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Showing posts with the label Banishing the tearing demons

Swallowing Melancholia 1

At a boarding school in the North East of England, three boys of ordinary charm, formed a cabal at the centre of a class and successfully invoked the powers of a ragamuffin demon who was fond of tearing people. The music teacher did his best to exorcise it. He tried playing Beethoven’s 9th loudly to the boys in class. He tried trust exercises. He stood up in every Quaker school meeting murmuring imprecations and spells. But nothing helped. The art teacher asked the children to draw a beautiful country scene, but one of the boys, seeing the demon, drew the hidden landscape of its home instead: a red sun in a dirty sky; the moon too close; a tall metal mast curving upwards, standing on a promontory by an evaporated sea; the sea bed stretching into the distance. The art teacher, puzzled announced:   'I would have like to have given this more marks, however, I can't.  This is a pebble on the shore. Melancholia is a film embedded with healthy irreverence and honest