Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

lol

I’m seeing it again tomorrow, will be interesting to see how it holds up

I made it years with no Hereditary spoilers, but I'm going to try to see this one a lot faster. Alas, first spoiler: it's apparently 2 1/2 hours long! Gonna be tough to find a window.

I know it's only been a day. I need to watch his shorts to confirm my suspicions. But the more time I get away from both of his features, the less I like them and the more this criticism rings true (via Letterboxd):

this guy has built his rep on being solid at the drama stuff (directing actors) and really swinging for the fences with the horror/gore shit but has completely failed to synthesize them in any real way so its all just kinda thrown together into a collection of scenes that actually work, until they dont - i guess the real accomplishment is making drama audiences watch gore & gore audiences watch a drama?? in this & hereditary all the real-life family tragedy shit is wielded like a kid who just discovered racial slurs, excited that hes "hacked" his way into getting a emotional reaction - its unsettling but kinda empty & irresponsible

Honestly feels OTM - when I wished that he would switch it up next time, I was sure he could. Can he though? Midsommar is more consistent than Hereditary but it doesn't top the first half of that movie. Oh my god, the ending of that movie is such a fucking joke! During a lot of Midsommar, I had that stupid "HAIL KING PAIMON!" chant stuck in my head. I know he loves Bergman and shit but could he make something like Cries and Whispers? Midsommar might be as close as he gets.

The strategic use of wild, insane violence/gore feels essential to Hereditary (less so this one, and here it feels almost perfunctory because all of the big kills come at regularly scheduled interviews & they're not a surprise). So I'm not as confident in him as a writer, but he is certainly a talented director - one thing that doesn't get enough credit is the camera in both of these movies, which moves with such authority and inhumanity. But I'd like to see the pre-horror draft of Hereditary.

*intervals

Lol I love the ending of hereditary

What did you think about “HAIL SATAN” in rb?

I still have no idea what "elevated horror" means. horror with elaborate production design?

Probably someone's way of saying "better than that icky quicky genre trash."

Isn’t it just prestige/respectable/middlebrow? Not worth fussing too much about imo

xp yeah

xps

I think it works in RB because that movie is so much more rigorous and disciplined. As it goes on, you're just getting trapped in the Dakota, the walls are closing in, you're SURE that this all has to be in Rosemary's head, the tension just keeps rising until that final reveal and BAM it's actually fucking Satan! the casting of that group is essential too imo, they're genuinely fucking scary- and the line "HAIL SATAN!" is like popping the balloon of a nightmare only to wake up into a worse reality!

the second half of Hereditary is too undisciplined and there's too much space, doesn't feel focused, and the cult is much more obscure and less scary. there isn't that claustrophobic, and completely plausible dread that RB has. of course you could argue that Hereditary might be all in someone's head, but idk to me the crucial difference between the two is that RB never loses its realism while Hereditary just runs itself off the road.

That's a dumb moviegoer distinction. What does it mean on a formal or aesthetic level? Xp

Nothing

xp you make a persuasive argument!

"irresponsible" genre cinema is a very funny idea, to me

"elevated horror" is horror that goes up to HERE

must be this elevated to attend Midsommar

i do plan to go in higher than god

Rosemary's Baby also had a novel as source material and hand rail.

Yeah I heard a lot of ppl say it transcended the source material

Brad I think you will like Midsommar better, or at least I think it has fewer of the qualities you hated in Hereditary

that Letterboxd comment has a lot of otm

I have to say my least favorite take I've seen (elsewhere) so far is "oh so this guy's trick is showing women in visceral grief huh"

this guy is no von trier

Good thing too.

Oh God let's keep the von trier wars out of this thread

Yeah, good idea.

A point I haven't seen brought up as much, perhaps addressed earlier in the thread -- there's nothing explicitly supernatural happening in Midsommar at all (which, I suppose, is very Wicker Man too). Lots of ritual, sacrifice, etc. etc. but at no point is there a formal externalized sense that there's actually something beyond an explanation of things having always been like that.

Related to which, I kinda appreciated how there wasn't an actual 'head' of the cult as such. Leading figures, sure, but there was a kind of mutability happening, no one in specific making a final call, which fits in with the whole collective idea. And whatever practical considerations were or weren't happening as well, I kinda liked the weird sense that I got that the actual cult membership wasn't...consistent somehow. Again, could be sloppy filmmaking (kinda doubt that given Aster's obvious eye for the obsessive), could be down to what extras were available on what days, but I'd need a rewatch to see if it was always the same people each time filling out the corners, because it suited the air of dreaminess/otherworldy activity, combined with the idea of shifting and damaged perceptions.

that is a good point, and it's in the film's favor that it is basically realistic or plausible at the very least - makes me want to see it again, which I probably will tomorrow. I have no desire to see Hereditary again because the ending just eliminates any ambiguity for me, and severely complicates the whole thing and bungles an otherwise compelling & ambiguous movie.

One thing I keep thinking about is the final shot. the only time that Dani smiles in the entire movie?

did anyone else think of Sigur Ros when she said thank you in swedish

For me the plausibility stumble could, also, be intentional. If the cult has been doing this every 90 years, well, sure -- nine people (or less) mysteriously disappear, it could happen. But it's 2019(ish), and people have cell phones, social media, etc. etc., and part of me thinks the film ends at just the right spot because it's almost like two days later there'll be the first breathless CNN reports about a clutch of young college students from the US and UK that have all not reported back after planned vacations and the mass arrests are about to follow. Which reads as even MORE darkly comic to me than all of what's already evident!

So yeah, that exultant smiling final shot -- and I think it pretty much is the only time, at least the only notable one -- could also be what's about to be her last real moment of happiness on several levels. I absolutely love how by ending as it does there are any number of future possible fates for the character, and they all read as very, very possible.

I thought the internet didn't exist in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman said so.

she smiles a few other times but that was one of the only true grin from-the-depths smile rather than a polite smile. i loved her facial expressions throughout the movie.

also did anyone else notice that the girl who was approved to mate had red hair and the outlander mate she chose also had reddish hair? i feel like they only showed his hair in the sunlight (revealing it to be more reddish than brown or blonde) after it was revealed that she had chosen him.

I have no desire to see Hereditary again because the ending just eliminates any ambiguity for me, and severely complicates the whole thing and bungles an otherwise compelling & ambiguous movie.

o t m

Fuck ambiguity.

Otm. Ambiguity seems like a perfect argument for people who *haven't seen the fucking movie yet* to rail against it guns blazing. Fuck that.

i am complaining about hereditary, a film i saw

Fetishizing "ambiguity" in movies is some classist middlebrow bullshit.

go on

fkn rosebud amirite?

and yes i think it gets so narrow and boxed-in by the end that the story loses all imagination and any fascination for me, if you love that good for you xp

Fetishizing "ambiguity" in movies is some classist middlebrow bullshit.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Monday, July 8, 2019

I thought the complaint about middlebrow entertainment was its clarity and narrative inevitability?

ambiguity seems like a pretty elemental part of horror as a genre to me, your mileage may fuckin vary i guess

Ambiguity about what, though? To take a recent example I saw (because I generally don't watch horror movies), did you like Get Out? Did that movie contain ambiguity?

i started the get out thread! get out is an effective polemic so it does not necessarily require ambiguity, no, ok i take it back

but also i think it plays with ambiguity until the hypnosis scene, and generally offers a lot to think about beyond that. hereditary offered me absolutely nothing to think about except toni collette's performance and ari aster's hatred for his own characters

I don’t think ambiguity is de facto good, or bad, or fundamental to horror, or... classist?

That is my take

also i am using "polemic" incorrectly i think

ari aster's hatred for his own characters
this is also overstated and not otm imo

what i mean is that the politics of get out are very unambiguous in a good way

Guys