(Spoiler warning)
What’s the best way to get rid of your clueless boyfriend? Burn him alive with the help of a Swedish cult—or at least that’s what Dani does in Ari Aster’s box office hit “Midsommar.”
While horror as a genre has been leaning away from jump scares and toward psychological thrills for several years, “Midsommar” is the first horror film I’ve seen that has taken up the mantle of trauma and fear that’s specifically feminine. By shooting through reflections in mirrors and incorporating the symbolic significance of runes and bears, Aster places the viewer in the midst of a crumbling relationship. When that relationship is demolished, we’re content to watch it burn.
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Spatial Disconnects
The audience is introduced to Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) through a phone call. Dani, on one end of the line, relentlessly calls Christian, worried about an ominous email she had received from her bipolar sister. On the other end, Christian is out with his buddies, leisurely eating pizza, and ignoring Dani. The guys urge Christian to break up with her, characterizing her as nagging. Christian is on the fence, wondering, “What if I regret it later and I can’t get her back?” Still, he himself states that he’s been thinking about the possibility of a breakup for over a year. This spatial and emotional disconnect introduces us to the strained dynamics within their relationship.
Later that night, Dani finds out that her sister killed herself and her entire family via car exhaust poisoning. Christian can’t break up with Dani in the wake of this tragedy, so their relationship is “saved” for the time being. However, on a trip to Sweden accompanied by three of Christian’s friends, the couple is eventually forced to confront their issues.
There, the group visits the Hägra commune, a Swedish community whose sinister practices border on cultish. Dani’s experiences in the commune offer her the opportunity to recognize the shortcomings of her relationship with Christian, when he’s emotionally insensitive following the death of her family. He continues to be inconsiderate throughout their time in the commune. For example, he neglects to warn her about the ättestupa ritual they witness, where an old couple throws themselves to their deaths, and is dismissive when Dani becomes anxious about other foreign couples disappearing mysteriously from the commune.
Throughout “Midsommar,” Aster shows the disconnect between Dani and Christian by shooting the smaller frame of a mirror within the larger frame of the shot. At the beginning of the movie, Aster films through mirrors to establish the dynamics of their relationship before they reach Sweden. The first scene that unfolds through a mirror is the confrontation between Dani and Christian after Dani finds out that he’s been hiding his plans for a two-week trip to Sweden with his friends. Aster chooses to shoot this confrontation through a floor length mirror. In this shot, we can see Christian only through the mirror that Dani stands next to. This mirror acts as a frame within the larger frame of the film; Christian is literally separated from Dani through the amplified depth the mirror creates between the two.
This filming technique exaggerates the physical and emotional distance between Dani and Christian. During this scene, Christian dismisses her concerns, claiming that he “wasn’t keeping it from [her].” When Dani exclaims “you already have a plane ticket!” he responds with a not-so heartfelt “I’m sorry?”, a comment that demonstrates Christian’s insensitivity towards Dani.
With this filming technique, Aster allows the audience to see both Christian’s and Dani’s faces even while they face opposite directions. Because we usually don’t see both characters’ faces at the same time when a conversation is filmed in a traditional shot-reverse-shot pattern, this detail creates a feeling of unease in the relationship, laying the groundwork for what happens in Sweden.
We lose the mirror shot when Dani moves across the room to talk to Christian at close range. The literal distance Dani is covering here can also be interpreted as the distance she has to go to accommodate Christian’s indifference. She goes through considerable effort to apologize to him even though she’s the one who has been wronged. The emotional energy she exerts for him is exhausting to watch. This situation is a realistic expression of Dani’s anxieties about her relationship, a moment of realism before the horrors that take place at the commune. Based on this scene, we know that Dani would rather stay with someone who puts forth little effort to compromise or be vulnerable than face her fear of being alone.
The next significant shot we see involving Dani and mirrors takes place during the group’s initial arrival in Sweden. As the group nears the Hågra commune, the camera flips upside down to show the viewer a world that is literally topsy turvy. Our introduction to this reality is another mirror shot where Dani confronts her own reflection once at the commune. As Dani stares into her own eyes, her features begin to warp and enlarge in a grotesque fashion, resembling her sister’s and family’s faces after their deaths at the beginning of the film.
Within the world of the film, Dani’s warped perception of her reflection can be explained by the mushrooms she took with Christian and his friends when they first arrived in Sweden. However, this shot can also be interpreted as a depiction of Dani’s confused sense of self at this point in the story, because of both her relationship with Christian and her family’s death. Dani’s sister is shown in the background of the mirror, wearing the same exhaust pipe that was strapped to her face when she died, vividly showing that Dani feels haunted by her family’s death and her inability to have stopped it from occurring. Since their death morbidly prevented Christian from breaking up with Dani at the beginning of the film, her sister’s appearance in this shot can also represent Dani’s nagging sense that something is wrong with her relationship. Additionally, because Dani is left alone after her family’s death, this shot could be a reflection of Dani’s fear of isolation that drives her to stay with someone entirely wrong for her.
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Runes
In addition to mirrors, Aster also uses runes to characterize Dani and Christian’s relationship. As the film progresses and Dani and Christian’s relationship falls apart, the Hågra people gift Dani her own Swedish garb—mostly eerily pristine white clothes, a sign of their acceptance of her and expulsion of Christian. The scenes in which Dani wears these clothes are ones of empowerment and community. In one scene, for example, Dani is dressed in the bright white, almost knee length dress of the Hågra and dances around the maypole with the other Hågra girls until they drop from exhaustion. The last girl standing is crowned May Queen, the highest honor bestowed at the Hågra’s summer solstice festival. While Dani participates in the May Queen dance, Christian betrays Dani in a bizarre, ritualistic orgy.
The runes that we see sewn into Dani’s Swedish clothes represent her move away from Christian and towards self-discovery. According to an article published in The Week, the Radio (ᚱ) rune sewn into Dani’s Swedish clothing means “journey” in the Nordic tradition. In the context of Dani and Christian’s relationship, this could be interpreted as a marker of Dani’s journey to the realization that she does not need Christian in her life. A defining moment in this turn happens when Dani wails in despair at Christian’s cheating and the rest of the girls from the commune wail along with her in a pile on the floor to comfort her. This results in a hyper-expressionistic show of female support and the catastrophic impact of infidelity.
The other rune featured in Dani’s Hägra clothing is the Dagaz (ᛞ), which means “new beginning.” This rune conveys almost the same meaning as the Radio rune, except this one implies that Dani’s journey will result in a new start, or symbolic rebirth, once she has rid herself of Chrisitan. Aster chooses to focus on these runes, which are sewn into Dani’s shoes, right before she begins her May Queen dance competition with the other girls in the commune. Dani’s rebirth then becomes reliant on a supportive community.
On the other hand, the runes on Christian’s clothing are linked to his masculinity. The most prominent rune imprinted on Christian’s Swedish robe is the Tiwaz (ᛏ), which is associated with the Norse god Tyr and with masculine power and energy. Furthermore, Christian only wears Hågra clothing during the orgy he participates in with the Hågra women, a role he is only needed for because of his sex. This emphasis on Christian’s masculine energy makes him a larger symbol for manhood and the most abhorrent qualities of masculine behavior associated with mistreatment of women. The inclusion of this rune on Christian’s Swedish robe also conveys that his masculine energy is not welcome in Dani’s new female-centered family. When Christian is anointed with his robe, he only wears it for a short time before he is stripped naked of it and thrown out of the orgy ceremony chamber after he’s done his part. When he is stripped of the robe, Christian is stripped of his association with the commune and thus Dani’s new sense of place and self. This image presents Christian, and maleness in general, as a commodity. Christian’s masculinity is only welcome when he can serve the commune and procreate with one of its members in an orgy, and once he has served his purpose, he is emasculated in the most humiliating way: stripped naked and thrown out into the open air.
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Bears
Another key symbolic tool used to represent Christian is the bear. With her new power as the May Queen, Dani chooses to sacrifice Christian by burning him inside of a bear carcass. This image is doubly disturbing: first because Christian is inside a bloody bear carcass which children of the commune are shown gutting earlier in the film, but also because Christian looks almost childlike with his face framed by the furry bear’s as we see him for the last time.
Christian’s fate was foreshadowed at the beginning of the film by a painting in Dani’s bedroom back at home. In this painting, there is a little girl wearing a crown, miniscule in front of a large bear whose nose she is stroking. If this bear represents Christian, its size shows that he is a large presence in Dani’s life, but one that she also loves. His presence is one that she spends too much fruitless energy on, but one that she will eventually overthrow, symbolized by the little girl’s crown and its associations with power. Dani certainly achieves empowerment by the end of the film when she is crowned the May Queen, leading to her literal and symbolic courage to kill Christian, or in a real-world sense, break up with him.
In the Nordic culture that the Hågra hail from, the bear is considered the most powerful and ferocious animal. Norse men would even wear a bear skin to battle to channel the power of the bear against their enemies. It’s curious that Christian wears a bear skin, the ultimate symbol of Norse manliness, at his most vulnerable moment—when he is sedated, awaiting his death. Because of this symbolism, Christian’s brutal, shameful death is associated with both the shortcomings of masculinity and the triumph of Dani’s femininity.
Dani wears a ball gown of flowers as she watches Christian burn. Flowers are almost universally associated with femininity—Dani becomes a symbol of extreme femininity while Christian embodies the extreme masculinity. If you read the movie as symbolic of the arc of a relationship, Dani’s act of murdering Christian is synonymous with her decision to break up with him following a cheating incident represented by the orgy. Her actions are thus a “win” in this story, but whether this win is positive or negative is up to the viewer. Dani smiles to herself as the film closes, yet the Hågra around her scream in pain, perhaps representing the dual joy and suffering that comes with cutting toxic people from one’s life. Regardless, Dani’s individual triumph over Christian and the negativity he brought to her life have wider reaching effects because of these symbols. Her victory becomes a symbolic triumph for women with emotionally abusive boyfriends. In Aster’s world, they can watch them burn in hell.
Mediocre Issue | November 2019