Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

it's not as good as Hereditary - no one in the film is as good as Toni Collette, the racial stuff is elided in a suspect way, it's way too long and could have been more succinctly edited. Those are the only knocks against it though.

lol at arguing over its genre placement, this is totally a horror movie - the checklist of genre tropes embedded and toyed with in the film is very long.

this thread is a bitch to wade through so apologies if I'm rehashing anything but I did note emil.y's post above:

The whole film is about the terror of feeling pain alone vs the community's sharing of your pain. It's about the difference between gasping quietly in a toilet so nobody hears you having a panic attack vs screaming and having everyone around you scream with you.

This is key. The sect processes trauma by acknowledging it, ritualizing it, and expelling it in a way that, perhaps most importantly, both externalizes it (sacrificing outsiders) and perpetuates it (sacrificing its own members). This is a kind of horrific evil that becomes attractive when you have no other way available to process your own trauma. Dani isn't free from her trauma at the end by any means: she *owns* it, she controls it via the power of the community, it has been harnessed and circumscribed. It has been integrated into her sense of self and into the wider community.

The racial politics of this though... it's bizarre to cast Josh as a black character (and Connie and her fiancee as brown characters) and then not in any way address the racial dynamics involved with a bunch of Nordic white people, who are fixated on bloodlines and breeding, murdering them. Like, no characters - not even the non-white characters themselves - *ever* acknowledge this? In the scene at their house prior to the trip Josh has a book on the table titled "The Secret Nazi Language of the Hraxthur" or something like that, clearly he would be aware of the racial aspect and histories of such cults and would at the very least feel some sense of exclusion/otherness, but this is never conveyed. And then the film leans into his conventional "black guy in a horror film" role... idk it was disconcerting. So much of this film felt carefully constructed and deliberate, and this aspect of it seemed not so well thought out.

And then the film leans into his conventional "black guy in a horror film" role

can you expand on this? bc i don't know what you're referring to here

well the whole film is structured around the classic "group of friends under threat" horror scenario, whereby each member is picked off/killed by a predator in succession, often for some apparent transgression, either implied or explicit (ie, having sex, violating a taboo, or for no other reason than being black). For reference: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst

Josh's role in the film checks a number of those boxes - he's not top billed, he's the lone black guy, he's also the "most important" in the sense that he's given the most to do/has the most detailed understanding of what's going on, etc.

he has an explicit transgression that is not "no other reason than being black"

Right. Could also argue that he technically doesn't die first, because the other two brown people do.

you are right that the movie pretty much ignores that josh is black. i'm not sure that's problematic, but what do i know. i didn't feel like it made the film more illogical or unbelievable.

Will Poulter's character dies first, no?

No, Britishers first, right?

the East Asian Britishes die first

they are also, perhaps not coincidentally, the least fleshed out and obviously their function in the film is to be expendable

anyway my point isn't just that the movie ignores that Josh is black - it ignores that racially fixated white people kill a bunch of brown people *while never bringing it up that this is happening*

I found this interesting, although it gets a few facts wrong: https://www.graveyardshiftsisters.com/2019/07/how-midsommar-utilizes-and-subverts.html

When I was watching it I felt like they'd written the script, realised it could end up an *entirely* white cast, and made sure to avoid that by casting PoC, but as Οὖτις points out, didn't really change the script to acknowledge that there's a huge pre-existing dynamic at play. Maybe they thought it would change the theme of the film too much to make it a big deal, but they could have mentioned it at least a bit. I feel like I'm on pretty uncertain ground with this, though.

I'm not black (although I am named Josh lol) but as a Jew if you plunked me down into a northern European cult setting you can be sure as shit one of the main things on my mind would be the racial dynamic/history involved and how that would be a potential threat to me personally. My "otherness" would be foremost in my mind.

I get the logic of ignoring the racial aspect in the script, since it doesn't really tie in with any of the major themes Aster is interested in. But it did feel like a missed opportunity to at least poke fun at the sheer whiteness of these occult groups

as I suspected, the script makes no reference to the characters' races

The biggest missed opportunity for cultural comedy is that this film about Nordic hippies has characters staying in huts where you can constantly hear babies crying and the first thing a character asks is “where do we jerk off”, and ilx has not dealt with this at all

lol

as I suspected, the script makes no reference to the characters' races

cool, should've just cast Dani as black then - problem solved!

j/k

In terms of casting, I feel like they watched the Good Place and saw Chidi, and were "yes, yes, YES, that's exactly who I want for this character."

"Oh is he black? I don't see skin color"

As a horror movie, this is super weird in that the main character has no agency at all, or even a compelling drive to get out of this scenario -- she's peer-pressured into almost every decision. It really tracks more tightly with a teen anti-drug movie.

her drive is explicitly to get *into* this scenario - to forget her grief, find community/family, commitment

she's seeking catharsis, rebirth, etc. I thought her motivations were perfectly clear.

those were thrust onto her; the boyfriend fake-suggests it, and she says yeah. cult recruiter implants the idea of "you need a family" onto her.

needed a scene where florence pugh turns to camera and says "I am choosing to do this. thank you and enjoy the show!"

that's a bizarre misreading. the film opens with her desperately trying to elicit some kind of connection/commitment from her boyfriend in the absence of her family. this leads to everything else.

er xp

she and the boyfriend both start out as these indecisive blanks, which is why it's weird halfway through when the boyfriend is revealed to have some secret backstabbing academic ambition.

boyfriend is depicted from the get-go as basically a loser and a jerk, it's remarkable they give him absolutely no redeeming qualities or moments (making her "choice" at the end a foregone conclusion that should come as a surprise to no one)

i refer people who believe dani has no agency to this entire thread

i don't want to really get into my probs with this b/c it won't be fun for any of us but does anyone want to tell me why dani's big moment (choosing to kill christian) happened offscreen?

it would have been a surprise if they included a scene of her making such a choice, but it's cut to be consistent with the idea that she's still just going with the flow.

xxp I read his "academic ambition" more as flailing to find something to grasp onto, albeit in the most jerkass-possible way. He's clearly a such an empty person that the best thing he can think to do is bite his friend's thesis.

that's interesting! academia as a nordic cult that swallows up empty people.

Dani, offscreen: BURN THE BAD GRAD STUDENT

why dani's big moment (choosing to kill christian) happened offscreen?

because it's a foregone conclusion, and cutting to him being stuffed into a bear suit is funnier/more dramatic

"bear say hi to me" redefined

Japanese poster title

they give him absolutely no redeeming qualities

Is not breaking up with her a redeeming quality? Letting her tag along on his bro-cation?

The fact that Christian was chosen by the cult for his sperm was kind of interesting, suggesting that he had at least one thing to offer, and maybe only that.

One plot point I thought was strange and unnecessary and I didn't really understand was when Christian decided he'd steal Mark's thesis. It became a point of conflict in two scenes (the initial argument, the later scene where Pelle insists that they both share the work equally). It seemed to serve no purpose except possibly to establish that Christian DID in fact have no value as a person.

*replace "Mark" with "Josh" in the last post, got my generic male names confused

neither it not josh’s unethical turn really made sense and honestly neither ended up mattering.

the script for this could have gone through....several levels of refinement.

I think it did and this is where it ended up. He said it was cut down a lot, though I have no idea if the script that was apparently leaked was the shooting script, a final script or a draft. I know he was disappointed the script was leaked, which implies it wasn't done or maybe wasn't representative of what he ultimately settled on?

It seemed to serve no purpose except possibly to establish that Christian DID in fact have no value as a person.

yeah was the only takeaway afaict

yeah that was the only takeaway, I mean

was I the only one who wished there had maybe been some quality metal on the sdtk? Would also have accepted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVfdPUR9zc

Is not breaking up with her a redeeming quality? Letting her tag along on his bro-cation?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, July 18, 2019 4:17 PM (twenty-six minutes ago)

no that is not a redeeming quality
he passively did both -- it would have taken more energy for him to tell her to take a hike (in their relationship or wrt the trip) than it would for him to carry on with the status quo. of course he just kept going along according to plan.

metal would have been ok but i am holding out for droney jams

But if he had broken up with her, that would have been bad, too, wouldn't it have been? Because I still see no reason for him to stick with her except out of sympathy, and that's not a bad reason, is it?

well yeah I meant like drone-metal sort of stuff. Sunnn O))), Earth that kind of thing

xp

he doesn't stick with her out of sympathy, it's out of laziness and cowardice