Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

I think the predictability was part of the point. The plot is telegraphed throughout, even from the opening scene, so hard the fun is being a few steps in front of the characters in a 'oh no don't go down in the basement' sort of way. Read a good article the other day about the use of yellow in this film to connote death and danger

Catching this on DVD soon. After reading this Esquire article, will be freeze framing periodically. Haven't seen anyone mention it itt, so maybe some'll check the movie again.

I noticed a couple things like that but they’re subtle enough they’re overwhelmed in a first viewing by all the goings-on!

I noticed faces etc. here and there - given the hallucinogenic influence on the film that's not surprising. But I would guess that it, like Hereditary, rewards multiple viewings. Still a month for DVD here I think?

I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but to me the events on the ending only make sense symbolically. The fire represents the breakup and the villagers reactions represent the internal turmoil going on in Dani's head. Then the smile comes after the realization that it she finally feels free and that it was clearly all for the best. It symbolized her letting go.

After all, Aster has been saying over and over that this is a breakup movie, yet at no point is there an actual break up scene, so the fire must be it.

It's interesting to think about, but I don't think my reading needs a symbolic interpretation of the fire or the villagers' reactions. The movie is definitely about Dani navigating her breakup, but I don't think it's symbolic of her letting go--I think it's literally her getting catharsis from burning her ex in a bear suit in a pyramid.

she also lost her entire family in a single shocking violent act
she has a lot going on!

I'm fine with taking it at face value. Though I can understand the impulse to try to do that when faced with some of the more surreal moments, I personally don't feel like the story is too fantastical to withstand a literal interpretation -- and definitely not compared to other horror movies. The experience the creators convey is the same whether the audience takes it that way or not, I think. I've seen it twice, both versions, and I still don't really know if I could explain why the final scene feels so right. I don't know if I get it intellectually, but I "get" it on an emotional level if that makes any sense.

so is anyone going as May Queen + Bearsuit for Halloween

I went as the hippie religious nut from Us

i saw three separate bear-dani combos on various social media this weekend

was specifically thinking of her big mountain-o-flowers outfit at the end but it's too late for me and my wife to pull it off

that was the exact outfit i saw 3x

haha
great minds think alike :)

I would absolutely love to do that, but I've really nowhere to go for Halloween. Maybe no one needs to know that and I can just float around on the underground

You can be the May Queen but I'll be the strapping Swedish chap who wins her affections

You will be the bear

Or maybe we can dress as the old pair who off themselves. Gore effects and mallet optional

All we need is matching blue pyjamas

:O

We even have goblets!

I know a couple who did the Bear/Flowers dual costume, and saw a bonus photo of a friend who dressed her cat and dog up as flower pile + bear. Luckily it will be cold on Halloween so the costumes won't be unbearably hot (heh).

Sadly another friend of mine saw the movie and she hated it! She said Dani was selfish and annoying.

Hot take there, lol

more like an icy cold take

yikes

I mean the argument with douche boyfriend about him not telling her about Sweden shoulda been enough to put her in the "emotionally manipulated" category but hmm, some people think it's her fault apparently. Ok.

the only thing she really lacks is the self-confidence to assert her needs, but after seeing how her concerns are trivialized from the _very start_ by her dick boyfriend, it seems like more a function of her youth and clinging to the one guy who is a constant after tragedy strikes

if her family hadn't died at the very beginning, she might have dumped his ass by the time the rest of the movie took place! instead she's clinging to the dude who was like "oh, you're sister is nuts and you can't keep responding to her. everything's probably fine"

Yeah I didn't really know how to respond so I just dropped it.

like many o_O comments, it reveals the commenter's bias rather than adding anything interesting to the discussion (calling someone annoying is always like that too)

finally got around to this. i suppose the first line of commentary should be complimentary as i do think it's a good film (if not nearly as good as Hereditary) so the stand-outs in my mind are Florence Pugh (who is fantastic) and the outrageously good Haxan Cloak soundtrack. Aster is a great stylist and has the chops to be a great filmmaker and this movie shows it; everything - and there's a lot! - is very well executed and captured. It is also remarkably funny throughout!

My main issues are that as a horror movie it is outrageously bone stupid and plays its cards wildly and openly to the point of nearly killing the hook... "what's there to say? it's a bear," indeed. The characters are all one-dimensional and uniformly moronic in their reactions. I'd be less frustrated by that if it weren't for Aster's sadistic streak, not so much for his actors (though you can make that argument too) as toward the audience. He's so relentlessly manipulative and painfully creepy it gets under my skin.

like i bet i would catch a lot of nuances and interesting things on a second viewing but i don't need the agita frankly.

On what grounds would one allege he's sadistic to actors? Cause he gets them to play traumatized? Actors live for that shit.

My opinion on Astor has coalesced to - so-so and quite lazy writer, brilliant enough director and ideas man that that doesn't really matter.

I just read that Astor came to this movie as a work-for-hire project!

My main issues are that as a horror movie it is outrageously bone stupid and plays its cards wildly and openly to the point of nearly killing the hook... "what's there to say? it's a bear," indeed. The characters are all one-dimensional and uniformly moronic in their reactions. I'd be less frustrated by that if it weren't for Aster's sadistic streak, not so much for his actors (though you can make that argument too) as toward the audience. He's so relentlessly manipulative and painfully creepy it gets under my skin.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, November 27, 2019 12:33 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

totally agree with all of this but also think he's a shitty tryhard director

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2019/12/28/detail/midsommar-directors-cut
$15 for a screening of the director's cut (a half hour more? what would you add?) and a talkback with aster.

by the majority of accounts the Director's Cut adds nothing essential

more closeups of smashed faces?

the humanist in me is repulsed by that
but the Cannibal Corpse in me is excited

I didn’t notice anything different when I watched the longer cut. I had to look up what was added.

I preferred the non-director's cut. The extended scenes messed with the pacing of the movie imho.

I keep wanting to respond to the couple of negative posts before the bump, but honestly I don't even see how some of that criticism can be argued against as it seems like kind of a personal thing (whether an artist is "creepy" and/or "manipulative", let alone "tryhard"). Still one of the more unique, interesting, and gripping films I've seen recently (I don't see many, tbh), and I'm glad to see Pugh's name on some year end and awards nomination lists.

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.

Showed this to a friend going through the end of a six year relationship and this was hugely otm for her.

Yeah this was not very scary or even disturbing but it was enormously cathartic in its depiction of the primal violence of grief and busted relationships. The group scream session was very moving to me!

It scared and disturbed the shit out of me!

I mean, also very funny in the “oh he went to do something” moments with screaming in the distant background

The director's cut added a cool scene with another Horga ritual at a lake followed by an important and engaging fight between Dani and Christian. It also added in the funniest line in the movie (the JSTOR bit). But I think it really overemphasized how shitty Christian was to the point that he went from a typical self-involved dick to a total villain. I felt that kind of detracted from the ending.

Just saw the movie recently so missed the whole debate upthread. Sorry if I say things that have already been said.

I spent the whole movie wondering how the tragedy she experienced at the beginning was going to link up and be relevant by the end. I kept thinking: why murder-suicide? Why the sister killing the parents? Why can't it just be any loss, why does it have to be this? And then everything fell into place in a perfect, satisfying way when I saw her smile.

Because it's not just about catharsis, or shared screaming/pain, though both of those things are part of it. It's also that at the beginning of the movie, Dani lives in a world where people simply don't accept that things like that happen. That's why Christian is so dismissive of her worries, it's why he and his friends don't freak out even as people start disappearing around them - because in their reality, there's no room for things like what happened to Dani. So Dani is utterly alone, and she has no way to think about what happened to her, or process it, or start to move on. And I think that's an accurate depiction of the way people react to something that horrific; if it only happens to Other People, that means that someone it does happen to becomes unreachably Other.

Thus the appeal of the cult; this is a place where this exact kind of thing does happen, and (as I think someone said upthread) it's ritualized and normalized. Sure, they make it happen. But that can have an appeal in itself; when you know that horrific things happen, making them happen can be a way of maintaining some kind of control.

So it makes perfect sense for Dani to end by feeling at home in the cult; she finally lives in a culture that has a context for what's happened to her, that can give her a way to make sense of something senseless. That doesn't mean it's a good thing. It would obviously be better if she could get that sense of shared catharsis/context for trauma from something other than a creepy murder cult that's manipulating her in order to recruit her as breeding stock. But I think the movie gets at something real about trauma and the way it opens people up to things like cults (or religions, or fandoms, or what have you), and I think it was beautifully done.

yes

good take!