Anatomy of Melancholy (2000) dir. Jo Ann Kaplan

A cinematic meditation on mortality which takes the form of an anatomy book in the process of being made. A large portfolio opens, arranged as part of a still-life in an artist’s studio. In the open folio, we see a printed Table of Contents from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, and opposite this Table, we see a succession of blank pages on which illustrations appear, drawn before our very eyes by an invisible hand, showing us parts of a dissected human body: the hands, the organs of generation, the heart, and the head. The drawings made in time are both act of immediate creation and testament to our ultimate passing. Accompanying the simple but powerful images, we hear the words of Keats’ Ode on Melancholy recited at first haltingly, but with increasing confidence by a young girl: Ay, in the very temple of delight Veiled Melancholy has her Sovran shrine.....