Just Watched Melancholia

Very interesting movie... starts off slow with slow music and slow motion pictures that almost look like stills.

Melancholia is the name of a planet that's been hiding behind the sun and finally initiates an orbital journey that will bring it into perilously close proximity with Earth, but as the film begins you don't really know anything about that context... you're just watching Justine and her newlywed husband as they arrive for their reception at a mansion owned by Justine's brother inlaw... played by Keifer Sutherland (turning into Donald right before your eyes). 

As the incredibly expensive and seemingly unending reception progresses you watch Jusine fade in and out of depression so that there seems to be a two-fold significance to the film's title... the melancholia of the bride as well as the name of the approaching planet.

Enough about the story... now about symbolism.  I'm not smart enough to explain it, but I can at least detect some of it when I see it. 

There is Biblical symbolism in the name of the horse that only Justine can ride... his name is Abraham... and twice she rides him and both times he balks at crossing a bridge on the way to the village... and when the movie concludes after more than two hours... you will perhaps observe that at no time do you see any scene anywhere except on the golf course estate where the mansion is located.  Later Justine's sister tries to escape doom by riding a golf cart to the village and... oddly enough... it dies at the bridge precisely where Abraham consistently refuses to go further.

Also the movie is split into two parts... the first titled Justine and the second titled Claire after her sister.  Justine and Claire.... Their initials are strikingly similar to those of Jesus and Christ... am I stretching here?  Very likely.

Claire's little boy is Leo.  I think an obvious reference to a constellation which seems relevant as much of the movie includes star-gazing.

Then there are numbers... at one point Claire's husband is trying to impress Justine with how much money he has spent on the reception party and demands of her if she knows how many holes there are on the golf course.  Answer 18.

Also guests are required to guess how many beans are in a crystal receptacle... eventually we learn the answer is 678 supposedly trivial, but Justine uses her knowledge of this as evidence that she knows things others don't... like there is no life on other planets.  But two things about the number itself... first if you add the number of the tribes of Israel (12) to the number of the mark of the beast of Revelation (666) you get 678.  That's the first thing... the second... if you observe that 6, 7, and 8 are sequential cardinal numbers... I think it's interesting that the very next number we hear about is when Justine sarcastically suggests that during the end of the world they ought to listen to Beethoven's 9th,,, coincidence?  Makes me wonder if I could have found a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 had I been looking for them from the beginning.

That's all I came up with on my own... now to research the supposed critics and experts.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Came up with a couple more things... The reference to the 18th hole is delivered by Claire's husband, John.  In the Bible, John is the writer of the Book of Revelation so I took a peak at chapter 18 and like most of the book... it's about the wickedness and destruction of Babylon... but in the 23rd verse we get:

And the voice of the bridegroom

and of the bride

shall be heard no more

at all in thee

Also... back to the horse Abraham not being able to cross the bridge... during her depression Justine is similarly unable to get into the bathtub... this could be one of those movies in which water plays a great role in the symbolism.