Written & Directed by Ari Aster
Starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Vilhelm Blomgren
Released 2019
After a horrendous family tragedy, sorrowful Dani accepts an invitation to rural Sweden to experience a fabled mid-summer festival. Along for the ride, her self-interested boyfriend Christian and his two schoolmates, all who entrust and are lead by their Swedish friend Pelle to showcase his hometown community and customs. Although things seem to be paradisal upon arriving, once the festivities commence, our beloved Dani finds herself not just an observer, but a participant of bizarre and inescapable events.
STORY
This is a narrative that creates such contradicting feelings as a viewer. There’s an incredible amount of terror all throughout the timeline, quite literally since the start of the film. However, it flirts with an underlying theme of discovery and empowerment for our protagonist Dani. Though her journey is completely traumatic, what we would otherwise consider “villains” or “monsters” in this world, who undeniably are directly contributing to Dani’s agony as well, they’re simultaneously a loving and inviting incendiary who celebrate her new essence. This ironically redirects the attention to another brute, and our true antagonist, Christian. This alchemizes our first reaction of this commune from repulsing to applauding.
Refocusing our attention on said unsound, our immediate impression to this culture might be deemed a bit close-minded. The rituals that take place are nothing short of gruesome and inescapable nightmares, yet there’s nothing inherently malicious or conniving about the people. They take their traditions immensely seriously, and all are welcome to participate, though not all who arrive will be departing; the environment does lead to our characters demise, but their personal unscrupulousness could be argued as the justification. The intelligence is exhibited once Dani has achieved a high status among the commune as the new May Queen, and is finally vindicated by watching her unrealized foes suffer horrendous fates. It was a highly creative way for the audience to celebrate these deaths and to solemnize Dani’s new found freedom. She needed to experience this, she needed to be there, otherwise she could have been stuck in this manipulative cycle forever. Ari Aster has such a brilliant way of storytelling with an ability to force us into twisted spaces where our subconscious is soaked in psychosis, and then given a soft, blood stained kiss on the forehead.
IMAGERY & PRODUCTION
Production design was by Henrik Svensson (Sick of Myself; The Circle) and Director of Photography was award winning Pawel Pogorzelski (Hereditary; Beau is Afraid). This film is one of my ultimate favorites cinematically. The style of the world, character design, the composition, set ups and transitions, were all incredibly pulchritudinous that curated an enchanted element to the horror. Each scene presented surrealism on the verge of delirium, and an eldritch charm in every corner. This was by no means your average “scary” scenario. Most often, we are placed in some dilapidated farm house that clearly has sinister beings occupying the very walls of the establishment, out in the middle of absolute nowhere and nothing, and every single aspect about it screams “You will be murdered if you come here!” Midsommar instead invites you with bright colors and sunshine, wide open spaces and smiling faces abound, a bounty of rich food and strong wine, fellowship through dance and song…and THEN you’re murdered.
The now iconic costume design was done by Andrea Flesch (Colette; Open Grave) creating the infamous sacrificial bear suit and May Queen flower dress, or as I like to say the ultimate revenge outfit. It took five people one month to fully construct Pugh’s finale ensemble, totaling a massive 10,000 flowers head to toe. Needless to say, that amount of weight on someone is understandably quite heavy, so they would hide a chair inside of it for Pugh to sit on in between takes! Although originally Flesch wanted to use real flowers, because of the amount of time to make the dress, it was simply impossible. Instead, her and her team used silk flowers, an alternative that I couldn’t even discern was faux. The bear suit as well took weeks to make as it required the help of a Hungarian prosthetics team. So much work and detail went into not only these memorable pieces, but every last character, lead, supporting, and background, bar none. Tremendous work by the SFX makeup and prosthetics team as well, fabricating such convincing and uncanny deaths in the most imaginative ways. The “butterfly” display in particular was undoubtably one of the most elegantly harrowing mutilations I’ve seen in cinema.
PERFORMANCE
Florence Pugh (Dani) has easily become one of my favorite actors. Her performance in any role she’s given captures such a uniqueness to what would arguably be considered “simple” characters, respectfully. For instance, I can imagine directors creating such freedom and space within these persona’s for Pugh to orchestrate her own depth within them, letting her take the reigns of how she pleases. She’s a genius of an artist and I truly enjoy watching the complexities she materializes. This particular role of hers took me on such an emotional ride, from heartbreak and disappointment to sympathy and delight. From the very beginning of meeting her, you can observe her self deprecating, people pleasing desire for her partner, who is very obviously a manipulating prick. Pugh is extremely convincing in her portrayal of such a person, to the point of instigating my own frustration with how forgiving she is of her co-star, Jack Reynor, the emotionally self-serving boyfriend “Christian.” Reynor truthfully executed this asshole of a partner quite uniquely and I would say more maliciously than overt abusers. His pointed attacks are always done with such subtlety, almost as a phantom passing you, creating this uncertainty from his victims of his tactics; they feel the sting yet they can’t quite place where it is coming from. I hated him, so bravo!
The other musketeers were made of a mixture of characters, which was also very refreshing to see the posse not just be a horrendous copy and paste of the worst of our antagonist personified as 3 other characters. Our group included William Jackson Harper (Josh), Will Poulter (Mark), and Vilhelm Blomgren (Pelle). Each actor seemed to take their parts on independent paths, as if they all shared the main character role. They didn’t feel empty or just a filler spot, and I observed each of their existence in this realm as a collective of friends as well as separate people who all had their own agendas. Harper was the more logical one of the group, Poulter was the shallow idiot, and Blomgren was our great catalyst who truly changed the course of everyones life. The rest of the cast did a phenomenal job as well at illustrating the nuances and complexities of this beautiful and ancient ritual, that is also thoroughly brutal, and the severe mind-fuck of witnessing several people tortured and murdered, both willing and unwilling. The indigenous Swedish attendees were exceedingly haunting in their very breath, yet sustained such a high level of sacredness that you had to revere. The other invited guests were all mostly terrified understandably, and as an audience there was this conflicting cognizance of empathy for both sides of perspective and practice. That is where this film shows off its psychological intellect. A very well put together cast indeed.
What Does it Mean?
I took away a few possible messages from this film. One was very simply that no matter what you are going through as an individual, there are things bigger and older than us that have been set in motion for thousands of years, and it’s force can not be stopped nor is it biased on who it influences. We are at the whim of ancient practices that may transform us in inconceivable, though necessary, ways. The theme of “bad boyfriend dies grisly death” is, from an audience point of view, excusable. Along with that, “degrading friend everyone hates is slaughtered” also a favorable trope. Of course we love our protagonist becoming said “hero” of the story, reigning queen of Midsommar, and watching her beloved burst into flames from his betrayals; all appropriate. However, there are definitely a few deaths that might not be so warranted or at least equates unfairly to their downfalls. A mans eagerness to learn cultural secrets, though he was warned already not to temper with certain aspects, ultimately his curiosity, perhaps coupled with a bit of entitlement, lead to a vicious ending. Additionally, the seemingly innocent couple who were brought as mere guests by an old friend, one that did carry certain notes of malice I will admit, were killed quite surprisingly and without an obvious reason besides tradition, or their host had this intention for them the whole time for their own personal reasons. Needless to say, the Swedish inhabitants of this commune who gladly sacrificed themselves didn’t really leave us any room to decide the rationality; I suppose if one wants to give their life, who are we to say that’s nonsensical?
Another, feasibly abstract, meaning to this cultural emersion would be the importance of community during grief. Dani had been overcame with trauma and misery, all while trying to pacify these feelings for the curtesy of her partner, and his dispassionate companions. In fact, her entire purpose for going was through this weird guilt attached obligation from Christian, and she’s immediately plummeted into a society that takes the rules of the world by it own archaic definitions. One of my favorite moments is when Dani witnesses Christians perfidy in real time, and is then surrounded by a group of women who runs to her side, holds her, encourages her to cry and then cries and yells with her. That expression of communal backing as well as the powerful imagery of women embracing each other and emphatically taking on each others pain, binding them in their femininity and understanding of heartbreak, it was one of the most potent scenes that broke open an entirely new outlook on why Dani is there, and how she will never be the same in all the best ways. Weirdly, she needed this experience.
Midsommar is a fantastic piece of brilliance that teaches its viewers the importance of traditions and rituals in order for true transformation. If you aren’t too intolerable of gore, I would suggest to give this a watch!