Midsommar (Film Review)

2019 A24
Written and Directed by: Ari Aster
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, and Will Poulter
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 147 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

Dani and Christian's relationship is faltering. Dani, herself medicated for some unexplained mental illness, is under constant stress that her bipolar sister will act out. Christian, tired of hearing about Dani's sister, would rather just hang with his Dani-hating bros. However, just as Christian starts to tinker with the idea of leaving Dani, the unthinkable happens, and Dani finds herself not just down a sister, but her entire family. Now, Christian's got no choice but to stick around, though all he seems to be able to offer Dani's heaving sobs is a pat on the back and a distant stare.
Cut to months later, and the couple are in a holding pattern. Christian (Jack Reynor) is attempting to get back to normal life with his pals. Meanwhile, the traumatized Dani (Florence Pugh, in a tour-de-force performance) spends most days in bed. A chance to change the status quo arrives, in the form of a trip to a remote commune in the forested hills of Sweden. Seems that not only is one of Christian's fellow-grad-student buddy's writing his thesis on just these sort of communities, but another is actually from one, and wants to take his friends back to his Scandinavian home to experience the midsummer celebration. Before you can say, hey, that's a weird coincidence...they're all on a plane to Stockholm.
If you've seen one Ari Aster film...you've seen half of Ari Aster's films. The young writer-director's first film, Hereditary, veered from family drama, with minutes upon minutes of realistic conversation and conflict, into full on horror, with minutes upon minutes of decapitations, reanimated corpses, and demonic possession. Midsommar is something completely different, but Aster is already developing some trademarks:a sublime fusion of hypnotic camera movements and lighting, and an interior mise en scène that at times feels like a wall of cubbyholes, from which a monster or a metaphor could spring at any moment. However, the most pervading aspect of an Aster film is the creator's patience.
Hereditary takes its time exploring and building up the family drama and conflict so that the finally revealed supernatural evils just feel like a logical evolution of already existing domestic horrors. Midsommar not only explores family, but community, empathy, and romantic relationships, as well...and when, instead of monsters, the strangely bizarre and unsettling, though still very hard-R happen, these more extreme events again feel like the natural growth of the themes Aster has already been exploring. I don't really want to talk about that, though. What I really want to talk about, what I'm still thinking and dreaming about, are the pretty pictures and sounds.
When the Americans enter this North Swedish paradise, they might as well be on another planet. The sun never sets, and everything is bathed in golden light. Beautiful music streams organically from the commune's musicians, welcome, yet without warning. All of Aster's film-making elements blend rapturously as a be-flowered Dani dances with a group of white-clad women around a maypole, as just maybe, the empathy-seeking Dani finds a new family. Aerial, symmetrical shots of people gathered around tables feel as orderly as nature. Wind rustles through the grass and treetops, and oh wait, what's that sticking out of the garden bed?