[8.0/10] I have to admit that I’m a little mystified by Midsommar, albeit in a good way. There’s a decent amount that goes unexplained (or at least under explained) in the climax of the film. The pieces are there to put a good amount of it together, but the close of the film is still a bewildering, unnerving experience, as it should be under the circumstances. But if I had to pinpoint what Midsommar is trying to say, I would center it on two big ideas: empathy and emotion on the one hand and life and death on the other.
The former comes through in Dani’s relationship with her boyfriend Christian. From the moment we meet her, Dani is clearly going through something difficult and feels like she can’t lean on her long-term boyfriend for emotional support for fear of scaring him off. When she tries to express her frustration or grief or anything other than “I’m cool,” he either begs off or turns it back on her to make it seem like she’s the one with the issue. And as the film goes on, we see Christian evincing a deeper lack of empathy, acting nonplussed at horrific scenes, stealing his friend’s work, and feigning only fleeting concern when acquaintances go missing.
At times Midsommar lays some of this Bad Boyfriend material on a little thick (especially him forgetting her birthday and how long they’ve been dating, which feels like something out of a sitcom). But it works to draw a contrast between Christian on the one hand, and Pelle and his “family” on the other. While Christian pays desultory lip service to Dani’s feelings, Pelle sees her is attentive to her and responds to how she’s feeling in a given moment.
So does his whole enclave, the small Swedish community whose midsommar ritual our cast of newcomers is experiencing. In one scene, an elder describes their scripture as “emotional sheet music.” Their society is built on emotion as a free-flowing, communal thing, with the climactic scenes involving the adherents of his culture imitating the expressions of joy or pain or horror until it crescendos into one crowd-wide emotional wave.
For most of the film, Dani is still grieving without even fully realizing it, having this well of pain and mourning she’s been unable to express given how her prime emotional outlet constantly deflects and shuts her down. It’s not until the end of the film, when she firmly discards him, that she can fully express that grief she’s had bottled up for so long, with a catharsis and a rejection that gives her the first genuinely smile we see in the whole picture. Through this lens, Midsommar is ultimately a story of emotional expression, where open processing of one’s feelings is encouraged, snuffing out those expressions is punished, and the consequences of both can be severe.
The other big theme, and this one is admittedly fuzzier from my vantage point, is the cycle of life and death. We witness elders commit suicide at a given age, with it treated as a blessing and a choice, with the idea that their names will be passed on to children not yet born and their lives lived again. One of the movie’s strangest interludes involves a ritual centered around conception. And the climactic set piece and lingering undercurrent of horror upon which the whole movie rests is a ritualistic killing to banish away the dark spirits and invite happiness and prosperity to their community.
I’ll confess my inability to fully articulate what all of this means, but the biggest takeaway I have is this. Dani is laboring under an unspeakable tragedy, with the suicide and murder of the rest of her family, with no good emotional support to help her get through it. This community offers a welcome alternative to that, not only its emotional openness, but in its treatment of death as part of that liberating cycle of nature. Dani sees herself more and more a part of both nature and that community (as represented by her “flower volcano”, as my wife put it, in the closing sequence), and that view of death as something both spiritually freeing and not cause for grief is uniquely inviting to her.
But that’s the great thing about Midsommar. Even if you’re not inclined to grapple with emotional repression or cultural views on mortality, it works as pure slow-spun, unnerving horror. The film shares a vibe with past horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Get Out with our protagonist ensconced in a warm and welcoming atmosphere and community, with subtle hints along the margins that something is wrong here.
Frankly, some of the film’s best moments come when you have a vague sense that something is off, but can’t put your finger on what. The film does a good job of escalation, introducing peculiarities that can be written off as foreign cultural practices, until it becomes undeniable and terrifying how this is not just a different society’s ways and rituals but something darker and more sinister. For a film that is not only long, but also languid in its pacing, Midsommar is never boring, gradually bringing the simmering horror to a boil.
Still, the gradualness prompts a confession -- if you could somehow scrub away all the horror elements, I would totally stay in the Harga enclave. Part of the way the horror works is by making their commune seem so warm and inviting, to where you relate to Dani’s feeling so content and at home there.
Much of that owes to the cinematography and beautiful images that director Ari Aster and director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski put together. The location itself is gorgeous, full of sweeping greenery and eye-catching structures strewn about their little grove. It’s a film rich with color, as Dani’s Mayqueen getup exemplified. The look of handsomely-set tables and maypole dances embodies the warm communal feel of the place before things turn deadly, as does the way the Harga seem to be one organism, always moving and feeling in stereo. Aster and Pogorzelski frame the images beautifully, playing with symmetry, different depths of field, and close-ups to convey the grandeur and intimacy of even the most horrifying moments. And there’s even some superb impressionism, with wavy backgrounds to subtly convey the effect of the drugged tea the main characters imbibe.
But part of it is just the smiling, empathetic atmosphere created by the Harga. The film uses that sense to its advantage, by both wrapping the strangeness up in “Well, I guess it’s just their custom,” and by luring Dani and the audience in with the slightly unnerving, unfailing friendliness of the whole thing. So by the time it becomes clear this is a death cult and not just a culturally unfamiliar enclave, both the protagonist and the audience are too wrapped up in it to turn back.
That transformation and relatability rests on the shoulders of star Florence Pugh, who does fantastic work here. The shift from low-key naturalism to over the top emotional exhortations could be jarring, but feels right coming out of her. More to the point, much of the film requires her to be bottling up her emotions until they explode, which in the hands of a lesser actor, leave Dani feeling flat. Instead, Pugh conveys the layers to the character, the internal roiling that makes the choices made in the end feel organic to what the viewer hasn’t seen, but feels through her, until it becomes expressed with lethal consequences.
There’s a lot of weirdness and even opaqueness to Midsommar. That makes the film a little baffling and hard to get your hands around at times, even when its cards are on the table. But it also uses that uncertainty to its advantage, lending an unknowable atmosphere to the Harga and their rituals, and a greater unspoken terror when their practices are laid bare. I’d be lying if I told you that I fully understood Midsommar, but that only heightens, rather than detract from, its horror, its themes, and its final exorcising transformation.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-10-06T16:53:36Z
[8.0/10] I have to admit that I’m a little mystified by Midsommar, albeit in a good way. There’s a decent amount that goes unexplained (or at least under explained) in the climax of the film. The pieces are there to put a good amount of it together, but the close of the film is still a bewildering, unnerving experience, as it should be under the circumstances. But if I had to pinpoint what Midsommar is trying to say, I would center it on two big ideas: empathy and emotion on the one hand and life and death on the other.
The former comes through in Dani’s relationship with her boyfriend Christian. From the moment we meet her, Dani is clearly going through something difficult and feels like she can’t lean on her long-term boyfriend for emotional support for fear of scaring him off. When she tries to express her frustration or grief or anything other than “I’m cool,” he either begs off or turns it back on her to make it seem like she’s the one with the issue. And as the film goes on, we see Christian evincing a deeper lack of empathy, acting nonplussed at horrific scenes, stealing his friend’s work, and feigning only fleeting concern when acquaintances go missing.
At times Midsommar lays some of this Bad Boyfriend material on a little thick (especially him forgetting her birthday and how long they’ve been dating, which feels like something out of a sitcom). But it works to draw a contrast between Christian on the one hand, and Pelle and his “family” on the other. While Christian pays desultory lip service to Dani’s feelings, Pelle sees her is attentive to her and responds to how she’s feeling in a given moment.
So does his whole enclave, the small Swedish community whose midsommar ritual our cast of newcomers is experiencing. In one scene, an elder describes their scripture as “emotional sheet music.” Their society is built on emotion as a free-flowing, communal thing, with the climactic scenes involving the adherents of his culture imitating the expressions of joy or pain or horror until it crescendos into one crowd-wide emotional wave.
For most of the film, Dani is still grieving without even fully realizing it, having this well of pain and mourning she’s been unable to express given how her prime emotional outlet constantly deflects and shuts her down. It’s not until the end of the film, when she firmly discards him, that she can fully express that grief she’s had bottled up for so long, with a catharsis and a rejection that gives her the first genuinely smile we see in the whole picture. Through this lens, Midsommar is ultimately a story of emotional expression, where open processing of one’s feelings is encouraged, snuffing out those expressions is punished, and the consequences of both can be severe.
The other big theme, and this one is admittedly fuzzier from my vantage point, is the cycle of life and death. We witness elders commit suicide at a given age, with it treated as a blessing and a choice, with the idea that their names will be passed on to children not yet born and their lives lived again. One of the movie’s strangest interludes involves a ritual centered around conception. And the climactic set piece and lingering undercurrent of horror upon which the whole movie rests is a ritualistic killing to banish away the dark spirits and invite happiness and prosperity to their community.
I’ll confess my inability to fully articulate what all of this means, but the biggest takeaway I have is this. Dani is laboring under an unspeakable tragedy, with the suicide and murder of the rest of her family, with no good emotional support to help her get through it. This community offers a welcome alternative to that, not only its emotional openness, but in its treatment of death as part of that liberating cycle of nature. Dani sees herself more and more a part of both nature and that community (as represented by her “flower volcano”, as my wife put it, in the closing sequence), and that view of death as something both spiritually freeing and not cause for grief is uniquely inviting to her.
But that’s the great thing about Midsommar. Even if you’re not inclined to grapple with emotional repression or cultural views on mortality, it works as pure slow-spun, unnerving horror. The film shares a vibe with past horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Get Out with our protagonist ensconced in a warm and welcoming atmosphere and community, with subtle hints along the margins that something is wrong here.
Frankly, some of the film’s best moments come when you have a vague sense that something is off, but can’t put your finger on what. The film does a good job of escalation, introducing peculiarities that can be written off as foreign cultural practices, until it becomes undeniable and terrifying how this is not just a different society’s ways and rituals but something darker and more sinister. For a film that is not only long, but also languid in its pacing, Midsommar is never boring, gradually bringing the simmering horror to a boil.
Still, the gradualness prompts a confession -- if you could somehow scrub away all the horror elements, I would totally stay in the Harga enclave. Part of the way the horror works is by making their commune seem so warm and inviting, to where you relate to Dani’s feeling so content and at home there.
Much of that owes to the cinematography and beautiful images that director Ari Aster and director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski put together. The location itself is gorgeous, full of sweeping greenery and eye-catching structures strewn about their little grove. It’s a film rich with color, as Dani’s Mayqueen getup exemplified. The look of handsomely-set tables and maypole dances embodies the warm communal feel of the place before things turn deadly, as does the way the Harga seem to be one organism, always moving and feeling in stereo. Aster and Pogorzelski frame the images beautifully, playing with symmetry, different depths of field, and close-ups to convey the grandeur and intimacy of even the most horrifying moments. And there’s even some superb impressionism, with wavy backgrounds to subtly convey the effect of the drugged tea the main characters imbibe.
But part of it is just the smiling, empathetic atmosphere created by the Harga. The film uses that sense to its advantage, by both wrapping the strangeness up in “Well, I guess it’s just their custom,” and by luring Dani and the audience in with the slightly unnerving, unfailing friendliness of the whole thing. So by the time it becomes clear this is a death cult and not just a culturally unfamiliar enclave, both the protagonist and the audience are too wrapped up in it to turn back.
That transformation and relatability rests on the shoulders of star Florence Pugh, who does fantastic work here. The shift from low-key naturalism to over the top emotional exhortations could be jarring, but feels right coming out of her. More to the point, much of the film requires her to be bottling up her emotions until they explode, which in the hands of a lesser actor, leave Dani feeling flat. Instead, Pugh conveys the layers to the character, the internal roiling that makes the choices made in the end feel organic to what the viewer hasn’t seen, but feels through her, until it becomes expressed with lethal consequences.
There’s a lot of weirdness and even opaqueness to Midsommar. That makes the film a little baffling and hard to get your hands around at times, even when its cards are on the table. But it also uses that uncertainty to its advantage, lending an unknowable atmosphere to the Harga and their rituals, and a greater unspoken terror when their practices are laid bare. I’d be lying if I told you that I fully understood Midsommar, but that only heightens, rather than detract from, its horror, its themes, and its final exorcising transformation.