Midsommar Film Review: A 7-Stage Trip
Hereditary was a polarising film from the writer director Ari-Aster, which is why I was happy to note that Midsommar had inherited its obscurity, doubling down on the disorientating nature of grief, alienation and ritualistic madness. Hurrah!
So, what’s it about?
The beginning of the film sees Dani (Florence Pugh) struggling with a slowly fragmenting relationship with her boyfriend of four years, Christian (Jack Reynor). The tragic death of her sister and parents leaves her bereft, putting yet more pressure on the uneasy pair. Christian is neglectful, half-heartedly supportive and cagey and it gradually transpires that he’d made covert plans to go to Sweden with his academic roommates without telling Dani, and when the invitation is awkwardly extended to her, she awkwardly accepts. It’s all very awkward.
The group, consisting of Dani, Christian, student anthropologist Josh (played by William Jackson) and jester of the pack, Mark (Will Poulter), all travel back to their friend Pelle’s (Villhelm Blongren) rural Swedish commune home. On the way, they group stop to greet Pelle’s friends and take some mushrooms, before re-embarking on their journey to the commune. At once vibrant, innocent, welcoming and claustrophobically sinister, the group are initiated into village life, and its intense, outré rituals.
Sounds a bit weird…
It definitely was, and perhaps half an hour too long.
What was your interpretation of the movie?
Spoilers. Take it on face value, and you can say that the film is a decent movie about a fragmented group of people and the worst road trip to Sweden ever, replete with psychotropic plant juices, pan-flutes and ominous traditions. Come for the folksy horror vibes, stay for the stunning cinematography by Pawel Pogorzelski, who masterfully captures the creeping vines of unease in an otherwise colour-drenched Eden and Bobby Krlic’s expertly-crafted score.
But...
My interpretation is that once Dani takes the mushrooms, we are taken on a psilocybin journey that covers the landscape of her grief. Dani is shaken by the shock of the ritualistic suicides of an elderly couple, which is contrasted against the loss of her parents. The community watch the deaths in stasis, like neurons standing on end, and tellingly, their collective emotion throughout the film tend to mirror Dani’s, hands in the hair in celebration or wailing in anguish, helping her navigate the terrain of her hallucination while giving her increments of closure.
Her fears of abandonment manifest itself in two main ways throughout the film. Firstly, vehicles represent a departure away from her. She dreams the group drive away from the commune, leaving her behind. She despairs that a couple they’d befriended, and who came to the commune with them, had been separated in their keenness to leave – the boyfriend had travelled ahead in the car first and had left a message for his girlfriend to join him after. “Why would he leave her behind?” Dani frustratedly asks, her desperation to know brushed off by her own boyfriend, whose mounting disinterest in her is palpable. This is the second branch of her fear of abandonment: the slow-splintering of her relationship with Christian is ever-present, as she watches his interest in a girl at the commune manifest itself in him eventually having sex with her in a roomful of women. And as every woman in the room rocks and sways in ecstasy, it could be perceived that what she fears the most is not the girl he’s copulating with, but the essence of female sexuality and threat of his interest in it outside of their relationship.
But the girls at the commune also become sisters to the broken-hearted Dani, dancing with her, consoling her, embracing her – they become ideal forms of sisterhood, despite the crawling promise of bloodshed underneath. Within their circle and construct of sisterly solidarity, she is insulated from the horrors of the village, much like the rarely-featured disfigured child who hides in the darkness, and as the product of incest, symbolically carries a heavy burden of shame, perhaps much like Dani as the sole surviving member of her family. As Dani blossoms into a new iteration of herself, covered in flowers, the child is also plucked out of the shadows and placed in the light. The ritual of the seven stages of grief just had to be executed for her to arrive at that point.
You could be wrong though…
I could definitely be wrong though.
And what was up with Christian wearing a bear when he was burnt to death?
Yeah, weird, right? No fucking idea.
