I re-watched the movie Melancholia (2011), part of Lars von Trier's "Trilogy of Depression." It's broken into two parts- the first half involving a wedding procession that never seems to end and the second half being apocalyptic, as a planet heads for Earth.
I think it may be the most haunting, realistic depiction of depression I've seen in art. I'm open to hearing otherwise, but I haven't seen something so viscerally capture it. For example, the never-ending wedding is exploring the subjective experience of time during depression. Time flies when you're having fun, right? When in the quicksand of depression though, everything feels like an eternity, each day is a hellish hourglass that never seems to run out.
The movie's exploration of "depressive realism" in psychology also deeply resonated with me. Some psych experiments have found depressed subjects are better at predicting their task performance or how much control they exert over decisions. The idea is, what if many depressed people are more accurate? The film juxtaposes the reactions of two sisters in the film, the depressed one (Kirsten Dunst's character) hopelessly assuming the planet will hit Earth. What if the default human perspective is distorted or self-serving and it's really depression that gives you a clearer picture of reality? Melancholia isn't for the light-hearted, but nor is facing life's harshest realities head on...
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/tsgesy/melancholia_and_the_question_of_depressive_realism/
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