The Collapse of Human Interaction
In Midsommar, Ari Aster injures his character with horrific trauma. It echoes through the rest of the film once again. Christian and his girlfriend Dani nearly broke up during their four years together. Despite Dani having trouble with disturbed siblings, it caused a tragic death in the family. As a result, she locks Christian into a forced relationship. Their friends push them to self-healing.
When Christian and his friends Josh and Mark prepare to visit Sweden because their friend Pelle is throwing a rare festival, it’s not an obligation. He attempts to invite Dani over, interrupting the boys’ trip vibe they’re referring to it. With Dani’s psychological state making her resilient, she assembles every human interaction layered on the verge of collapse. For the moment, Christian tries to be supportive and accommodating.
However, he is disingenuous but egotistical; even small gatherings make the audience squirm with social discomfort. Dani’s constant separation and solitude are the physical isolation of Hårga, the site of a summer solstice ceremony that only occurs every 90 years. On the way, Aster’s camera rotates to a reverse angle. It takes us to a world turned upside down when Christian and his friends travel to a remote farming community in Sweden.
The Forest
A beautiful and quiet village in the middle of a forest may not seem so ordinary. Its closeness to the cycles and nature of life, and the inhabitants cannot express a rejection of traditional western beliefs. An extraordinary and haunting experience became Aster’s second convincing film. Like his debut with Hereditary, Midsommar draws on dozens of bloody horror motifs and sources.
It’s neatly inspired. What Aster begins as a fascinating anthropological investigation unravels into a pagan nightmare of folk horror. Nature worship, sacrifice, sexual charm, psychedelia, and the midnight sun each play a prominent role in the following nine-day festival. Otherwise, Aster also uses a two-pronged arrangement. It invokes anxiety about the remote and their community’s relationship with the wilderness.
While presenting the characters, the interpersonal drama underscores each situation. While it is potentially annoying in the film, Aster prefers to limit his audience to places we don’t understand. He scares us with uncertainty about what will happen next. By employing a clever blend of actual ancient practices, the cinematic tradition of folklore serves as a source of horror. In addition, he also combines arrogance as a horror film set in the daytime continuously.
Curiosity
Midsommar allows us to watch with curiosity. A tickling foreboding and shadows hide nothing because there is a mystery. Likewise, with the theme of the film’s academic observation, it is the kind of experience that makes us sit in our chairs while being equally distracted to the point of being enthralled by what we see. As much as a woman screams from a distance, the film’s best is the small details.
It’s creepy and instills a sense of dread in Midsommar. Likewise, with the villagers reacting, the Americans searched for voices, were shocked, and behaved. For the moment, the villagers seemed unconcerned while not used to occasional screams. Americans will probably panic, regardless of it seems that no one cares. It brings out such a mood with scenes of violence and horror.
Rather than that, the constant feeling of not knowing what’s going on next testifies to the film’s effectiveness in creating a mood. A blonde-haired woman and man wearing white underwear like underwear symbolizes hermaphrodite qualities. In addition to bringing the community to a very detailed life, Aster uses a diegetic score. It originates from the chant-like chant in which animal skin drums and violins accompany it.
The Immerse View of Hårga Culture
While the budding scholars in the group observe the bustling flower activity at an academic distance, Christian and Josh both want to write about the commune for their thesis. The people of Hårga greeted the outsiders with suspicious cheerfulness. They also have a forbidden temple at the edge of the village. Beyond sleeping in a shared room with wall sacrifices, copulation, and murals of seduction to teaching their children to carve runes, Christian and Josh take the increasingly unsettling oddities with objective curiosity.
At first glance, it doesn’t take long for the good intentions of ättestupa’s ritual suicide to disturb Dani and company by surprise. Questions about the troublesome fillings of meat pies and inbreeding seemingly serve as harmless cultural curiosities. We expect a wild party complete with mind-expanding drugs glancing here and there. Aster borrows many tropes from other horror films like The Witch and The Wicker Man (not the Nic Cage version).
Most have always exploited fears of pre-Christian practices and used them in neopaganism. In contrast, Aster does more than immerse the viewer in a strange custom setting. It also depends if everything seems to hinge less on the horror festival than the crumbling relationship between Christian and Dani.
Breakup
We can safely say that Midsommar is a substandard breakup movie. Closing with a chilling final shot, Aster treats his character with emotional complexity. It goes into Dani’s head, featuring an incredible performance from Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh. Like a captivating performance from Toni Collette from Hereditary, Pugh brings every scene the other way around into her character’s frame of mind.
She acts on a level that creates a realistic psychological portrait, making the film a masterpiece of filmmaking. Together with the cinematographer Pawel Pogorelski, the film’s visuals are full of hallucinations, bright and clean. With a touch of world-bending CGI, the label Aster has devised differentiates the level of horror for unrelate demographics. The film’s jarring yet genteel aesthetic presentation of its leanings towards high-quality horror may not appeal to the sophisticated crowd who see terror as under a label.
However, Aster’s approach to horror is pacing, intentional with the visual complexity of taking in the beautiful views of the village. Yet, horror films always signify every director’s awareness of convention. When they exploit the basis of shared experience in surprising and unsettling audiences, such bases can include other horror film conventions. On the other hand, it will save your worst fears for dark and nighttime settings.
Sunshine
However, Midsommar reveals its setting in a rural place. The sun shines during most of the 24-hour cycle, entrenching the film so much that it runs deeper than governing the lighting and genre setting. Then, the shots in Midsommar isolate background elements. However, it may not be enough to remind all viewers of another moment. When a closer look doesn’t help them, it includes a view of the flat.
Striking illustrations line the ceilings and walls. Likewise, the shadow painting and the book on the coffee table are seen in Dani’s room before she begins her journey. The picture of a bear kissing illustrates Christian; at the film’s end, he meets with the cult leader in a room. If not, Pelle peers through a narrow gap between the planks in the background. In an easily missed shot, Christian succumbs to the powder, knocking him unconscious while bringing him one step closer to his death.
Of course, it includes all cardinal narrative details into its backdrop. When it’s only going to be a background or a mere decoration, Aster reminds his viewers to pay attention to anything.
Indifferently
In an opening shot, it fills the frame with mural-like illustrations; it packs with occult folklore images. The camera will track sideways in following the characters walking on the complex. With a caged bear sneaking its way onto the front surface, the inappropriate scenery served as just a set outfit in the first place. However, it reveals in another part of the film when Christian sits in a waiting room covered from floor to ceiling with ornate designs.
He then was into a room where more blue-and-white designs covered its walls. Retardation stops crashing, and it’s not easy to separate itself from one another until it explodes into consciousness. Horror films like Midsommar invest a borderline where Aster treats it “indifferently.” With searing significance, it amplifies the slash of a murderous knife from the background until an exploding form takes to the foreground.
Aster is a talented director. He is more interested in themes of emotional distress; thus, the horror environment epitomizes it. Both his feature–and possibly his next feature, Beau Is Afraid–use community, family, ritualism, and cult to create feelings of terror and alienation. It then leads to a natural blend of the physical and the psychological. The film’s lasting is a sense of wonder and horror of liberation and connectivity.
Bibliography
- Bird-David, N. (1999). “Animism” revisited: personhood, environment, and relational epistemology. Current anthropology, 40(S1), S67-S91.
- Mumford, D. B. (1998). The measurement of culture shock. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 33(4), 149-154.
- Spadoni, R. (2020). Midsommar: Thing Theory. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 37(7), 711-726.
