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osprey_archerI waffled about seeing Midsommar, because I’m a wimp about scary movies, but I love Florence Pugh and I love stories about cults, and the Kan-Kan was showing it on the big screen, so who was I to resist? So I dragged along my friend Becky and it blew out tiny minds so hard that we stood in the parking lot for half an hour discussing the movie, even though the movie ended at 11:30 and we both had work the next day.
Florence Pugh plays Dani, a psychology grad student grief stricken in the aftermath of a family tragedy. Her boyfriend Christian is her only remaining source of support, so she clings to him even though he’s barely emotionally present in the relationship. He was thinking about breaking up with Dani when the tragedy struck, and what kind of asshole breaks up right after a tragedy? The kind of asshole who realizes that a clean break might be kinder than remaining in the relationship in a completely half-hearted way, which is what Christian does.
Like Christian, Christian’s friends offer Dani half-hearted support, while really wishing she would just go away. (Aster’s evocation of modern-day conflict-averse we-all-speak-therapy-but-we-don’t-actually-care social dynamics are pitch perfect and pitch black.) The one exception is Pelle, a Swedish student who always treats Dani with genuine understated warmth.
Pelle grew up on an isolated commune in Sweden, and he invites the whole gang to visit for the annual Midsommar celebrations. As Christian and his friends are all anthropology students, they jump at the chance, and soon they arrive in a bucolic village full of people in soft white clothes frolicking in the endless midsummer sun. (Indeed, in the background of many of the shots, you see the villagers clasping hands, dancing in circles, etc., an eerie yet attractive density of ritual.)
I spent a lot of the movie thinking, “This would be a fantastic place to live if it weren’t for, you know, the human sacrifice.” Which is a fascinating reaction, because, well, it isn’t really! Would I really want to live my entire life in a dormitory that is basically an open barn with beds spaced along the sides? Where all the meals are taken communally, and you eat exactly what everyone else eats, and there are no other options if you’re just not feeling the elderflower cordial or whatever it is they’re drinking? No! No I would not!
And yet for the space of the movie, it feels attractive. It’s the contrast from the coldness of Christian, who can only awkwardly pat Dani as she screams and cries after learning that her sister just killed herself and their parents. He’s enacting support like a marionette and wishing it were over. Later on, when Dani is distressed, she always stumbles off to sob alone.
“Do you feel held by him?” Pelle asks Dani, speaking of Christian, and although she never exactly answers, it’s clear the answer is no. But here, the community would hold her. The community does hold her. Late in the movie, Dani discovers Christian having ritual sex with another girl, and she stumbles away from the scene screaming and crying - and all the other girls in the community gather around her, holding her, screaming and crying along with her, entering into her pain where Christian only ever held her at arm’s length.
And this is the emotional logic behind Dani’s choice, not long after, to let Christian be burned alive as a human sacrifice. Awful as he is, no one would say that he deserved this. (Certainly none of the other grad students deserved their sometimes gruesome fates!) And yet at the end Dani smiles, bright and radiant, in the grip of a terrible catharsis.
Florence Pugh plays Dani, a psychology grad student grief stricken in the aftermath of a family tragedy. Her boyfriend Christian is her only remaining source of support, so she clings to him even though he’s barely emotionally present in the relationship. He was thinking about breaking up with Dani when the tragedy struck, and what kind of asshole breaks up right after a tragedy? The kind of asshole who realizes that a clean break might be kinder than remaining in the relationship in a completely half-hearted way, which is what Christian does.
Like Christian, Christian’s friends offer Dani half-hearted support, while really wishing she would just go away. (Aster’s evocation of modern-day conflict-averse we-all-speak-therapy-but-we-don’t-actually-care social dynamics are pitch perfect and pitch black.) The one exception is Pelle, a Swedish student who always treats Dani with genuine understated warmth.
Pelle grew up on an isolated commune in Sweden, and he invites the whole gang to visit for the annual Midsommar celebrations. As Christian and his friends are all anthropology students, they jump at the chance, and soon they arrive in a bucolic village full of people in soft white clothes frolicking in the endless midsummer sun. (Indeed, in the background of many of the shots, you see the villagers clasping hands, dancing in circles, etc., an eerie yet attractive density of ritual.)
I spent a lot of the movie thinking, “This would be a fantastic place to live if it weren’t for, you know, the human sacrifice.” Which is a fascinating reaction, because, well, it isn’t really! Would I really want to live my entire life in a dormitory that is basically an open barn with beds spaced along the sides? Where all the meals are taken communally, and you eat exactly what everyone else eats, and there are no other options if you’re just not feeling the elderflower cordial or whatever it is they’re drinking? No! No I would not!
And yet for the space of the movie, it feels attractive. It’s the contrast from the coldness of Christian, who can only awkwardly pat Dani as she screams and cries after learning that her sister just killed herself and their parents. He’s enacting support like a marionette and wishing it were over. Later on, when Dani is distressed, she always stumbles off to sob alone.
“Do you feel held by him?” Pelle asks Dani, speaking of Christian, and although she never exactly answers, it’s clear the answer is no. But here, the community would hold her. The community does hold her. Late in the movie, Dani discovers Christian having ritual sex with another girl, and she stumbles away from the scene screaming and crying - and all the other girls in the community gather around her, holding her, screaming and crying along with her, entering into her pain where Christian only ever held her at arm’s length.
And this is the emotional logic behind Dani’s choice, not long after, to let Christian be burned alive as a human sacrifice. Awful as he is, no one would say that he deserved this. (Certainly none of the other grad students deserved their sometimes gruesome fates!) And yet at the end Dani smiles, bright and radiant, in the grip of a terrible catharsis.
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Date: 2023-07-08 02:10 pm (UTC)I'm nodding my head at your musings on whether you'd truly like to live there. When you're a guest in a place, it's so hard to think about what actual life in a place would really be like--even more so when it's a whole nother culture. For Dani, everyone holding her and screaming and crying along must have felt so much more supportive and real... but if you're in the community--if this is "what we do" for a woman in distress--then actually it's a routinized cultural response. Maybe a better one for Dani! Some cultural styles are more appealing than others, depending on who you are. But it's culturally determined, not personally determined (or at least, that's what I'm guessing from the fact that this is a commune that has pretty set ideas on how things are done). If you lived there all your life, and you saw the community of women crying and screaming and holding that asshole Freya, who you *know* is just a spoiled brat who's frustrated because Olaf chose Ingrid as his dance partner instead of her, then maybe you roll your eyes at the solidarity. And when you've seen them do that for everyone, maybe it means less when they do it for you. ...Or maybe not! But certainly Dani's not got a clear view on it.
But I'm really curious on where your and Becky's thoughts went, when you were talking in the parking lot.