Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

But if he had broken up with her, that would have been bad, too, wouldn't it have been?

From experiences in my life, I can honestly say that it's much better for someone to be honest and admit they can't support you, than for them to consistently fail to support you when they're supposed to.

I didn't feel the same way as you, emil.y. To me, it felt as if Christian was overtaxed already with having to deal with "his girlfriend's bipolar sister", and then was completely hinged into a situation where he was having to care for a woman who'd lost her parents and her sister.

Overall I felt the movie tried to portray Christian as an oaf with an insurmountable task.

I think there are two viable readings of Christian, one in which "he is bad", which the whole "I'm stealing your thesis" side plot would seem to support, and a particular "the hexes do nothing, your man is garbage" interpretation of his post menstrual-pubic existence.

The other reading is that "Christian is stupid", where the whole "I'm stealing your thesis" was less significant than the direction implied, and the drugs were strong, and he didn't fuck that creepy woman willingly, and he is staring out of his Tanooki suit with his expression of "..what?" because he doesn't understand that He Is Stupid.

There is also the possibility that he is bad and also stupid

I found Christian sort of sympathetic because he's just such a recognizable fuckup of a certain age. The kind of guy who could maybe make something of himself at some point if he decided to be more genuine or something, but is so driftless and indecisive that he just gloms onto everyone else's ideas (in every sense). I definitely had a period in life where I was somewhat Christian-like due to depression and circumstance, though I was never a grad student. Like I guess he is a "bad boyfriend" but that's really just a side effect.

I'm sure my sympathies w Christian don't have anything to do w the fact that I also kept a relationship going too long partially due to issues in my partner's personal/family life, which I suspect is actually an extremely common dynamic to one extent or another

Well, I have good news, Simon H., you have been selected as our ninth sacrifice

As long as the yew tree is ripe this year.

Saw it a second time. Loved it much more as I watched for things i missed the first time. Like Mark saying he saw Connie training for the "sprinting Olympics" earlier, implying he saw her running for her life and was to aloof to care.

Also, Christian is a terrible person. Not just to Dani. He steals his best friend's thesis, only to make himself the victim and then sell his friend out at the first sign of trouble when the book disappears.

He sees Dani thoroughly concerned about Simon's disappearance, disaffectedly says "wow, what a dick move", completely misreading her terror that something is amiss, before resuming his conversation with a member of the community.

He's so phony, that when he's completely chill after the antestuppa scene and she calls him on it, he says "it was SHOCKING" in the least convincing way possible and mentions he needs to keep an open mind, with zero regard for how triggering it had to be for Dani.

Also his behavior during the argument about the Sweden trip is classic manipulative behavior. She is rightfully calling him out, mildly at that, also saying his apology was bullshit, so he acted aggrieved and threatened to get home to back down.

Also the look on his face at the end slayed me. "Of all the ways I expected to die, burned alive inside a dead bear wasn't even in the neighborhood".

I definitely felt more dread and terror the second time around. You know people are dying, but you're hoping it's for more rational reasons. Connie and her fiancee looked spooked and might have alerted authorities. Mark violated their ancestral tree. Josh broke their trust. Still terrible, extralegal reasons to kill anybody, but sensible.

Then you find out that four of them were intended to die from the onset, regardless of their actions, and it was just a matter of which 4, and would there be a 5th. It was purely a numbers game. 4 new bloods, 4 natives, 1 May Queen choice.

Not for a harvest either - just to eradicate evil.

I also thought to myself that all of them should have realized they were doomed at the antestuppa ceremony. No community would let outsiders see that, for fear of them fleeing and exposing them. You either die or you become a Horge!

lol SENSIBLE??

Sensible in that each death had its own motive and was in some form of accordance with protecting the commune. Note I also said "terrible" and "extralegal".

Like it mattered not that Connie and her fiancee were possibly going to blow a lid off of the goings on. That just made them the first two chosen of the required four.

Mark was a douche that pissed on their tree, so he was number three. Josh broke his secrecy agreement, so he was 4. Since only five guests were originally invited, that would have left one extra to either be killed, or join their commune.

Dani being the May Queen was dumb luck. She wasn't supposed to be going originally and only five new bloods were required (4 for certain sacrifice, 1 50/50 chance of sacrifice)

In other words, even if all five of them went and had the time of their lives, they'd mostly all have been slaughtered anyway.

it's true that their fate was sealed as soon as they got on the plane to Sweden. you couldn't pay me to go to anything like that place... sacrifices or no sacrifices... shared meals? sleeping in a cabin with half a dozen other people without walls? No

In general i don't like to go on vacations with other people, period

The crying babby would be enough to nope me back to Stockholm.

LOL yeah @ expecting anybody not related to that babby to put up w that shit

there was a baby in this movie?

In general i don't like to go on vacations with other people, period

― Fuck Trump, cops, and the CBP (Neanderthal), Sunday, July 21, 2019 5:17 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It can be fun... I mean, worst case scenario is Don't Look Now!

I, too, have now seen Midsommar
fyi, it took me two days to decide if I actually liked Hereditary or if it'd stick, probably why I'm bad at movie reviewing -- the ones where it's an immediate emotional payoff can be great as you're walking out the theater, and sometimes diminish over days or even hours. If it takes more than moments, sometimes it's worth pondering what was memorable and truly sticks

to catch up with the thread:

i guess where hereditary rubbed me wrong is what's really happening is fuckin boring and also stops dead a pretty decent exploration of the way profound grief and guilt ripples through a family

I was irritated when hereditary did that! it's made it so far as a psychological drama that is going to have a weird turn but some sort of payoff, and the rug is pulled out from under the audience and there's absolutely no real psychological payoff and just a huge "it was all real" reveal. it succeeded or failed on whether the ending was messed up enough

emil.y and others widely otm!

the points that really stood out to me:
dani's character receives little to no true empathy and a fair amount of dumb gaslighting from her boyfriend, where he's acted minorly aggrieved for her questioning of his inability to communicate! the entire cult, outside of murder/sacrifice, has this entirely exaggerated sense of empathy expressed through physical affect. even the cult outreach officer they traveled there with isn't great at it, and there's something there in the idea that individual empathy is difficult but when expressed as a group it's the subsumption of individual pain

the blatant yet unrevisited point in dani's family's death was her sister's note about the darkness and how she was taking herself and the parents away. and then dani goes to the land of perpetual sunlight. there's also the fact her birthday falls during the festival -- so she's not a midsommar festival baby because of timing, but seems significant. but the guy who took them there, he mentions being an orphan and that his sister they meet has the same birthday. so he probably was part of the cult from birth, and was conceived at the same time as his sister, and both of his parents were sacrificed

the babby was good in this

why was the babby always screaming all night, so frustrating

there was a lot of murdering

Babby upset by all the masturbating, presumably

kind of was sad it was so obvious they were killing people early in the film, but I feel like the lack of ambiguity on the audience end was intentional

finally got to see this today, it's deeply harrowing (and part of that is the soundtrack) a la Upstream Color but just fantastic. but I don't think it's a folk horror film really? probably the best movie in 2019 so far though

Saw it on the second day of the new Alamo Drafthouse in L.A. It was v good, shout out to Haxan Cloak

FWIW I found the Dani's family's death part super-duper disturbing, more so than any other part in the film. I guess that was the idea though.

The 'Fire Temple' theme is some iconic soundtrack shit btw.

I'm sad we didn't get a good one-liner like "hail paimon!" but perhaps we did and it wasn't in english

"someone tell those girls they're walking stupid"

*walking past a bear in a wooden cage*
"so we're just going to ignore the bear?"

"That's a bear."

'I'm going to lie down. Everybody lie down'

^ paraphrase because I don't remember the exact line but this whole scene had me in absolute stitches. The whole 'I don't want to meet new people' is perfect psylocibin talk

rip Mark, not a horrible enough person to truly loathe, more than enough of a fool to get skinned

- Can we just go back to Stockholm and have a real holiday?
- Sorry, I'm skint.

I was debating whether there was a non-zero chance any of the outsiders would have been allowed to leave. There's definitely the tension earlier in the film where it's unclear whether they're getting killed for fucking up by screaming when the elders commit suicide, or taking pictures of the sacred book. I think it's pretty clear at the end that they were all fated for death, so the stakes of the earlier interactions.. kind of evaporate? Minus the May Queen, obviously. She's the wild card.

I just assumed that once Connie and Simon got murdered for not *really* doing anything wrong that all the outsiders were going to die. Including Dani! I was more focused on how Dani was going to transform and what she would turn into.

baffled that no one saw Dani = May Queen as soon as the May Queen thing was referenced, that seemed as obviously telegraphed (if not *moreso*) than the deaths of everyone else

Pelle clearly had his eye on her as May Queen immediately, like as soon as he tried to broach the subject of their common "orphan" status

If he did, he lucked into it, because it seems like he had zero involvement in her going on the trip in the first place.

I guess the one discrepancy to me was that Pelle mentions his parents died in a fire which seems to imply they were sacrificed, but it's probably both a red herring and foreshadowing to what the cult does. They never really deviate from the initial claim that the full festival only happens every 90 years? Although they must do a lot of the rituals in other years, because otherwise there wouldn't be all of the photographs of May Queens

baffled that no one saw Dani = May Queen as soon as the May Queen thing was referenced

idk seemed pretty obvious to me and a lot of other people I've talked to!

well since she was the main character, it seemed likely Dani would end up as May Queen... the question is did she win the dance contest fair and square, or was it rigged to ensure she would win?

as soon as she arrives there, everything from her asking about the May Queens, looking at the photos, having a bed directly under a picture showing part of the rite, directly points to that

obviously they don't need to rig anything because in a movie if gods are worshipped, said gods are the director and writers. whatever the gods want to happen, will happen

Although they must do a lot of the rituals in other years, because otherwise there wouldn't be all of the photographs of May Queens

had a confused discussion about this with the ppl I saw it with immediately afterwards - as referenced upthread, it must be that they have May Queens every year (because why else all the photos), but the sacrifice stuff is only every 90 years?

^^^ otm

I thought they may have rigged it because they could tell from the screaming ritual that she needed a success. And she got it!! :) big smile!!

well, I mean... it's about if Dani wants to be they May Queen or they do

e they could tell from the screaming ritual that she needed a success.

doesn't the screaming ritual happen afterward?

which actually lines up with the cycle of life: youth until 18, on a quest until 36, pillars of the community until 54, ritual suicide at 72, and every 90 years they reset the cycle with sacrifices

That otm was for knowing there was a May Queen situation happening for Dani