As this was written for an exam in a classroom setting, there is less of the usual shorthand plot synopsis for those who have not seen the films, so you may wish to seek them out before reading this, though it is not necessarily essential.
Otherwise, enjoy The protagonist β Stephen Jeremy Irons in Damage, Justine Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia β are at odds with that society, either due to a lifetime of repressed sexual and emotional urges Stephen , or a mental and emotional inability to understand the social status quo Justine. This transgressive exchange is dual-layered in Damage Stephen versus Society , and triple-layered in Melancholia Justine versus Society versus the mysterious planet that ultimately destroys the Earth , but both films point towards a similar underlying message: A society that is too rigid to recognize or allow for the individual to thrive will be transgressed upon, and will likely return that transgressive energy in kind, subsuming and erasing the individual Damage or being subsumed and erased itself by further transgressive forces Melancholia.
The British bourgeois society of Damage is defined by four key characteristics. First, and most obviously, there is repression: All the characters besides Anna Juliette Binoche display a fundamental inability to emotionally communicate with one another.
Martyn and Anna are lovers β in the traditional, bourgeois sense of the word β yet they seem to know extremely little about each other. In short, all these characters and more are repressed, unable to communicate their feelings to those they supposedly love, and often unable to honestly admit their own problems and urges to themselves. Second, the film presents strictly observed social rituals as core to the bourgeois experience.
Repression abounds in this sequence, and we are made acutely aware as the dinner and ensuing interactions go on that these social rituals are fundamental to maintaining repression as the status quo. Within these social rituals, we also observe the third characteristic: conformity. Without so much as a full conversation, he and Anna begin an intense sexual affair, and the sequence depicting their first tryst β Stephen gets a call, curtly agrees to something, and then visits Anna to make love β is brief to the point of being baffling.
