![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This entry contains spoilers for the film Midsommar
And then there’s Midsommar, a really fucking strange movie, that’s probably best seen on streaming media.
Why?
Because if you see it in a movie theater with other people, you’ll laugh at it.
Don’t forget: Humor is primarily a way to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the contemplation of taboo subjects.
The film is intentionally funny, of course, if you accept it on its own terms. Like it’s even got a double-edged punchline: Sacrifice is necessary in every relationship.
I’d say Midsommar is the film you’d get if Ingmar Bergman had teamed up with, say, Wes Craven.
Florence Pugh—rapidly becoming one of my favorite actresses—plays a woman whose life has just unraveled in the most horrifying manner imaginable. She’s desperate and needy, so she decides to tag along on a trip to northern Sweden with her Loutish Boyfriend and two of his loutish pals. They don’t want her. But the weird cultish commune they’re visiting wants her. It really, really wants her—and no, you can not imagine the rest.
On display throughout is fabulous faux-Swedish folk art that I think Midsommar’s art director entirely made up:
Really, Midsommar’s exclusion from the Academy’s Best Production Design nominations list is an outrage.
Oddly enough, the squirmiest scene is not one of the many scenes of ritual violence and mutilation, scattered like flower petals throughout the movie.
No, it’s a scene in which the Loutish Boyfriend has ritual sex with one of the commune denizens.
She lures him to her with a trail of flower petals and awaits him naked with her legs drawn up in what I guess is the Ritual Sex Hut.
Behind her stands a line of naked women, and the women are of all ages.
And this was just shocking, shocking, shocking! I mean, these were not females chosen to spark up the movie with a little tits-and-ass razzle-dazzle!
(I actually paused the movie at this point to stare at the older women’s naked bodies, strip off my own clothes, scurry to a mirror and do a compare and contrast.)
If you remember back to the classic horror movie The Shining, the most horrifying hallucination our flawed protagonist Jack Torrance has is of an old woman rising naked from a bathtub.
Ladies and gentlemen, our culture cannot conceive of anything more horrifying than the body of a naked old woman.
That is a truth that should make every feminist take self-inventory.
Anyway, very powerful movie, though not for everyone.
Although oddly enough, I saw it on Max’s recommendation. He kept texting, Mom, YOU will like this movie.
And he was right.
###
In other news, I passed the tax certification exam with flying colors. Tax season starts in a week, and by the time it ends, it will be spring!
And then there’s Midsommar, a really fucking strange movie, that’s probably best seen on streaming media.
Why?
Because if you see it in a movie theater with other people, you’ll laugh at it.
Don’t forget: Humor is primarily a way to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the contemplation of taboo subjects.
The film is intentionally funny, of course, if you accept it on its own terms. Like it’s even got a double-edged punchline: Sacrifice is necessary in every relationship.
I’d say Midsommar is the film you’d get if Ingmar Bergman had teamed up with, say, Wes Craven.
Florence Pugh—rapidly becoming one of my favorite actresses—plays a woman whose life has just unraveled in the most horrifying manner imaginable. She’s desperate and needy, so she decides to tag along on a trip to northern Sweden with her Loutish Boyfriend and two of his loutish pals. They don’t want her. But the weird cultish commune they’re visiting wants her. It really, really wants her—and no, you can not imagine the rest.
On display throughout is fabulous faux-Swedish folk art that I think Midsommar’s art director entirely made up:
Really, Midsommar’s exclusion from the Academy’s Best Production Design nominations list is an outrage.
Oddly enough, the squirmiest scene is not one of the many scenes of ritual violence and mutilation, scattered like flower petals throughout the movie.
No, it’s a scene in which the Loutish Boyfriend has ritual sex with one of the commune denizens.
She lures him to her with a trail of flower petals and awaits him naked with her legs drawn up in what I guess is the Ritual Sex Hut.
Behind her stands a line of naked women, and the women are of all ages.
And this was just shocking, shocking, shocking! I mean, these were not females chosen to spark up the movie with a little tits-and-ass razzle-dazzle!
(I actually paused the movie at this point to stare at the older women’s naked bodies, strip off my own clothes, scurry to a mirror and do a compare and contrast.)
If you remember back to the classic horror movie The Shining, the most horrifying hallucination our flawed protagonist Jack Torrance has is of an old woman rising naked from a bathtub.
Ladies and gentlemen, our culture cannot conceive of anything more horrifying than the body of a naked old woman.
That is a truth that should make every feminist take self-inventory.
Anyway, very powerful movie, though not for everyone.
Although oddly enough, I saw it on Max’s recommendation. He kept texting, Mom, YOU will like this movie.
And he was right.
###
In other news, I passed the tax certification exam with flying colors. Tax season starts in a week, and by the time it ends, it will be spring!
