Mourning and MelancholyAfter a tragic loss, someone will go through a grieving process that will be either constructive or destructive. Grief is a time when the person experiencing this loss begins to seek reconciliation and a way to deal with their sadness. They will try to move on, forgive and forget the past. Freud wrote that grief is a normal reaction to the loss of a love object, consciously known and identifiable. Mourners will express sadness but may eventually separate from their lost love. Conversely, Freud says that melancholy develops when sadness is inappropriate to the situation and becomes internalized. The person suffering from melancholy identifies the lost object or person with themselves at an unconscious level, leading to a loss of ego. Two films dealing with grief and melancholy are Journey From The Fall and New Year Baby. In New Year Baby, Socheata Poeuv loses her self-esteem when her mother exposes what really happened to her family in Cambodia. Her two sisters are not actually her sisters, her brother is her half-brother, and her mother had a husband before Socheata's father. She returns to Cambodia to cry and try to reconcile her grief. She is able to move forward constructively by taking into account and appreciating all the difficulties her family has gone through, but she also understands that it is in the past and it is time to move on. In Journey From The Fall, Mai is not able to go through the same grief. process like Scheata Poeuv. She is having a hard time coping with the loss of her husband and the tragedies that happened to him. She is an example of a melancholic character who is not able to let go of her loss and therefore lets it manifest differently in different people. Some will cry and after a while find consolation and peace. They will forgive, forget and move on with their lives without blaming themselves. Others will have more difficulty expressing their sadness and will become melancholic. These people will not get over the loss and will constantly blame and hate themselves for it. It is possible that the events that melancholics have faced are too difficult to handle and this will prevent them from forgiving and forgetting.6References1. Freud, S. “Mourning and melancholy”. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 56.5 (1922): 543-45. Print.2. Travel since fall. Real. Tran Ham. Perf. Kieu Chinh and Long Nguyen and Diem Lien |. 2006. Film.3. New Year's Baby. Dir. Socheata Poeuv Poeuv. Perf. Socheata Poeuv. 2006. Cinema.