Midsommar is a movie about a relationship going up in flames - literally.
Writer-director Ari Aster has described it as more of a breakup movie than a horror film,
one that he hopes will leave people, quote, "feeling a little bit confused about how to
feel."
So: what happened?
As Aster has explained in many interviews, Midsommar is about a relationship coming to
an end.
He told USA Today,
"The goal was ultimately to make a big, operatic breakup movie that feels the way breakups
actually feel: catastrophic, like the world is ending."
"It's an operatic breakup movie and a dark contemporary fairy tale."
Like a lot of great horror movies, you're not really supposed to take everything that
happens in Midsommar literally.
Whether all of this weird stuff is actually happening isn't nearly as important as how
the characters react to it - particularly Dani.
Altered states and hallucinations play a big role in Midsommar's story, and subjectivity
is important to how the plot unfolds.
From Dani's perspective, the story plays out as a series of increasingly-shocking revelations.
The movie looks a lot different from the perspective of Pelle , the member of the Hårga commune.
Out of all of Christian's friends who come to the Hårga festival, he's the only one
who knows what's going to happen.
“That’s why you look so guilty right now, because you know.”
The audience also gets competing perspectives of Dani and Christian's relationship.
The audience sees Dani going through an incredibly traumatic time, needing the support of a loved
one more than ever.
But we also get a look at Christian's perspective, seeing a guy who's falling out of love with
his girlfriend and tired of dealing with her drama, whether any of it is her fault or not.
Complicating matters are Christian's friends, most of whom clearly don't like Dani, and
are encouraging Christian to pull away.
"You've been wanting out of this stupid relationship for like a year now."
Dani spends most of the movie as a passive protagonist, mostly only reacting to events
as they happen.
She doesn't want to be a needy person, and bends over backwards to take the blame for
her own clinginess, always going with the flow in the hopes of salvaging her relationship.
So she ends up on a trip she didn't plan, under the influence of hallucinogens she didn't
intend to take.
She gives and she gives, hoping all the while that Christian, his friends, or the world
in general will just give her a break.
Nothing in her life feels in her grasp until the end of the movie, when she's finally crowned
the May Queen, and given ultimate power over the commune.
After spending the whole movie as a doormat for Christian and his friends, she ends up,
symbolically at least, in control of their fates.
In Midsommar, flowers represent family, with an early clue to the symbolism being the floral
wallpaper in the bedroom of Dani's parents, seen just before they die.
The metaphor can be extended to plants in general - after the death of Dani’s family,
the houseplants in her apartment are all dead.
In the beginning of the movie, Dani's world is dark and frigid, but things begin turning
around for her on the trip, in a place where the sun rarely stops shining and flowers grow
in abundance.
Before Dani even consciously realizes it, she's being introduced to a new family.
The first person to wish Dani a happy birthday - the first birthday she's celebrating without
her family - is Pelle.
Dani truly begins being pulled into the cult on the final day, when she joins in the drug-fueled
dance around the maypole.
For the competition, she's gifted a flowered wreath.
After she wins and becomes the May Queen, she's soon seen literally up to her neck in
flowers, all-but-smothered by the Hårgas' adoration - her brothers and sisters, if she'll
have them.
It's a mutually-beneficial relationship.
The commune often needs outside members in order to avoid inbreeding, and Dani needs
a new place to belong.
Her old family's lives were violently ended - her new family has a violent start.
Midsommar's violent yet somehow serene ending works on one level as classic, Wicker Man-style
folk horror, but it's also a strong metaphor for a dissolving relationship.
Early on in the movie, Dani, a psychology student, makes reference to the psychological
process of a breakup, seeing the signs of her dissolving relationship in Christian's
distancing behavior.
In that sense, the whole bonkers final sequence can be read as a ritualistic look at how a
relationship comes to an end.
As the movie begins its third act, both Dani and Christian alienate and agitate their friends
with their relationship woes.
They become separated, experiencing different parts of the festival on their own.
Christian goes into a trancelike state as he cheats on Dani with Maja, the commune girl
who's shown signs of being smitten with him ever since his group arrived.
Since we've seen him be drugged and hexed to the point where his mind seems blank, there
is a strong sense that he is not doing this voluntarily, urged on by sheer physical desire
rather than conscious thought.
It's the exact story we see in a hanging tapestry earlier in the movie.
Meanwhile, Dani goes dancing on her own, unconcerned about Christian's whereabouts.
With a little help from the Hårga, the long-suffering couple is finally coming apart.
Dani starts the movie surrounded by people who don't appreciate her grief, worried that
they'll abandon her.
The only people who show her kindness seem to be Pelle and the Hårga.
After Dani bears witness to Christian and Maja together in their ritualistic tryst,
she begins to emotionally break down.
As she does so, she's surrounded by followers of the May Queen, all emphatically mimicking
her every noise and emotion.
Despite the obvious pain of the moment, this sense of true connection and empathy is what
Dani has spent the movie looking for.
She screams, and everyone around her screams back.
Unlike Christian or his friends, they share her pain.
Ever since her family died, that's all she's really wanted.
One of the more amusing aspects about Midsommar's climax is the way the events parallel fellow
folk horror film The Wicker Man - as well as that movie's certifiably insane, Nicolas
Cage-starring remake.
That movie inexplicably involved Cage's character dressing up in a bear costume to disguise
himself before eventually just running around punching people, a fact that's impossible
not to think about when Christian is rendered paralyzed, and sewn into a bear carcass of
his own.
It's the same bear briefly shown caged up on the commune grounds earlier in the movie,
not having a clear purpose until the movie's bloody end.
Considering how much Aster has credited the original Wicker Man with inspiring Midsommar,
it's not hard to read this detail of the bear suit as an intentional nod to the remake,
adding a bit of dark absurdist humor to the movie's fiery climax.
As Christian and the bodies of his friends are being readied for ritual sacrifice, the
proceedings are watched over by a mysterious figure, face invisible behind a thick veil.
The script for Midsommar names this character as Víðarr, the god of vengeance.
But while this figure obviously plays into some kind of Hårga ritual, he also serves
as a metaphor for Dani's emotional state.
The man refers to Christian, wrapped up in the bear carcass, as a, quote, "mighty and
dreadful beast," whose death will purge the Hårga society of its, quote, "most unholy
affects."
Even though she may not have ordered it deliberately, this destructive ritual can be read as a very
personal action on the part of Dani, on whose orders the commune is now effectively acting.
Whether she ordered it or not, this is an act of vengeance on her behalf.
After four years of dating and a long, slow withering of her romance with Christian, Dani
is finally asserting herself, and guiding the relationship to a permanent end.
After spending the whole movie being passive, this sequence represents her consciously letting
go, unleashing all of her pent-up frustrations with Christian and his friends, to her relief,
and their doom.
Seeing her smile could come as a total shock.
It's cathartic, it's weird, and it doesn't make a ton of literal sense.
But it does make sense emotionally, making for a haunting final sequence that - as Aster's
said he intended - may leave viewers perplexed about how they're supposed to feel.
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