’Midsommar’ is quite definitely one of the best films of the year so far, with powerful visuals and an effective soundtrack. You can probably tell just by checking out some of the stills whether its a film for you, which is normally a goos sign.There’s been plenty of proper reviews of it. But this isn’t one of them, it’s more a counter to the way some people have read it.
It is very definitely, in the words of director Ari Aster, "a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film." Clearly, everything we see is through both the distorting lens of Dani’s grief and suppressed anger at her so-called boyfriend Christian. So, for example, his cheating on her doesn’t involve something so tawdry as sneaking upstairs with someone at a party, it becomes the centrepiece of a grand pagan ritual. But is it, as some maintain, a revenge fantasy?
Compare this film to perhaps the greatest revenge fantasy of them all, Brecht and Weill’s ‘Pirate Jenny’ (1928). (In the unlikely event you don’t know it, you can catch it here.) The ‘gentlemen’ who populate the song are effectively Grosz-like caricatures, puffed-up bigots and bullies, and the point of the thing is that like Jenny we can exult in them getting their comeuppance. They’re coconuts placed to be knocked off their perches, complete with grimacing cartoon faces.
Now Christian, there is no doubt, is a thoroughly slappable oaf. But neither is he an out-and-out jerk. In fact he’s mostly characterised as being characterless, hopeless rather than malevolent. He’s frequently swayed by Mark’s peer pressure to break up with Dani, then hopelessly unable to go through with it when alone with her. (Mark is in fact much more of a self-serving jerk than Christian.) He can’t even think what to write his thesis on, pathetically copying Josh.
And this is reflected in the different ways the Harga treat them. Dani is crowned the May Queen, given the illusion of agency. Whereas Christian is simply told what he must do. There’s little indication that he’s even attracted to the red-haired Horga girl he gets paired up with, it’s yet another thing in life he goes along with. And of course, ultimately he’s rendered paralysed, the terminus of useless lumpness.
And speaking of Mark…
The deaths of both Mark and Josh are punishments for having transgressed village rules, not for the way they’ve treated Dani. In fact Josh has little interaction with her. While the English couple, Simon and Connie, are about the closest anyone in the film gets to sane and well-balanced. They have the strongest reaction against the death ritual, and Connie point-blank refuses to countenance that her other half would have left without her. (Correctly, as things turn out.) Arguably they’re a counter-example to Danni and Christian’s non-relationship, but then in a revenge fantasy shouldn’t that virtue lead to them living? (Spoiler – they don’t.)
And speaking of the Harga…
More widely, for a fever dream going on in Dani’s drugged-up head the world of the Harga is remarkably thought-through and consistent. They need to draw in fresh blood to avoid inbreeding, so they need celebrations they can invite people to. Reach a certain age and suicide’s expected of you, a custom presumably dating back to times when resources were more scarce. They literally write their plans and customs on their walls. (Albeit in runes and pictograms.) Extending Chekhov’s rules, if they have a bear early on in the film you can bet that will become relevant later. Effectively, they live in a kind of cyclic time, where what they’re going to do is already ordained.
And remember the first Horga we meet is the ingratiatingly creepy Pelle, who intrusively brings up Dani’s bereavement and repeatedly insists he knows how this feels. He’s flirty-fishing fresh stock, persistently bringing up Christian’s multiple failings and suggesting he’s the antithesis of them. (His parents dying “in a fire” is a rare logical lapse. The inference is they’re sacrificed in the ritual, but that’s only supposed to happen every Ninety years. My guess would be the original line had them dying “in a fall”, but that was thought too obvious.)
There’s also a scene where he claims to have gone out with Connie before Simon, and she has to remind him they just went somewhere together, not the usual definition of “going out”. (Some have assumed Pelle arranged for the deaths of Dani’s family, though there’s nothing within the film to support this and it doesn’t need to be true. His predation could easily start after having heard of her bereavement.)
When made the May Queen Dani is given the power to decide whether Christian lives or dies. But this crucial moment is elided over., the film cuts ahead. Quite unlike, say, the triumphalist roar of “kill them now” in ‘Pirate Jenny’. Why should this be?
Pretty much everything that happens is their manipulating both her and Christian into their respective positions. Talking about this film while sidelining the Harga’s schemes would be a bit like talking about ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ while skipping Satanism. The May Dance which she ‘wins’ is clearly as much a fix as their putting temptation Christian’s way. The May Queen ‘dress’ she wears is as confining as Christian’s bear suit. That they give her the illusion of agency is important, but it’s no agency.
It’s thematically similar to ‘Kill List’, particularly in the final scenes. In both the lead character’s ‘emotional journey’, that supposed staple hacks learn in screenwriting class, is turned into something malevolent - a trail of breadcrumbs laid for them to innocently follow. The Harga don’t represent the surrender to grief or revenge. They are not an externalisation of Dani’s pent-up anger against Christian. Instead they want something specific from each of them. With Christian all they want is his extra-territorial sperm, after which he becomes superfluous. With Dani this is more complicated.
We can infer this from how they behave. Though there’s elders there’s no really a malevolent cult leader, announcing how it’s all going to plan, as there would in a regular horror film. They’re often filmed from above, forming shapes as distinct as their runes, as choreographed as any Stalin May Day parade. The women frequently mimic and echo Dani’s feelings, like a Swedish version of a Greek chorus. It’s important to note this mimicry isn’t taunting. In the death ritual, while the old man doesn’t die immediately the crowd copy his cries of pain. They’re there to honour his sacrifice, this is a a kind of sharing.
The film’s written so you’re constantly able to read it both ways up, as a psychodrama Dani’s having over the trauma of break-up, and as a horror of cult entrapment. But the bleakness of the film is that neither way up works for Dani. In the earlier scenes she frequently retreats into a small room (often the smallest room), both isolated and self-isolating in her inexpressible grief. The implication is that, in our individualised society, them’s the breaks – emotions have become privatised. But life with the Harga is the opposite extreme, socialisation to the point where there’s no individual left - you simply belong. It’s locking yourself in the bathroom or being sewn into the bear suit.
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