There are times when, walking out of the cinema, you feel lost and confused. You have more questions than answers. You’re maybe even a little disturbed. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film.
Midsommar is that
film. Ari Aster’s latest is a wonder to watch, yet deeply unsettling. I think I liked it.
It is, above all, a masterpiece in mood. Set in northern
Sweden (though actually filmed in Budapest), it takes inspiration from the
region’s lack of night during the summer. This is a meditative, hallucinatory
film with a timeless quality. Where most horror films revel in darkness, here
we have perpetual light. It’s strangely disorientating.
The narrative follows a group of American students who visit
their friend’s family in Sweden for the summer. It turns out they’re part of an
old cult who meet for festivities every 90 years. It begins innocently enough:
a pastoral, bucolic vision of life, full of freshly harvested food, singing,
dancing and community. It’s idyllic even. But things take a bizarre turn during
the various rituals that become increasingly deranged. In the midst of this is
Dani (Florence Pugh), suffering from anxiety after her bipolar sister commits
suicide and murders her family in the process. All she has left is her boyfriend
Christian (Jack Reynor) who’s emotionally distant. Their relationship on the
brink of collapse, the trip seems like a make or break opportunity.
The setup and pagan rituals will be familiar to many. What
sets Aster’s film apart is his cinematography and use of sound. What’s so
unsettling is how things seem so normal, yet there’s something not quite right
either, setting the film off-kilter. It’s in the way the camera loops upside
down as it follows the students’ car; or a flower slowly and subtly pulsing in
a headdress; or framing that slightly obscures the action. It replicates the
hallucinatory quality of the film, as trees and grass shimmer either from drug
consumption or simply the heat of the constant sun. The music, too, is eerie:
harmonious drones that slowly distort with dissonance.
The uneasy atmosphere is then punctuated by moments of graphic
violence and/or sex. These are intended to shock, a tactic that seems somewhat
cheap within such artful mood-setting. But they also lend the story some
dramatic weight – and, in all honesty, the odd moment to chuckle at absurdity.
That’s all very well if there’s a strong narrative underpinning
it all. But it’s here where Midsommar begins
to slip through Aster’s grip. His film is fuelled by anxieties: grief, death,
cheating, emasculation, perhaps even a fear of foreigners. Yet what it all
means is left entirely ambiguous. Is this a film about the need for community,
that, no matter how deranged and bizarre, we all need a family to belong to? Or
is this a straightforward revenge tale about a perverse break-up, a woman
finding release from her partner in the most eccentric manner? Or maybe I’ve
missed the mark?
Aster’s folk horror is a pensive meditation on a muddle of
themes, one that satisfies for its craft more than its narrative and sits just on the right side of pretentious. For some, its
ambiguity is a void. For others, the guessing is half the fun.
3/5
Watch: Midsommar is out now.
