The four Americans are amused by the sun drenched property of a Swedish commune. People in discreetly embroidered white linen robes with flowers in their hair smile at them, moving gently but purposefully across the sprawling grounds. A 90-year summer solemn festival is being prepared, and because one of her classmates was born in the community, anthropology students Josh, Mark, Christian and his girlfriend Dani are now allowed to celebrate.
"And here we ignore this bear, or what?" Asks another visitor, when he discovers a black monster in a cage. Probably the young man has been dazzled by the no longer setting sun, because until then, the camera has repeatedly captured menacing signs in this seemingly so friendly Lagom world: drawings with dead dances were to see, flowers were picked backwards, wood under strange Cheers screamed and visitors poured golden liquids in unadorned glasses. With the narrative Holzhammer the coming drasticity is hinted at, and not only director Ari Aster mastered the handling of crude tools, even the community dwellers put it soon.
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"Midsommar": the violent circle of life"Midsommar" takes the road to glaring folklore hell with the black of New York nights and the emotional darkening of its heroine Dani (Florence Pugh in a great on-edge performance): Dani has just lost her entire family, which is why she lost herself all the more desperate to her boyfriend Christian hangs (the Jack Reynor impressive as a study of passive-aggressive stupidity applies).
Christian really wanted to end his tense relationship and could not wait to flee with his buddies in the Swedish summer. When Dani unexpectedly comes up with the idea of joining, he can not say no with regard to their traumatization, and the trip, which was already burdened by the competitive conditions and different intentions (career! Swedish!) Among the men, gets even more complicated.
"Midsummer"
USA, Sweden, Hungary, 2019
Written and directed by Ari Aster
Performers: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren
Production: B-Reel Films, Square Peg
Distribution: Weltkino Filmverleih
Length: 147 minutes
FSK: free from 18 years
Start: 26th September 2019
Brilliantly, Ari Aster assembles dysfunctional relationships and emotional havoc in his New York prologue before his film takes its place in its main setting for two hours. As in his sensational success "Hereditary" Aster makes the art craft structure of his film visible right at the beginning: If the predecessor with filmed miniature houses, in which suddenly the figures were suddenly brought to life, opens in "Midsommar" at the beginning of a curtain from naive folkloristic motifs, in which the entire plot of the film is already scribbled.
Aster proves to be a clever master builder of genre frameworks, which are less aimed at surprise effects, but rather tilt out of an interesting disorientation of his characters in the expectable horror scenario. This in turn celebrates the film in the brightest daylight (camera, as in "Hereditary": Pawel Pogorzelski), instead of genre-conforming rush through gloomy interiors in which the evil always comes too late in the view. Aster and his stage designer Henrik Svensson shake up Nordic myths and myths until they elude any ethnological plausibility, but nevertheless give the impression of a closed system.
In the video: The trailer for "Midsommar"
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Even more impressive, however, is the film's play with the creeping normalization of brutality, for which he also needs his full length. How the inter-human disturbed ensemble of metropolitan individualists falls into the clutches of a totalitarian system and gradually becomes accustomed to its premises, in itself disturbing - and is reinforced when you know that "Midsommar" was filmed in Hungary.
"This is not bad, this is something cultural," Christian calmed his girlfriend Dani after the first outbursts in the community. There is the abyss, over which all singing and laughing children of the sun must jump, if they want to be part of a stable community, long since can not be overlooked.
Rarely did you feel safer after enjoying a horror movie in dark rooms alone.
