pessimism. “Oh, we all die. Who cares?” No, if you really want to do something good for society, if you want to avoid all totalitarian threats and so on, you basically should go . . . we should all go to this, let me call it–although I’m a total materialist–fundamentally spiritual experience of accepting that at some day everything will finish, that at any point the end may be near. I think that, quite on the contrary of what may appear, this can be a deep experience which pushes you to strengthen ethical activity.

The result of this experience is not, “Oh, the end may be near, so let’s kill, let’s just enjoy,” and so on. No, it’s the opposite. Again, paradoxically, I claim it’s not a superficially but profoundly optimistic film.

Interviewed by Megan Erickson
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
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Comments

This post currently has 44 comments.

  5. @RaHeadD10

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    The soundtrack should give it a way as a Wagnerian tragedy. This great film was clearly inspired by Schopenhauer and German Romanticism. It's a deeply reactionary film I will say.

  6. @AsarCor-s7f

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    You make wonderful videos! 👏 I’ve got a question: 🤨 I only have these words 🤔. (behave today finger ski upon boy assault summer exhaust beauty stereo over). How do I use this? 🤨

  7. @Eternal-Security

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    Godless worthless nonsense. She is an adulterer, promised to man, yet cheats on him for no reason but to fulfill a small and meager space of emptiness with physical lust and pleasure. Gross and abominable behavior. The earth (The World) deserves what it gets. Ultimate judgement. But those chosen of God, the followers of Jesus will be saved and given a new heaven and a new Earth! Amen and thank GOD!

  8. @christianschmitz5261

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    Zizek is completely off the mark – Dunst's calm has one reason: while people (most of society) spend their whole lives deluding themselves into fantasies (such as marriage, careers, having children…), she is the one who is "sane" enough to look at the world the way it really is. She knows, that impact will put an instant end to the world's suffering – the unending re-cycling of life by "mother earth" – impact being an act of cosmic mercy, if you will. Her line "This Earth is evil, we don't need to grieve for it… nobody will miss it." being the key to her deep understanding.

  15. @eastafrika728

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    The end is the beginning of everything, in it's true form. Optimism means the earth will live on with greater humans with self reflection and who can withstand the heat, long after entitled, negative and impulsive, socially isolated boys have destroyed themselves.

  18. @Quilly1

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    What makes the movie especially fascinating is that she's the one with clinical depression, the one seen as socially and psychologically dysfunctional by the rest of her family, someone who could never hope to get by without their constant help and urging. And then the end draws near, and every one of these people who thinks of themselves as a vital support for her loses their own mind panicking, and she's the only one who can deal with it. I've never seen another movie argue that depression has value, has an upside.

  20. @sbsssa89

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    If you actually saw the movie, you would remember Justine’s claim that “Earth is an evil place”, hence her absolute “optimistic” desire for Melancholia to end this planet’s superbly drawn existence.

    Very optimistic of her, to accept death when all she craves is death.

    My man here is usually on point, but here, he strikes hard. Justine’s sister’s drive to save her child is the only vital drive at the end of the movie, hence her anguish and despair: for the loss of potential life.

    Justine is an apostle of death; her sister is a true believer of impending doom, the face of whoever loves life staring at the Reaper in the face. Distressed and annoying, but clinging to life.

    Von Trier would laugh hard –with a Danish accent– at this absolute misreading of his movie.

  23. @hummingpylon

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I agree. I think Lars said that depressed people cope better with tragedy. I would think it is because they are already there, and also the end also means the end to their suffering, and they don't feel like they got any stake in the world anyway. If you got nothing to lose, the end can be an experience more meaningful than life and survival. Or rather there is a factor of survival in dying, the survival of the soul…

  24. @williamabbott9437

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    The frequency of the sane in chaotically catastrophic times is discordant to the vibrationally high frequent peaks and valleys of scrambled chaos.
    The frequency of the insane in chaotically catastrophic times is synchronized in harmonic resonance with the frenzy.
    In sane times the discordant appears insane.
    In insane times the discordant appears sane.
    When in actuality neither are sane or insane, times or persons.
    Rather there are rhythms in frequencies, polyrhythmic, syncopated, discordant, harmonic.
    When things are not in rhythm or harmony they appear out the camoufog.
    Then you see lame in the herd, you see the electron in the atom, you see thought separate of the hive.
    It was always there, now the tree was heard.

  25. @eliad6543

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I haven't seen the film, but if Justine was enjoying life as the planet approached, she did everything but accept death. She acknowledged death and resolved to live until it was out of her hands. Acknowledgement and refusal (when they happen at once, not one after the other) are far from acceptance.

  26. @markaplier1261

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I think the movie actually is a call for people to get religious, because when you are about to die its less terrifying if you believe in something, just luke the child was told about the magic cave. And you know what? At the moment a giant planet is about to destroy earth, ill embrase god in my arms so hard, not because I have rational reasons to believe he exists, but because I hope God exists, I hope it dearly. Accepting god is the ultimate gesture of letting go all illusions of control over your life, of accepting your lack of control, to totally surrender yourself to whatever comes. Surrendering yourself to god free you of the burden to control your own life

  28. @danielosetromera2090

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I disagree completely. Justine is not in peace, just because she's not crying and shaking. She feel the emptiness of life right through her bones and this paralyze her. She stares at the abyss, and the abyss stare back at her, like Nietszche said. She kinds of accept her fate, but she know the loss is brutal. Nothing optimistic here, besides being able to waiting stoically for your own destruction.

  31. @lingolicious

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    when my grandpa died, my depression/anxiety was like a blanket weighting my whole life down for years. i saw a beautiful girl, felt nothing. heard a familiar song on the radio. felt nothing at all. i wasn't sad about not getting aroused. or sad about what the song reminded me of or that it didn't have that uplifting effect like it did before. there was just nothing. little by little i felt stuff triggering me. still almost nothing, but when i saw an elderly couple holding hands in the metro or was walking by my grandpa's favourite brand of candy in the store, i started crying. felt sadness. finally. which was better than nothing. like justine in the film, i went in and out. then i started looking up everywhere i went. instead of shoegazing, i looked up and imagined where i could end it all. looking for beams. justine looked up to the incoming planet and from my point of view, saw this as salvation and a way out, where others panicked and saw it as a negative. justine saw it as something positive. maybe she was even optimistic. the planet actively ending her life and she could only wait passively. after research, not planning and setting a date yet, i was in doubt. my actions would influence my surroundings. i thought if i get cancer, it will all be over and out of my control. kinda like the planet. no one could blame me, tell me it's gonna be ok, because it's terminal and out of my hands. maybe better than beams and some rope. i don't want to be ill, then end my illness and as a result make my friends and family ill. when justine sat there in the end, she was supportive. everyone else still had something to lose. the planet/melancholia/depression/guilt/illness/death/salvation… whatever you think fits, didn't made her (or me in my opinion and experience) optimistic, because there was nothing to be optimistic about, but she was now useful. being useful and comforting her sister, like she helped her when going in and out of depression. my sister helped and still helps me and i hope to help her some more too. more than now. maybe not just make her happy, but help and comfort her in a time of need, where my illness is useful for once. positive, not negative. now i don't feel optimistic or happy but get triggered positively by talking to my sister's children and the neighbours cat visiting me everyday. i don't want more right now. more than enough. play with the kids and the kitty and mostly hideaway listening to philosophical podcasts. not only the illness but also corona took away my former life and surely also something from everyone else's life. maybe first only your work, then savings, then made you ill and later mentally ill. locked inside. no contacts. no exercise. no hobbies. no parties. no social life. a downward spiral. actively trying to dig yourself out, but going deeper as a result. then remaining passive. petrified. getting a little better and some stuff done. petrified again. like von trier and his depression i assume. it's our luck that he makes use of his depression and gives us not an explanation, but attempts to make us feel and experience his feeling of depression and a film that connects and stays with us. i saw the film a decade ago, so i might be very wrong about von trier's intentions, but this stuck somehow with me. thanks to lars, who makes you want to turn away and applaud at the same time, which i prefer to being smiled at, while they give you the finger behind their back. you might not like his films, walk out of the cinema, but they will stay with you. and also thanks to zizek for making me and my brain go on exploration with your guidance.

  32. @vins1979

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I disagree with Zizek on this one. Justine is not an optimist. She is just relieved at the idea that the world is going to end soon. This is typical of the depressed mind, which Lars Von Trier was trying to depict in the movie. The only relief of the depressed person is the idea that everything is going to end. Depressed people think about death very often, sometimes imagining their own death has a calming effect.

  33. @mirostanimirov8952

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    Alber Kameu reveals that Total Absurdity is the ultimate Hope.
    ( collaterally rescued many lifes of young Thinkers, who were at the point of suicide, seeing how ridiculous our Human Condition is)
    This Idea is also in His work "the Sisyphus' stone".
    I like Slavo but this is an old Idea and he can't use "I declare that…. " " I am proposing that…."
    No, dear Philosopher, you just meet that revelation. A.Cameu met it in the 50's or 60's, last century. I met the revelation as I was 16yrs old.

  34. @Yoububehahaha

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I've been suffering with medical issues for about 7 years now, every day I wake up I am surprised to be alive, and even more surprised that I still enjoy life.

    Or at least I see life for what it truly is.

    This is not something I can explain, you must wait to experience true suffering in order get the most out of life.

    This may not sound optimistic but here it is; I hope you all live long enough to suffer as beautifully as I have.

  37. @jdt8983

    March 26, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    I started watching that movie and then my brother in law kept making gay jokes the whole time so…Will have to watch it when I'm not around him

Comments are closed.

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