Midsommar Spoilers

Here's something that I wrote for the BGG Film Lovers Guild. Almost all of the time I spend online these days is time spent on BGG. I started a blog there and have been writing a lot about games. The Film Guild is somewhat active and has some great guys in it. I'm re-posting these rambling thoughts here because it looks like at least Brandon and Jeff are attempting to resurrect the CR5FC blogs. I  don't have any patience anymore for social media or news sites or the whole Internet, but I do miss the blogging days, having a tiny corner of the Internet that was truly personal and also had depth to it, a place in which one could argue at length, but all argument was centered in love and respect for one's conversation partners. That's the Internet done right, and we did it right for a brief while. Anyhow, here are some first reactions to Midsommar (with companion reactions to My Brilliant Career), full of spoilers, so don't read any of this if you don't want to be spoiled.

I went in as blind as I could. I hadn't watched any trailer. I had seen the poster. I had skim-read the interview that I linked above. I had seen Hereditary and so had huge expectations. But I've so far avoided all reviews and any other interviews or whatever. I'll probably deep dive into the commentary over the next couple of days, but first I'll offer up some of my initial "gut-level" reactions here.

All spoilers from here on out.

I'm somewhere between Jonathan and Matt in my appreciation for this film.

Way too long and just pretty boring? I don't know. 

The weird thing is that after the initial set-up, it was pretty obvious to me that our heroine was going to go down the path that she did, finding satisfaction in a new family, and that everyone else was going to die. 

I'm usually not all that great at guessing plot developments and endings. The fact that it was telegraphed here has me thinking that Aster was intentional in not caring about any sort of surprise. Either that, or I'm giving him too much credit, and this whole thing is inept.

So, it was all obvious. And it probably was too long. But I was never bored. If nothing else, Florence Pugh was always interesting to watch, and she was often in the frame. 

It probably was too long. I like Jonathan's comment above about an even longer cut being potentially more interesting. Each scene did add to the whole and the pacing never slogged, but I found myself repeatedly thinking that I'd already gotten the point and was ready for something crazy. What's worse is that I found myself thinking that I was already done with all of this. I have no desire to re-watch (though I may have already accidentally committed to see it again with a friend next weekend if it's still playing around here) and don't see it becoming a favorite in any way.

I unintentionally saw this as a double feature with Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career. I hadn't seen a movie in a while so watched MBC on Criterion Channel last night, then finished it this morning. This afternoon, I had time to see Midsommar, so decided to go see it. (3:20pm showing on a Saturday afternoon opening week, me and 3 other people in the theater).

So, My Brilliant Career and Midsommar are crashing around into each other in my mind right now.

As of right now, I believe that MBC is by far the better film. It's definitely a film that I'd like to re-watch, a film that delighted me. It's a Very Good film, but I also found it tremendously unsatisfying (and it is designed to be purposely so) in its conclusion. I won't spoil it too badly, but the conclusion is an anti-Comedy turn to stubborn Pride of Self. It is in praise of individual choice at the expense of lovers, family, community, all others.

Midsommar, on the other hand, in its perverse way, is a celebration of found community. The American male friends are shallow assholes, happy to satisfy their own desires. Our heroine is lost and in pain, struggling in the aftermath of her sister's terrible, selfish, final decision, all family lost. She yearns for an understanding lover, for family to fall back on, for a close-knit community. The way that these various storylines play out reflect a sort of horror logic judgment, in which everyone gets what is coming to them.

As an aside, answering Simon's question about "torture-porny" elements, I think that the film is actually fairly mild in the violence aspects, with most of it occurring off-screen (besides the cliff jumps; and it should be noted that the film is comfortable with its excess of gore in these moments). The film does become pornographic in its final "climactic" impregnation ritual scene, but Aster frames and edits this sequence in such a way that it's never erotic or titillating, but always awkward and uncomfortable. 

What's really lacking for me is the straight-up horror, the feeling of queasiness and dis-ease. A lot of the film feels like it's going through the motions. The suicides are pretty matter-of-fact. The other deaths are largely off-screen. The cult's actions seem pretty inevitable. We don't dread things so much as expect them. Nothing in this film scared me or made me feel any sort of emotional terror, which seems like the worst thing that anyone could say about any horror film.

Finally, I'm a little bit uncomfortable with Aster's use of mental retardation and physical deformity. It's true that these things make people uncomfortable. I almost feel like Aster is using them as a cheat, a shorthand way to get easy reactions of fear and disgust caused by the Other. But I have extensive experience with the mentally retarded, the developmentally disabled, and with individuals who have deformities. These individuals do not need further fear and disgust. They do not need any reminder that they are "not normal." Often, these persons evidence love and genuine goodwill in the face of adversity and disadvantage. But someone who looks different is strange and invokes fear and disgust. In Aster's current film, these few roles don't seem to serve any purpose beyond this obvious one, invoking fear and disgust, with these characters having no further real life to them at all.