CAN RATIONALITY CURE HUMAN ILLS?

ARS von Trier is one of the great auteurs of this century.

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His Melancholia (2011) is dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. It tells the story of Justine (Kirsten Dunst), a young woman suffering from acute mood swings and depression. She walks out of her marriage with a 'nice' young man before the wedding party is over. Through the party, Justine refuses to play the game. She makes love to a stranger, insults her boss-the head of an advertising firm who has just given her a promotion estranges her loving sister, and generally busts the game.

All of it happens in one night. But it is a rather special night because a rogue planet, Melancholia, hitherto hiding behind the sun, is approaching Earth and may collide with it. Until the last moment though, we are given to understand it might just drift by.

Watching Trier's movies is a visceral experience. Nothing is left to the imagination in his Antichrist or Nymphomaniac, which along with Melancholia form a loose trilogy that tries to plumb the female unconscious. At the bottom, Trier appears to say that the female unconscious is as chaotic as the male one. His characters are proof that he does not believe in game theory.

Game theory is a great invention of the mentally troubled mathematician John Nash. In application to social and political situations, it provides conceptual tools for the players, all of whom are interdependent. The theory seeks to facilitate proportionate payoffs to every player. As a result of this interdependence, each player has to formulate his moves according to his/her payoffs.