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Lets talk about what it means to destroy yourself.
In the relatively short time Ive been alive, I have made an art out of self-destruction.
Ive sought oblivion at the bottom of the bottle and in the arms of a rakish stranger.
Ive lost count of the suicide notes Ive written, the attempts Ive planned.
If pressed, Id say I learned the art of self-destruction from my mother.
Its also a matter of misfiring brain chemistry that comes with having bipolar disorder jot down II.
Its become a way of being, a prism through which Ive written the narrative of my life.
Cinema has struggled to capture the texture and complexity of this experience, especially when it centers on women.
Perhaps this is whyAnnihilationfeels like such a revelation.
But I was struck by what a complex, sensual experience it was.
In the theater, I recoiled, yelped, cowered, and craned my neck upward in awe.
One night, he shows up at their home unannounced.
Hes withdrawn, changed in ways that frighten Lena even if she cant discern exactly why.
The terror only heightens from there as he spits up blood, his organs failing.
Before they can make it to the hospital, theyre swooped up by government officials.
Lena joins a group of women meant to travel into the unstable terrain to bring back data.
Were all damaged goods here, Cass says with tranquil ease, incongruous to the situation.
Ventresss chilly determination is a byproduct of her looming, inevitable death due to cancer.
Garland is never as blunt anywhere else in the film as he is here.
No one can account for what happened from the moment they cross this barrier to when they woke up.
These thematic and emotional concerns are not merely a matter of narrative decisions and character backgrounds.
They are etched into the very fabric of the film its sounds, its visual grammar, its texture.
As they venture deeper into this alien terrain, this becomes more evident.
The plants they encounter are strangely drained of color, as is the unnerving shark-alligator hybrid.
Concrete walls are covered in vegetation that reads as cancerous growth, tumors awash in psychedelic color.
From certain angles, trees scan as humanoid in shape.
Depression is like this.
It consumes everything in its path, warping it madly.
The world is drained of vibrancy or easy understanding.
The finest meal can taste like ash.
Your body is no longer your own, but a weapon formed against you.
The one sequence in the film I return to most often comes about midway through their journey.
The women decide to camp out at a mostly intact house hooded by overwhelming vegetation.
She studies her hands angrily as her skin seems to glisten like liquid.
The scene turns when Casss voice can be heard just outside.
Anya is gone for too long for anything but horror to follow this silence.
It moves between the chairs, sniffing at the air.
When it opens its maw to bellow, it isnt an animals voice it speaks with, but Casss.
If I had to give my depression a face, perhaps it would look like this.
Each woman comes to represent a different facet of the struggle with depression and self-destruction.
In Anya, its how you lose touch with and control of your own body.
In Ventress is the angry, propulsive desire to give yourself fully to engendering your own destruction.
And in Josie, its the weight of suicidal ideation.
I have come, in recent years, to describe suicidal ideation as a bitter pull.
Lena is determined to continue.
Josie is curiously still, her eyes trained elsewhere.
Its then that you notice her bare forearms.
Leaves and foliage prickling through the scars.
She walks away from Lena, who calls her name and follows her.
But shes gone, turned into one of those beguiling humanoid shaped trees.
Something beautiful, complex, and strange even in death.
The film reaches a crescendo as Lena arrives at the lighthouse where this entire ecological phenomenon began.
Here we see an embodied meditation on subjectivity and trauma.
As Emily Yoshida expresses in herreview, Garland goes silent for the films stunning finale.
This is partly due to Portmans stellar performance as Lena.
Acting is as much about becoming as unbecoming, and few actors understand this balance better than Portman.
Who am I without my trauma, my guilt, my sorrows?
This question has haunted me in the last few months.
Maybe, like Lena, I can become someone, something else.
Not as easy categorizable, but perhaps more whole.
