Crying: Dreadful Melodramas—Family Dramas and Home Invasions

Abstract

Much of this chapter focuses on the melodramatic genre and its application in contemporary extreme cinema. Melodrama typically involves loss, and/or a character that arrives too late. In Linda Williams’s notion of the “body genres,” these are films designed to elicit tears, and they frequently revolve around family. However, these are narrative concerns and therefore speak to emotions—particularly sadness. Extreme Cinema attempts to demonstrate how contemporary practices might embellish emotive narrative content with affecting cinematic techniques. Lars von Trier’s 2009 film Antichrist, for instance, is about the death of a child and how the parents of the deceased child negotiate their grief, anger, and guilt. Von Trier visualizes the overwhelming anxiety and suffering by means of hyper-stylization—exaggerated colours and lighting, audio design, slow-motion, rapid-fire editing, extreme close-ups, etc. Also discussed is the work of Japanese filmmaker Shion Sono, particularly his films Strange Circus and Why don’t you play in hell?.