cinema, Anxiety and the Earnest Thought of Death

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to argue that some apocalyptic movies have a singular philosophical value as an existential device, insofar as they can constitute an occasion to think seriously about death in the kierkegaardian sense. To that end, I will use Søren Kierkegaard’s and Martin Heidegger’s theories on anxiety and death in At a Graveyard, The Concept of Anxiety and Being and Time, I will define an apocalyptic movie subgenre based on the distinction between montage and mostrage cinema and, finally, I will focus on Melancholia as a paradigmatic example of it. The final goal is to demonstrate that Lars von Trier’s film constitutes itself as a cinematic representation of anxiety, thanks to which it can pull us out of everydayness and make us confront the taboo of death.