For many watching Midsommar, the furthest thing from their mind will be the image of its then four-year-old director, Ari Aster, taking in his first movie in a theater, Dick Tracy, and running out at the sight of Warren Beatty (in the titular role) wielding a tommy gun as a wall of fire rose up behind him from an explosion. Though Dick Tracy wasn’t a horror movie (to anyone other than the children who were brought to see it because it was a Disney movie), it seems that this moment set the tone for an innate desire within Aster to scare and be scared. A horror movie obsession subsequently ensued.
Yet Midsommar is a genre altogether separate from horror in a classic sense, instead delving into the more psychological aspect of the horror called “the cycle of life.” But the strange confluence of events referred to as existence is something that doesn’t bristle the Hårga, a group of Swedish pagans who open their ancient commune to a handful of visitors: Josh (William Jackson Harper), Christian (Jack Reynor), Connie (Ellora Torchia), Simon (Archie Madekwe), Mark (Will Poulter) and, finally, our central character, Dani (Florence Pugh). Dani, who has only found herself in this remote place because of Christian, her boyfriend of four years. Though to look at the two of them, one would never know they were together for Christian is decidedly detached in the midst of Dani’s overt earnestness to be loved and given the affection now very glaringly missing from her life (a brutal scene at the introduction to the film explains why).
Christian and Josh, both anthropology students, are each swept up in the bizarre customs of the Hårga, who are soon to share with them a special tradition that happens but once every ninety years. Part of it including the senicide of two presumably seventy-two year old members of the cult (for seventy-two is the final winter of one’s life by cult standards). It is around this point of watching them serenely leap from a cliff while the others look on with approval that the likes of Connie, Simon and Dani start to wonder what they have actually gotten themselves into. As for Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), the college friend who has brought them to his “ancestral village” in the first place, he apologizes to Josh and company for not better explaining what would be taking place. While Christian and Josh, in their anthropological wisdom, seem to brush off the “strangeness” of the custom with more ease, Simon and Connie make plans to flee, though it seems the Hårga have a different idea for them.
Meanwhile, Mark expresses regret that they didn’t wake him up from his nap for the most interesting thing that’s happened on the trip so far apart from tripping on psilocybin–at which time he almost had a panic attack when Christian told him it was nine p.m., yet the brightly shining sun suggesting otherwise. This common trend in horror movies of subverting what time of day it is against an opposite expectation–lightness of darkness–is never a good sign of things to come for the characters involved. Dani, despite her state of suspicion and paranoia, seems one of the most well-adjusted to life on the commune, joining in easily with the “womenfolk” activities of making meat pies and even participating in the maypole dance competition that finds her being crowned as their May Queen.
As a tradition stemming from a real Swedish legend about a woman who danced until she drove out “the dark one” (does this mean exorcising Satan himself or one’s own inner demons, who knows?), it is very apparent that this, too, is precisely what Dani is trying to do in, at last, coming to grips with the grief that has crippled her over the past year. To the point of staying with Christian in the face of his constant knack for expressing just how uninvolved he is in the relationship. Yet her neediness and dependency stem from a place of fear that is only just now slowly being relinquished thanks to the steady psilocybin flow provided by one of the Hårga at any given moment that suits the purposes of their manipulation.
And, to the point of that manipulation, there is a sense one gets of, as is the case in real life, no one actually being in control of their own destiny. One way or the other, everyone has their part to play in Hårga, and it’s going to happen sooner or later, whether by “volunteering” to surrender Dorothy or being forced by the design of the elders (a symbol of the “gentle hands” of government and the wealthy that seem to dictate the lives of the rest of us).
To say that background imagery plays an integral role in Midsommar would be a vast understatement. For more than just ominous etchings and runes (which set decorator Henrik Svensson was instrumental in researching), even from the outset of the film, “ancient” pop culture offers a semiotic language. Namely when Christian accepts a call from Dani while at a restaurant with his friends, and an oversized poster of one of the iconic images (not the iconic one) of Sophia Loren with Jayne Mansfield behind him alludes to something that is frequent in the underpinning theme of the film: a disdain for those who are different. Except, ironically, Loren’s signature stink-eye toward a blonde ideal is how the blonde ideals of Sweden seem to be regarding others at the moment (something A$AP Rocky unwittingly found himself at the center of in his recent “scuffle” in the land of cows and pop music). The political eye of the storm in the Sweden Democrats’ bid to “Keep Sweden Swedish” a.k.a. not be so accommodating to immigrants that will pervert their aesthetic lineage and commitment to ancient customs. To this end, the Hårga are not abashed in their admission that much inbreeding does take place in their little commune, with only a few “outsiders” being brought in every now and again to dilute the bloodline a bit–but only if the astrological chart deems the consummation “a match.”
Aster himself commented of the depiction, “There are a lot of parallels to the history of Europe over the last hundred years. They’re not the most diverse community.” Yet even for as “too exclusive” as the Hårga might be, they are clearly an empathetic people, wanting everyone else to know just how literally they feel the pain of others by mimicking it in sound and movement (a scene of which stands out most notably when Dani has a panic attack after seeing yet another instance of, to say the least, “heavy shit” on the commune).
As Midsommar draws to a conclusion that, even while brutal to watch, somehow feels right (or maybe we’ve all just become Hårga cult members by the end), Dani at last expunges the baggage that has been plaguing her–all it took was finally embracing the pain. Which is something that most of us have worked our whole lives to avoid. Yet in contrast to the Hårga, who experience their torment to its fullest amid a setting of beauty, much of the rest of society at large chooses to stifle their emotions amid scenes of decay (i.e. the cityscape).
