You gotta get ’em with a hook, right? I mean, so many movies start with something that often drops us right in the middle of something we don’t yet understand and drive a bit of action forward in establishing a world, or characters, or plot point before truly getting the main story started. It’s a clever way to hit us with a bang right out of the gate, and I’ll admit, most of the time, does what it intends. Practically the entire James Bond series is built on this device while others use it as a way to plop someone into a mess and then reverse us back to how they got there. With director Ari Aster‘s 2019 chiller Midsommar, we also get a gut-punch start, and arguably, the single best moment in the whole film. Let’s take a closer look.
Briefly, this is a weird film, but it’s what Aster does, even with only two movies under his belt. His debut effort Hereditary was an exercise in knotted plot points and unbearable tension and he comes back to the well in delivering this, perhaps a stronger film story-wise yet equally rife with disturbing imagery and terrifying consequences. It stars Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor, a psychology student with a traumatising past that follows her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and three other friends to Sweden for a few weeks in summer. Once there, thinking they will be witnessing a local traditional ceremony that happens only once every ninety years, they soon realize nope, they are part of a local traditional ceremony that happens only once every ninety years, and big surprise, they’re the guests of honor, so to speak. Let’s just say, not every gets out alive.
I have some quibbles with the plot itself and found that the more the film went on, the less it interested me, right up to an ending that didn’t quite have the impact I was looking for considering the stakes it implies in the build up. There are heaps of visual metaphors that probably deserve further examination, some almost excruciatingly subtle and others hard to miss, like, literally right there hiding in the trees. However, I don’t mean to lessen the film’s efforts at all, the movie another creative, challenging watch that is all too rare in the cinema experience. We need Ari Asters out there and I encourage him to keep doing what he’s doing, even if we must sit through another head smushed with a giant sledgehammer again. This guy loves massive head trauma.
So, that said, I’d like to examine the beginning of Midsommar, which on its own feels like it could be the start to a film of almost any genre, and in fact, while I appreciated what follows, left me disappointed that it didn’t really follow up on this in the way that I expected, or perhaps, hoped.
We start with a full screen image of a painting of sorts that, on closer inspection, details the entire film’s story from left to right in crude yet hauntingly stylized characters. You barely have time to even appreciate what it is before it spreads open like a curtain and offers us a view of some very dark winter landscapes overlaid with a somber Swedish vocal. These are grey, dreary yet oddly beautiful stills of a snow-laden forest that fills us with a deepening sense of dread that feel weirdly contrasted with the film’s title. Cut to black and then a ringing telephone that zooms us in from a high overhead shot of a small American town to the bedroom answering machine of Dani’s parents, who appear to be sleeping (once we slowly dolly past a row of hint-filled home photos).
It’s Dani on the machine, many miles away, expressing some worry that her bipolar sister’s latest email seems particularly distressing and so calls to maybe see if something may have happened. We then shift to Dani as she hangs up her phone and sits at the computer looking at her sister’s last troubling message. We see on her phone that she has made multiple attempts to call her with no response. Dani is clearly getting distressed and so, in a deepening state of concern, calls her boyfriend Christian.
The camera is tight on Dani’s face as she holds back what appears to be a wave of emotion while she struggles to sound normal. We only hear Christian, a voice through the phone that doesn’t really come off as all that excited to hear from her, even a little distant as she presses for them to meet later. He agrees to come by later and then, with a heavy breath that signals he’s about to ask something he has no interest in, wonders about the “sister situation,” which prompts Dani to explain that she’s feeling more worried. Christian offers some platitudes about how Dani lets her sister walk all over her and that this is normal stuff and that it will be okay, like always. It’s just another ploy for attention. Dani admits that she is lucky to have him to help keep her stable. She says she loves him, to which, he again lets slip a hissing breath, replies he does as well. But does he?
They hang up and we cut immediately to Dani on the phone with a girl friend, pacing about telling her that she feels something is off with Christian and has worry that she’s scaring him away with her constant stress about her sister. We see that Dani is on her own anxiety medication, and grows increasingly upset when suddenly, she gets another call on the line, from someone listed as “unknown.”
It then shifts immediately to Christian at a pizza place with his three friends and the conversation is fixed solely on his indecision whether to break up with Dani or not, his friends offering their advice from straight up do it and get better sex elsewhere to deeper questions about Christian’s own mental roadblocks that appear to be preventing him from completing his studies. We hear from one of them about the possible Swedish maids he may soon meet, hints that there is a plan between these men. This is when Christian’s phone begins to vibrate and Dani’s name appears on the screen. She’s calling again. Except this time, it’s different.
What follows, I won’t spoil, as it’s crucial to the remainder of the film, but I want to dig a little into why this set up is so affecting. That starts with Pugh, who is heartbreaking, the way she establishes this kind of simmering sense of despair and coming trauma as she speaks on the phone, juggling a maelstrom of emotions as she tries to decipher her sister’s cryptic message, what it means in relation to her past, and how to get that across to Christian, who, we sense has lost any sense of involvement with all this drama in his girlfriend’s life. This is jaw-droppingly good stuff and Pugh is simply remarkable in her shattering yet understated performance. Dani is a wreck and all we want to do is hold her in a comforting embrace. Rarely have I seen such vulnerability so powerfully compacted into such a moment. I mean, dang, this is an underappreciated bit of acting.
What Aster does so well is draw us into this quite nightmare, reaching from the quite lonely stillness of snow-laden woods and the haunting siren of a distant folk song to the closing walls of a young woman on the brink of a complete break where soon everything she has tenderly been clinging to will slip free of her grasp. We learn from these few opening moments much about everyone’s place in the very articulate steps that travel them all to a rural community in the hills of Sweden, but most especially, Dani and Christian, who, naturally, are the key sticky ingredients in this story. It is their relationship that becomes the thesis behind Aster’s message and it it’s important to keep this opening in our minds as we witness their fates.
That’s not hard to do of course, the beginning of Midsommar, as least for me, the best part of the film. I’ve watched this three times now, and each time, this brief entrance into Dani’s horror is more impactful, perhaps because I know where it leads. I love what Pugh does with Dani, her small frame almost lost in her oversized sweater and sweatpants, her face contorted into a collage of ache that burrows into the viewer. It’s so good it could serve as a short film and end just as Christian answers the second time and be everything we need to know.
I think what makes it all the more frustrating though, by the time we reach the end of Midsommar, is how far Dani goes from this beginning, which certainly is important to the story, especially the final frame where a single turn of her expression means everything in why we’ve come this far. It’s just, perhaps, I feel Pugh is wasted a bit as she is so lump-in-the-throat good at the start in expressing herself, it’s a little off-putting to see her practically mute and with the same frowny expression for the last half hour of the film. Seriously. It’s one of those things where you think, sure, I get this in terms of the story, but geesh, you remember that big opening moment where this actor lowered the boom like a heavyweight champ? Let’s bring her back.
Midsommar is a rightful chore as a film experience, stuffed to the corners with weirdness, occasional gruesome violence, and lots of mystery. I like all of that. It’s just what a movie should be and while I don’t always get what I see, which I’m certain is the intent, at least Aster is pushing his viewers to get engaged in what they watching. Pugh is a real talent and I can’t recommend enough, if you haven’t already, to get your eyes on her work in this film, if anything, for the first fifteen minutes. It’s a great movie moment.