Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

dani's attraction to the cult and the inevitability with which she finds her place in it would make no sense without the depiction of her alienation as she tried to bury her trauma to accommodate christian and his friends. the emotional mirroring of the women, the synchronized breathing, and the theatrical ritualized suicides are cathartic in contrast to the isolated grieving she was doing previously.

Just popping in to note that the visuals were very authentic and, if I'd been feeling a touch more sensitive, panic inducing

And that Christian being named Christian was a bit on the nose. I loved it tho

dani's attraction to the cult and the inevitability with which she finds her place in it would make no sense without the depiction of her alienation as she tried to bury her trauma to accommodate christian and his friends. the emotional mirroring of the women, the synchronized breathing, and the theatrical ritualized suicides are cathartic in contrast to the isolated grieving she was doing previously.

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Tuesday, July 9, 2019 4:09 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Good points!

I never felt much of an attraction between Dani and the cult, aside from when she's drugged and/or politely going along with what they ask her to do. But maybe this is another problem with painting her as a wreck from the very start. I didn't get the impression she was alienated in some existential sense. She has a really shitty boyfriend and her sister and parents just died in a murder/suicide. She needs more than mere "catharsis," and I don't buy that the horrors of the cult offered even that. Not least because she's by every indication trapped there. In that regard, I did get a vibe of fatalism from Dani. Like, what choice did she have? Scream and run away?

Christian and Josh seem much more attracted to the cult. When Dani goes to Christian and notes, hey, isn't it weird that British guy just vanished? And his reaction is more or less literally "yeah, that is weird. So, cult member, talk to me about incest." I thought there was going to be another Rosemary's Baby-esque element where they gave her up for sacrifice in return for the idyllic cult life, esp. after she has the vision of them all leaving without her. But no.

I just don't think she is a well-written character, especially not compared to Toni Collette's character in "Hereditary," who is handling so much more, from grief and trauma to possible mental illness to her terrible childhood to her own failings as a parent. Keeps you on your toes as a viewer. But here I got no depth or complexity from anyone.

I also don't even know how isolated her grieving was to begin with. She has a (bad) boyfriend, who nonetheless dutifully hangs around when she asks. And she has a therapist. It's not like she was aimlessly floating through life, though she easily could have been written that way, so that the cult offered something she was lacking. Hell, the cult could have been presented as "I know a relaxing place where you can get away from it all." And then we see what she is or is not willing to tolerate in terms of weirdness in pursuit of her own well-being ... until it is too late! Or something. Kind of like the new age colony satire that was in "The Howling" or something.

dutifully hangs around when she asks.

Yes he’s totally there for her, who could feel isolated with someone so technically present

If anything I did get the sense that she shoehorned herself onto the trip because she didn't want to be left alone, and because she was desperate to hold onto this wet-blanket of a boyfriend at any costs. Though from the first minute she is in the colony she seems ill at ease and uncomfortable, both around her erstwhile boyfriend and the cult members themselves. Perhaps she realizes she made a mistake, but really, crashing a boys trip with people who do not like you (not even your boyfriend) to a remote Swedish cult seems like a pretty bad idea from the start.

Here's another way it could have been handled. She goes through some unseen trauma, could be any number of things. She has nightmares, anxiety attacks. Friend of friend Pelle tells her about a place where she can get her head on straight. She tells her boyfriend, I think I need to do this, and he reluctantly lets her go. She arrives in the village to find several other newcomers in her situation. Things start out idyllic, but then things get weird.

Screw the boyfriend and those other people, they add nothing to the story, hers or otherwise.

Yes it's a shame Ari Aster didn't make a completely different movie that you just made up and called it Midsommar

At one point lead Nice Cult Guy basically says "you're American, so just butt into the dance" or something.

Christian asks if he can join in after getting flirtily kicked by the redheaded girl, doing a piss-poor job of hiding the fact that he wants to chase after her, and dani clearly notices; Swedish guy says that funny line, one of many good jokes in this film; josh eagerly joins in too because that's his whole deal. This scene is a p good example of how everyone's relationships and motivations are made abundantly clear and drive the narrative

But he and Christian (and everyone) sort of just keep going after that cliff episode, and Christian specifically seems to be almost hypnotized. But he's not? It was unclear, to me at least.

if you believe the cult's "little love story" tapestry he is literally hypnotised due to the various stages of the love spell, but it's more likely that he's staying around because he's a shit. It's made very clear he's fascinated by/lusts after the redheaded girl - his reactions to her mirror exactly the scene at the beginning with the waitress ("you could be impregnating her right now") - while trying to maintain a veneer of reluctance. Him staying also fits his whole "we don't have to, unless you want to" pass agg vibe, he won't just leave dani but he wants her to cut him loose (eventually she does, in the happy ending). PLUS the extra bit of venality re the thesis: he's a Mediocre Dude™ with no ideas of his own and a path to success opens up in front of him.

If there was any humor in this

there was, like, throughout

I never felt much of an attraction between Dani and the cult, aside from when she's drugged and/or politely going along with what they ask her to do. But maybe this is another problem with painting her as a wreck from the very start. I didn't get the impression she was alienated in some existential sense. She has a really shitty boyfriend and her sister and parents just died in a murder/suicide. She needs more than mere "catharsis," and I don't buy that the horrors of the cult offered even that. Not least because she's by every indication trapped there. In that regard, I did get a vibe of fatalism from Dani. Like, what choice did she have? Scream and run away?
Christian and Josh seem much more attracted to the cult. When Dani goes to Christian and notes, hey, isn't it weird that British guy just vanished? And his reaction is more or less literally "yeah, that is weird. So, cult member, talk to me about incest." I thought there was going to be another Rosemary's Baby-esque element where they gave her up for sacrifice in return for the idyllic cult life, esp. after she has the vision of them all leaving without her. But no.

I don't know what to tell you, man. The attraction is there and they underline why at every point. She's just lost her entire family and has come to a place where she's explicitly told she can stay and not be an orphan, and the alternatives are painted pretty grimly. She finds a supportive network of women (that therapy session was incredible and I want to post more about it but even before that bit) and every single time she makes a decision to go further along with the ceremony in that last half hour it's accompanied by her glaring for like a minute at a time at her awful boyfriend who's ignoring her. You can "buy it" or not, but that's the movie.

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. It's also about BURNING YOUR FUCKING SHIT BOYFRIEND because HE'S FUCKING SHIT.

Really not into Josh's ideas for a remake, basically.

^^^

one of the funniest bits is when Christian is fleeing from what he's just done with the young girl and starts to run toward the building the women are in, but then hears their screams of anguish-turned-strength and realises that that's definitely where he does NOT want to go

Haha, yes. I really adored this film, if you couldn't tell. I have to keep reminding myself that the commune are bad, because I just want to go there and scream it out with my girls. That scene completely floored me.

Emil.y super otm

There was a LOT of humor in this movie! Not just dialog but visual and physical performance gags. Overt ones. It blows me away that anyone wouldn't notice. My audience laughed a lot.

I just saw it a second time, having in the meantime seen some criticisms here and on twitter that seemed persuasive, but I loved it even more this time tbh

xpost There was *not* a "LOT" of humor in this movie. Come on. Like, maybe some sort of rueful inevitability, but I couldn't call this a satire, or even a black comedy, and it's inconceivable to me that anyone could view it as such. I mean, I heard stories of people laughing during "Hereditary," too, but I think that's more people letting off steam.

Anyway, I totally understand that different viewers bring different things to the screening, and different viewers project and receive different things. I didn't find the psychological stuff remotely compelling or convincing, or the boyfriend a compelling or convincing antagonist, so my mind wanders to what might have made it a better horror film. Like I said, even though I thought it was full of shit, it didn't make me mad, I don't regret seeing it and I wouldn't tell someone else not to see it. Maybe they'll get more out of it than I did. Hey, I love it when people get something from art. All I know is that if dude turns in his next script and it ends with a bunch of naked people chanting, he should try something else.

did you not laugh when the old lady pushed on his butt, or when they got invited to the austin powers screening, or when the extract from the lew tree did nothing to protect the dudes in the temple from pain, or when the lady was like "yeah that sounds right" when reynor mentions that he ate a pube

That's just off the top of my head, there's loads more!

There are enough lines of dialogue in this film that are actual unequivocal *jokes* to make it “a LOT” of humour (just one of the top of my head: “I’d like to give her a bath), even before you add in cringey social comedy (virtually every interaction) and humour in the performances (Christian’s reactions during the consummation scene)

Plus all the shrooming humour was spot on

the extract from the yew tree did nothing to protect the dudes in the temple from pain

I did love that. Guy kinda goes "Well at least my self-sacrifice will be blissed out and peaceful...OH MY GOD WTF."

(Which to me just ties in further with the whole NOT-supernatural functioning of the movie. Really does feel like a "I double dog dare you!"/"Haha you fell for it" scenario.)

Also FWIW this new review today goes in further on a trauma/recovery/community angle; we've talked about it plenty here but it's a further summation.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alisonwillmore/midsommar-ari-aster-florence-pugh

FWIW, I thought the guy screaming in agony was my favorite bit! Just underscored that, no, there is no actual magic at work here. Though that doubly underscored that there really is no incentive for this wacky colony to survive. Just ... drugged-out brainwashing and tradition?

But if you're asking, no, I didn't think the cringe comedy was funny or believable, I didn't think the one obnoxious guy and his constant quips was funny (a colony of guys like that vape dude is my idea of horror movie hell), and no, I didn't think the butt pushing or pube in the food was funny. because they've already established this colony as strange and tradition bound and wrapped up in fertility rituals and whatnot, so if the guy was picked basically as a breeding stud, why would I be shocked or even find it amusing that they treated him more or less as an animal? That's no stranger than anything I'd seen already.

So what did happen with the missing book?

"I didn't find the jokes funny, so it wasn't a comedy." got it

The humour wasn't in him being treated like an animal, it's that "I think I ate one of her pubes" "yep, sounds about right" being a hilarious exchange in itself. I mean, arguing about humour is a futile endeavour, but I feel like you're trying to say that the humour is absent, rather than that you personally didn't find it funny - the former is just wrong, the second is, y'know, absolutely fine.

Obnoxious guy *was* hellish, which is why it was hilarious and the best fun that he got murdered.

xp

I think the implication is that it wasn’t actually missing but as josh had just been killed after being caught with it, they announced its theft as a misdirection/plausible reason why josh & the other guy went missing

Oh yeah, I thought that was super obvious, too?

Considering how little anyone seemed to care about the disappearing guests ...

Oh, and didn't find the Austin Powers joke funny, either, just thought it a banality, like the kind of outdated bestsellers and movies you find sitting in vacation homes or whatever. But hey, if that's your standard for comedy, life's gotta be pretty funny!

I liked that Buzzfeed article. Don't agree with much of it, but it makes some good points and observations.

Anyway, I'll step away for once. Clearly some of you love this film far more than I dislike it, so more power to you.

Oh, and didn't find the Austin Powers joke funny, either, just thought it a banality, like the kind of outdated bestsellers and movies you find sitting in vacation homes or whatever.

Well, yes, it is this, except that this vacation home is a weird cult in Sweden that's going to kill everyone you're there with. Banality + extreme weirdness = unexpected combination = comedy, ba-boom!

Vape guy’s lines were like half actual funny (if still awful) gags and half just witless xenophobia - and there’s so much of it, it’s really wearing. It was kinda cruel to deny the audience an onscreen death for that guy

Just read the Buzzfeed article, and I think it's the closest to how I felt about the film that I've read so far.

Btw to clear up an earlier point of confusion, the may queens are a yearly midsommar thing and not only a part of the 90 year festival - the guy (pelle?) showed dani a picture of “last year’s May queen” in the apartment

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.

AND being able to snag a few lols while she’s going through a patently horrific time in her life is basically the only way one can survive.

Lols that are definitively NOT at her expense

Sorry to pop in again, but does it matter that as she is apparently acclimating to the cult she is also constantly being plied with who knows what kind of drugs? That whole May Queen sequence, she is tripping balls and seeing things. So is Christian. Kind of runs counter to any narrative about power and agency when you are constantly getting roofied.

Another question. If she did not win the May Queen celebration, would they have killed her as well?

She doesn’t care about the drugs afaict

She knows and is like whatever sure gimme the tea.

Yeah "roofied" implies being drugged without your knowledge, which I don't believe she ever is.

I was under the impression that Christian was given some sort of strong, disorienting aphrodisiac. He might have taken it willingly, but he didn't know what it would do. Likewise the tea, who knows what that shit was or why she was given it, but to say she (or he) was in control of her faculties I don't think is accurate, even if she or he willingly gave themselves in to it. I dunno, I find that a problematic thematic snag. Are there any times on the commune they are *not* drugged? Who knows.

I didn’t say she was in control of her faculties — I said she didn’t care. I feel like you don’t grasp her mental state very well.

Did any of them care?

The scholarly guy definitely did.

About what drugs they were taking or being given? Don't recall that.