Tags
a24, ELO, Jeff Lynne, Sweden, the move
For a long time Netflix pushed Midsommar on me. They told me I’d like it but they wouldn’t tell me why. I was skeptical. They’d steered me wrong before.
The splash graphic for this film was a closeup of a young person wearing some form of traditionally-Nordic folk dress, topped by a crown/wreath of flowers. Said person seemed to be in anguish, perhaps with tears running down the cheeks. I avoid, here, assigning gender because I was quite sure said person was a young boy. It was not.
The sentence or two pitching the film makes clear it takes place in Sweden. Given the spelling of the film’s title, I had further assumed it was a Swedish-made, Swedish language film. Counter evidence came in the form of that description, mentioning that the plot involved “an American couple” who traveled to Sweden.
I really had planned to watch it before it disappeared from Netflix’s streaming but, when that happened, it was in the midst of their DVD end of days. I had higher priorities. Instead it was moved to said DVD queue where it died on the vine at an unattainable #23 (beyond even my ten bonus DVDs, had Netflix sent them to me).
When it reappeared on Amazon Prime streaming, that marketing image showing on the Amazon screen was different than Netflix’s. Amazon uses a rather conventional still of two of the actors in a way that doesn’t look at all strange. In the interim, I had also stumbled across just who that was in Netflix’s still. The picture they displayed was of top-billed actress Florence Pugh, in whom I took an interest after watching her in Outlaw King (she played the child bride of Robert the Bruce). Here she plays, and convincingly, someone a lot more akin to the actress herself. She is cast as a troubled, twenty-something graduate student who finds herself a bit lost in another culture of another place and another time.
I still didn’t know quite what this movie was supposed to be but I decided I was going to watch it before it vanished once again. I think it is meant to be watched without knowing what it is you are about to see. If you haven’t seen it, and think you’d want to, I’d stop reading right now. Do you want to see it though? That is really a hard question for me to answer for you. I am glad I watched it but not everyone will be.
But if you keep reading, even if it is to find out that, indeed, you want to watch this one, I’m going to ruin a good chunk of the experience for you. At least, I’m going to ruin it the way I experienced it – which was to go in knowing nothing when I started.
Let me start off with a hint as to what I’m talking about, and one that will indeed ruin the surprise aspect of the film. Let us consider Midsommar‘s genre. As a matter of fact I, myself, made the mistake of looking up something about it on-line before I was finished (it is a long movie at two-and-a-half hours1 – I split my viewing over two nights). One write-up pegged it as a “slasher” movie. I suppose it could be taken that way but it challenges just about everything we know about “slashing.”
This film features extremely explicit gore, casual drug use, visual depictions of the effects of those casually-used psychedelics, full-frontal nudity, and ritualized sex acts. So far, it sees the excess of the typical slasher film and raises you. In other ways, though, it isn’t “there” at all. Another review called it, slightly tongue-in-cheek I must imagine, a “breakup film.” Despite all of the sordid content I list above above, it lacks much of the horror that a horror film should provide.
For one, there really is no “monster.” The slashers are kindly, elderly Swedes who bear their victims no malice. In fact, most of the time they engender the epitome of hospitality, welcoming the American strangers into their community and to take part in their intimate celebrations.
Furthermore, the really gruesome blood and guts aside, it isn’t scary in the traditional sense. It’s mostly creepy – up until someone’s skull gets crushed like a watermelon. It may not sound like it but, for me, this is actually a plus. I’m not a fright-night, blood-curdling-scream, jump-scare kind of viewer so the Midsommar is much more my pace.
There is also, as might be assumed from the sheer length of it (again), these long stretches that leave you wondering just what the **** you are watching. At times, you wonder if there is a point to it and while that wondering adds to the creepy factor, the waiting isn’t really scary. It’s just… long. I’ll emphasize one last time that this is a good part of what makes the movie. I think you either see it or you don’t. It worked for me.
- 2 hours, 52 minutes for a director’s cut version. That’s not the one I watched although part of me wishes that I would have. The pensive pace, and resulting length, of the film is one of its features – the film’s tone is a key aspect of its quality. ↩︎