Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

Krlic did a great job. I would love a piece comparing the closing fanfares in Aster's two features.

I saw this a second time because a friend was keen to watch it and what stood out to me was how sparing the violence is. Even the overt gore of the first cliff diver's head is limited to two shots. It's easy to imagine visiting the commune on an average year and having a perfectly nice time!

Eh. I think it's fair to say that the violence in the cliff diver sequence is more ott than even the average gore. Same with the guy flayed and suspended with his back peeled open and his lungs exposed (whether or not that's supposed to be a some kind of hallucination). But otherwise, yeah, it's one of the ways this movie subverts horror tropes (while still having it both ways). Usually in a horror film someone wanders off, then there is a death scene. In this movie, by and large people just wander off and disappear, but it's pretty clear they meet grisly fates. One guy gets the Leatherface treatment with a hammer to the head. Another guy is flayed open. Is it Christian who, when he is freaking out, sees a leg inexplicably sticking out of the ground, like it was planted there? And then there is plenty of rotting viscera and body parts. Yeah, that's pretty subtle, but it could be that we all are inured to seeing this kind of stuff in movies. It's like when people talk about Texas Chainsaw and note, you know, there really isn't that much gore in it! Which is true. But of course it's still extremely violent and shocking and bloody. Just not 90 minutes of dismemberment or whatever.

Who do you think washes all these pristine white robes? That job must suck.

Was the vagina dentata of the eviscerated bear a little too on the nose?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPGaPTdno10

he discusses the "happy" ending in the first question here

Interesting, and interesting answer, thanks for posting that! Maybe it gets to the crux of some issues I have with it, in that he concedes that for every character *but* Dani it is essentially a pretty standard addition to the folk-horror genre, but *for* Dani it's a cathartic break-up wish-fulfillment fairy tale. Embracing both of those things at once is definitely challenging for me. It would be like watching a Friday the 13th movie where for 95% of the cast, yeah, it's a slasher film, but for one character specifically it's a movie about coming to grips with the divorce of her parents, her sister's battle with depression and struggling with a sense of self-worth in a gig economy. Like, a collision of high and low that's hard (for me at least) to balance.

that friday the 13th movie exists, it is called friday the 13th part vii the new blood

Kinda, yeah. That one's pretty batshit, but not too bad, compared to what comes next.

I love that he is a huge fan of "A.I.".

i mean minus the gig economy and sister stuff but it’s about a psychic teen who accidentally killed her father who’s being gaslighted by her mother and her psychiatrist, and she accidentally resurrects jason while she’s having an emotional breakdown, and it’s pretty easy to read the film as: jason murdering everyone in her life who sucks is the unleashed expression of her own unconscious

I feel like we might be divided among the line of those who identify w Dani at some level and those who (subconsciously or consciously) wish to protect her.

That vid is the interview I’ve been talking about, it’s on the film comment podcast - def recommend. As well as AI he goes on at length about 45 years, which I still need to see

it makes so much sense to me that he loves ai, one of the most ruthlessly emotionally cruel films i've ever seen

I agree, but a lot of it hinges on whether as an AI robot David can feel or how he feels or does it matter that he's a robot that can feel, or even what it means to "feel." Juggling those aspects of "A.I." I find wrenching, but I think it's based on the inherent complexity and nuance of the scenario. This one maybe lacked that for me, and the more I think about it, yeah, the more I think the early murder-suicide stuff is an extraneous distraction.

i went in wanting to like this, but unfortunately it's terrible lazy smug indulgent horseshit filmmaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiwMICAVwGo

The group screaming scene had real emotional weight, but ultimately I think the horror movie got in the way. Maybe I was rooting for the cult; I wanted them to be more legitimately sympathetic and mysterious, as in that scene. Human sacrifice just seems a bit predictable.

are you people still here?

Nine days, iirc

josh you love this movie

Saw it last night. Loved it. Much more so than Hereditary

Things I especially liked:

- Maybe the most true-to-life depiction of the psilocybin experience I've seen on film
- Speaking of which, Will Poulter provided some excellent light relief and his character was really well realised, right down to the vape
- Florence Pugh's stressed/agonised/anxiety-ridden facial expressions were spot-on
- Pelle and his calm/creepy Swedish brother were also great
- Soundtrack was incredible
- Such a pretty film. A cool idea to set a horror movie outdoors in the sunshine with very few night time scenes

i really loved this movie

I also think he lied to her about losing his family now that I think about it. The trauma/“what else do I have to lose” feeling Dani has that leads her to the communal experience was the best through-line of the film for me. What Emil.y said about hiding in the latrine/screaming it out w the community is the key to understanding why she went there. If you remove that/rewrite the movie to minimize her loss there’s not much left. Her loss and total aloneness in the world is another character in the movie imo.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, July 9, 2019 5:50 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry if this has already been addressed (not reading this whole thread) but pelle says his parents burned up in a fire, implying after the fact that they sacrificed themselves like ingmar and that other dude who are alive in the burning temple

I liked this a lot, but feel like its structure didn't lend itself well to the themes it was ostensibly trying to explore. You could arguably have gotten rid of all the ancillary characters who get picked off and it wouldn't have had that much impact on the core story.

re: Pelle's parents, I feel like they were trying to make that implication, but it doesn't line up with the "every 90 years" timescale. The film's never totally clear on which parts of the festival take place every year and which are only once in 90 years. That's a minor quibble, but it bugged me.

sorry if this has already been addressed (not reading this whole thread) but pelle says his parents burned up in a fire, implying after the fact that they sacrificed themselves like ingmar and that other dude who are alive in the burning temple

― na (NA), Monday, July 15, 2019

that was my conclusion too

I haven't seen the movie yet (and probably never will because I am a big wuss) but maybe there's an implication that the cult ages unnaturally as a result of their rituals that makes the timeline work and Pelle not a liar?

I will now go back to lurking since I haven't seen the movie

There's actually a detailed breakdown at one point of how the cult treats different ages like seasons, but they're all measured in normal years afaict

Most chilling moment was at the opening of the festival when the elder suddenly screams in Swedish (something like): "Spirits, go back!"

re: the 90 years thing, if everyone has to die at 72, then that part of the festival happens whenever someone reaches that age. the may queen happens every year. the burning of the temple/sacrifice - who knows, but if it's every 90 years then no one alive would have ever participated in the previous one... not that that matters so much.

my fav part of this was the title credits

pic.twitter.com/YWodhIDBLw

— Liv (@LivvyFanon) July 15, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiwMICAVwGo

A24 absolutely knew that this movie would enjoy a second life in meme format but I'm not mad about it

This is easily one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a perfect representation of the experience of trauma, the feeling of being an unbearable burden to everyone, the very real feeling in ine’s peer group that the needs of a trauma survivor are being felt as manipulative—

This wasn’t, to me, a horror movie, except for the first twenty minutes, that was the scary part—

That people who are traumatized are at first self-centred (Dani) and then deeply empathetic (Pelle), that so many of the rituals of a cult mirror similar methods of dealing with trauma both professionally and spiritually—

The contrast of tears being shed in private versus tears shed communally—

The contrast of murder-suicide being responded to with grief versus being responded to with joy—

Even the sex scene, which I knew was supposed to be “awkward” didn’t feel that way at all to me, this is how everyone should have sex, really—

I genuinely felt goosebumps everywhere in the crying scene and positively thrilled at the ending. I’ve read elsewhere about how Christian is a dick and Dani’s choice to burn him was a response to his infidelity and his emotional distance. I didn’t get that at all. Dani didn’t need a boyfriend, Dani needed family and empathy, she burned Christian in my opinion to sever her last connection to her trauma.

I didn’t love the deformed character and his function, and although I loved the music, the way they attempted to make the music sound diagetic was clumsily mixed to my ears.

I can’t read the thread ‘cause I’m walking home and typing on my phone but I think e.mily likely already typed everything I just typed and more succinctly lol

Ok, read the thread, agree with karl and wins and emil.y.

My one caveat is that I don’t think that Christian is a bad boyfriend, so much as an accurate representation of a partner who doesn’t understand/is exhausted by/doesn’t know how to deal with a severely traumatized partner (who likely, as indicated by her tearful initial phone call and subsequent call-to-a-friend, and the Ativan, has already some mental health issues before the opening tragedy)

i feel like that's true but that the movie also went out of its way to make him a coward and an asshole anyway

Dani didn’t need a boyfriend, Dani needed family and empathy, she burned Christian in my opinion to sever her last connection to her trauma.

i find this v otm

Good call. Dani and Christian are both at fault for following the path of least resistance, rather than questioning whether the relationship is worth saving.

yes, i like that. i mean he was not a great boyfriend but not to the degree where he deserved to be burned alive inside a bear.

Yea, at least put him in a wolf suit ffs

Avoided this thread until seeing the film last night, didn't realize we'd gotten to the spoilery bits already!

Although, unlike Hereditary's twists, you pretty much know where Midsommar is going as soon as they head for the commune. Like Texas Chainsaw, noted upthread, this sets up the family vs. the interlopers and you just wait for the inevitable to happen. The over-ther-topness of some of this also reminded me of Ken Russell's The Devils, a film I haven't seen in 40 years but whose atmosphere still lingers.

I didn't like this nearly as much as Hereditary. The ending, especially, felt to me like trying to outdo Hereditary by upping the crazy.

Still processing it, but somewhere betweenI went in wanting to like this, but unfortunately it's terrible lazy smug indulgent horseshit filmmaking and This is easily one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

My experience in dealing with different kinds of therapy can be summarized as follows. When I was first doing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, I felt as if the basis tenet of it is "nothing is wrong, your mind is distorting things". All problems you might be facing are just "distortions"-- your work anxiety, your relationship anxiety, your social anxiety. It's not a bad theory, but there's a major roadblock. I was reading "Feeling Good" and one of the problems put forth by a CBT patient was, "I don't want to die alone, gay and abandoned and depressed." The doctor's response was, literally, "that's just ridiculous". I was appalled. It's not ridiculous, and there is no distortion in thinking you're going to die alone, gay and abandoned and depressed. That is literally what is going to happen.

And I started to think CBT wasn't solving actual problems. It was helping with the anxiety, but not helping with dealing with real-life. It was trying to convince me that "nothing is wrong" but everything was wrong. CBT wasn't making my boyfriend love me again, wasn't improving my financial or social situation. It was after I turned to mindfulness that I started to find ways of actually dealing with actual problems.

Mindfulness, in contrast, doesn't teach you that "nothing is wrong", but that "everything is wrong, and you can be OK with that". The most succinct and extreme statement that I've read in this field of discourse is Pema Chodron's famous quote: "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found." The inevitability of aging and death and so on must be accepted and, possibly, even celebrated. Hopelessness should be seen as an ideal state, as hope only brings suffering.

The dichotomy of these two methods of psychological treatment were, I felt, represented at the core of this movie. I don't think it was a coincidence that the movie began and ended with three deaths. Dani's sister's murder-suicide was represented as brutal, terrifying, painlessly achieved and yet still gruesome and terrible. Christian's death at the end was painful, beautiful, simultaneously grieved and celebrated by the Hårgas. Cars and piping and duct tape, compared to bear sewing and house burning? It's not just the murders, either: Dani is taking the Western drug-of-choice Ativan at the beginning of the movie, and at the end of the movie is meditating, dancing, reflecting, and taking natural drugs.

I first got that Pema Chodron quote in my head in the Ättestupa scene. The Hårgas had accepted their position in the Earth's cycle so fully that even dying didn't scare them. Simon and Connie flip out and just see gore, but Dani, as revolted as she may have been, seemed to pick up on the logic of what was happening. The extreme commitment of the Hårgas to "exposing themselves to annihilation" included enacting extremely gory ritual deaths upon the visitors and burning themselves alive. Viewers of the movie who don't vibe with the logic of Hårgan psychology won't find the movie rewarding, but like I said, I found the ending to be exhilarating (and the opening, the murder-suicide scene, to be the only legitimately terrifying scene in the movie).

In short, I think this movie fails as horror because it's trying to do the opposite of what horror movies try to do. Horror wishes to shock you, but Ari Aster has this "Irreversible" style of filmmaking, beginning with the most gruesome sequence, and then wearing you down until, by the end, the formality of the house-burning is meant to be seen as comforting. It bears more commonality to my mind to historical religious rituals of "purification", death metal, etc.

great post. although i think if you're ambivalent about the cult's ideology, which most viewers likely are, the horror still works. i felt a sense of dread from dani's slide into paganism, the upending of her conventional morality is underway without her realizing it and there's no going back, like how you can't start untripping once the psychedelic experience starts, no matter how you now feel about it.

In short, I think this movie fails as horror because it's trying to do the opposite of what horror movies try to do. Horror wishes to shock you

i disagree with this definition of horror, so it doesn't "fail" for me as a horror movie. it shares a ton of themes with horror

I didn't like this nearly as much as Hereditary. The ending, especially, felt to me like trying to outdo Hereditary by upping the crazy.

i also don't really understand this criticism, which i've seen elsewhere so i'm possibly just wrong! but the ending felt way calmer and less crazy to me than hereditary, with way fewer ideas being thrown around in the final twenty minutes

I mean, some of the criticisms I’ve read about Midsommar seem to hinge upon its success in “scaring” the audience, which I feel is missing the point of the film. It also occurred to me that this film has much in common with “Possession”

it does!!!! and yeah, it is not a "scary" movie, but i sort of think of this like "not all effective comedy makes you laugh" etc.

seeing this tomorrow (wedding anniversary date night lol)

godspeed

fantastic posts, fgti

Still haven't seen this and am avoiding all thread conversation till then BUT thought you might be interested

Film Society of Lincoln Center - Saturday, August 17, 6:45pm (Q&A with Ari Aster)
Midsommar (Director's Cut)
Ari Aster, USA, 2019 - World Premiere
Scary Movies is excited to premiere the official, nearly three-hour director’s cut of the acclaimed sophomore feature from Ari Aster (Hereditary) in a special Saturday night screening. American grad student Dani (Florence Pugh), grieving after a shocking loss, accompanies her boyfriend and his buddies on their vacation to a tight-knit farming commune in the sunny Swedish countryside. They’ve timed their trip to participate in an extravagant nine-day festival celebrating the summer solstice, with hallucinogenic drugs in abundance and a Nordic sun that hardly seems to set, but things quickly take a dark turn in this singular, unflinching, utterly contemporary entry in the fish-out-of-water folk-horror canon. An A24 release.

this movie does not need to be three hours long but i'm curious

"It's just a three hour movie, can't be too weird.*

*Lincoln Center blood rites, Brad burned in a bear suit*