[00:00:19] Speaker A: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the final Girl on 6th Avenue podcast. My name is Carolyn Smith Hillmer and I am 16, 6th Avenue's very own final girl, and this week we are, as promised, going to be talking about another Ari Aster film titled Midsommar. Midsommar is a 2019 release rated r. Two hour and 28 minutes runtime. It is a little long, and for me that's not necessarily a problem.
But I do know that for some out there, it is so always nice to give you a heads up on what we're looking to expect, but this is another masterpiece from Ari Aster. I don't think that he'll ever release something that I won't like or won't watch, or won't appreciate for that matter.
But looking for our IMDb Bible description of this film before we get started, we have a couple traveling to northern Europe to visit a rural hometown's fabled Swedish Midsummer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.
Written and directed by Ari Aster, starring Florence Pugh, who is one of just the world's most absolutely incredible talents right now. She's so incredible.
Jack Rainer are two main characters, and there's also eyebrows. Will Poulter from we're the Millers who plays a character in this film that doesn't really resonate with me.
It's not like a character that I would have ever imagined him playing. But hey, I can always appreciate some good range.
And before we get started, just in case you have forgotten out there, the final girl on 6th Avenue podcast is part of the of incredible, morbidly beautiful network. Morbidly beautiful is your home for horror. If you love horror in any way, shape or form, then you are welcome at Morbidly beautiful. You can find my podcast and many others like it, such as the all American Spook show and not your final girl, as well as insightful film reviews and so much more, head on over to morbidlybeautiful.com to check it all out and show us some love. We have some really talented and incredible people that work on this network and any support is always appreciated.
So I think I don't want to waste any time.
I hate to waste time, and that's why I always put such an emphasis on it.
But particularly for this one, since the movie is pretty lengthy, I think we should just jump right in.
So our movie opens on a painted tapestry.
This tapestry may appear at first glance as something that's not super important, but it quite literally tells you everything you need to know about the entire film is in this tapestry. So hint, hint. If you turn this movie on and want to pause on that for a while and take a good look, we.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Cut into a snowy landscape with some beautiful singing and an immediate cut by a ringing phone. And Danny, our main woman, our main leader, she's leaving a voicemail for her parents about her sister.
And we get a view as the audience of her parents in bed. They're sleeping, and Danny is reading an email from her sister on her computer over and over and over again. And after trying to stop herself, she ends up calling Christian, her boyfriend, to ask if he still wanted to come over and hang out later. And she's fighting back tears. And you can tell she really feels bad that she is calling him. Like she doesn't want to bother him.
And he tells her, you need to stop letting your sister do this to you. Like your sister does this to you all the time. You let her. You are enabling her behavior because every time she ghosts you or gets unresponsive, you choose to try to give her a lot of attention and show she's really concerned about her sister, obviously, and she does admit to Christianity. Yo, my sister is bipolar.
I'm not letting her do anything.
She is mentally ill. I'm trying to be supportive. It's my family member.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: And.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: You know, Christian basically, in a roundabout way, tells Danny that you should be lucky to have me. You know, I. I'm all you have. Like, you're not alone. You have me. And off the bat, I mean, I don't like this guy. And neither should you.
Neither should you.
So Danny then calls a friend a girlfriend, and she's like, I feel like I need Christian too much.
And her friend's like, okay, but he's your partner. That's kind of what of he's there for. So, you know, what good would he be if he wasn't there for you? And in trying times, and Christian is at the pizza place with his friends, and all of his friends are trying to convince him to break up with Danny. And, I mean, it's just not fair. It's just not a fair thing to do. And he's like, kind of, you know, like, well, maybe I will, but it's not the right time right now.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Or.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm still thinking about it. You know, he really doesn't give a firm answer, which feels unfair.
And she calls again. His friends are irritated.
She is screaming, crying. We find out as the audience that the pretty snowy place we saw at the very beginning is actually where Danny's parents live. And as we take a view onto the house, we see fireman arriving to find Danny's parents and her sister all dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. And so Christian comes over and holds Dani while she screams and she sobs. And I don't know how Ari Aster or, like, I don't know what type of direction he gives to his women lead actresses. I mean, Toni Collette in hereditary lets out some of the most incredible displays of pain and grief, hurt and just the deepest sorrows of your soul.
And Florence Pugh does the same thing, obviously in her own way, while she's screaming and crying on the couch in Christian's arms. And Christian, we know already he was wanting to break up with her or was thinking about it or was talking to his friends about it. So he's not really the person we want to see taking care of her in this moment.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: So already, as the audience, we're conflicted. But then we get the title screen.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: And the next day, we see Dani. She's pretty much catatonic.
I don't think that that is a unreasonable way to be after such a great tragedy.
But she's laying in bed. She's not moving.
She is clearly grief stricken, obviously very depressed.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: She.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: She's not even sleeping. She's just kind of, like, staring at the wall.
And I think we've all been there. We know what that feels like.
And as we zoom out onto the wall that she's staring at, we have a nice painting of a girl, a little girl, kissing the nose of a giant brown bear.
That's important.
And Christian tells Danny, hey, I'm gonna go to a party.
I was just gonna go for, like, 45 minutes or so.
What kind of fucking asshole leaves someone to go to a party the day after.
The day after both of her parents and sister die, are murdered?
Only the keeper, the only man a girl can dream of. Christian.
So she's like, you know, actually, I wasn't really sleeping, so I'll go with you. I want to go with you.
And I think we've all kind of been there, too, where we are so desperate to not be alone that we'd be willing to go somewhere that we really don't want to go and do something that we really don't want to do just so we can be with other people. And I think that's where. That's where Dani's at right now, because she's really in no position to be going to a party.
At the party, Danny finds out that Christian and his friends are going to Sweden, which is a really convenient way to find out things about your own life partner.
One guy is going to go for a thesis and everyone else is going to go just for fun. And Danny had no idea that this trip was happening.
And Christian's like, no, it's cool. I just decided to go today.
And Danny's like, well, that's funny because you already have a plane ticket, so it doesn't really seem like something that you did on a whim, but cool.
And he feels he's already 1ft out on the relationship anyway, so this doesn't really feel like a big deal to him. But he's like, oh, you're attacking me. You're being angry. Angry, scary woman being so upset.
And she immediately cowers. And she's like, I'm actually not that upset. Like, I'm not angry. I just wanted to know. It's kind of embarrassing to find out things about my partner from other people that I don't talk to that much.
And she has to beg him to stay with her, which is obviously, again, the whole thing's very weird to me.
The next day, Christian is like, sitting with his friends in the living room and he's like, hey, I just want you guys to know that I invited Danny to come to Sweden with us. And so if you guys could just act, you know, excited about it or whatever, she's going to be here in a few minutes. I just, it felt right. Felt like the right thing to do.
And the other guys are kind of like, eh, okay, they don't really care too much, but they also don't seem thrilled. So she shows up at the apartment, and the swedish guy in the group, Pelle, is the one who invited all these people to go to Sweden with him. So immediately Pelle is like, I love Danny that you're coming. That's great. And he tries really hard to make her feel welcome.
He talks to her about, you know, the week that they're going to get there and shows photos of the commune that he grew up on that they're.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Going to be staying at.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: And he also tells Danny that he lost his parents as well at a young age. And so he really knows what that feels like. If she needs someone to talk to, he's happy to be that person. Person.
Very open, very compassionate, very empathetic coming from Pele, which is nice because, you know, no one else in this group of guy friends is particularly empathetic at all.
And then one of my possibly favorite scene transitions of all time takes place in which Dani gets up to go to the bathroom because she physically cannot take the discussion. Like, she can't emotionally or physically handle it when people bring up the fact that she doesn't have parents anymore. And it really freaks her out because, again, it just happened. It's not like this happened a year ago or two years ago or whatever. This was, like, all in the span of a few days.
So she's like, oh, thank you so much. I have to go to the bathroom. I can't breathe.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: I just need a second.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: And he's, you know, Pella's very sorry. He's sad that he made her feel this way.
She goes to the bathroom, and while she's, like, looking at herself in the mirror, trying to calm down, this overhead shot shows the bathroom and the apartment get converted into the bathroom on the airplane, which is really awesome. It's one of my favorite scenes. And I know that sounds very simple, but you should watch it. It really is a masterful scene transition, rather.
And she, you know, she leaves the bathroom. She goes and sits down next to Christian.
They have some turbulence, but then they land in Stockholm.
Very jealous. Always wanted to go there. Hopefully we'll go soon.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: And this is where things with eyebrows. Yeah. His name in the movie is Mark, but will poulter, for me, will forever be eyebrows. So he's still eyebrows here. I'm sorry. I'll try to remember to refer to him as Mark, but Mark. This is when he.
On their four hour drive from Stockholm to the commune, Mark has some really enlightening comments about hot women and homogeneity. So that's nice coming from him, I suppose.
When they finally arrive at the commune grounds, they meet another man named Ingmar, who brought Simon and Connie as his guests from London.
And Ingamar brings everyone shrooms. They're gonna do drugs. I don't know how safe that is.
You know, they're outside, it's in the heat, and they don't know any of these people, I guess. I don't know.
Maybe they're all really experienced mushroom takers in the commune. I don't know. But it seems kind of strange because they're doing it where they're not anywhere near the rest of the members of the commune. So it seems like kind of like a secret thing. Anyway. I don't think that it's ever something that's easy to endorse doing. I don't think it's easy to endorse doing drugs. In front of people you don't know. So for anyone out there who likes to do drugs, that's fine, if that's your prerogative, please do them safely.
Don't show up at a random commune in Sweden and take drugs from people you don't know. Just a word of advice.
So anyways, Danny is kind of like, wow. So my parents died three days ago. And two days ago, I found out that my boyfriend of, you know, three and a half years was gonna go to Sweden and not tell me. And then I just got off an airplane, and I'm in a different time zone and a different part of the world of people that I don't know at all. So, you know, shrooms don't really sound like a good thing for me right now.
And I think that that is totally understandable, Danny.
And Christian is like, okay, well, if you're not going to do them, then neither am I. Because, you know, it would be weird to make you be the only person who doesn't. And she's like, no, seriously, it's okay. Like, if you want to do them, that's great. I just need a minute. I don't want to do it right this second. I might want to do it later.
And so Ingemara is like, hey, I have a tea version if that would be better for you so you don't have to eat them. It might help with the taste. It might help with whatever concerns you might be having. And she's like, you know what? Actually, okay, that makes me feel comfortable. I will do that. So fast forward. They're all tripping pretty hard.
They're commenting about how the sun is out. It's 09:00 p.m. Mark is very upset by these observations. He's not loving the fact that the sun is still out at 09:00 p.m.
And Pelle asks if anyone can feel the energy from the earth. And Dany has her hand, like, out on the ground with her fingers spread apart. And she has these visuals of the grass growing through her hand.
And Mark is asking everyone if they can all lay down or sit down on the ground because it makes him feel more comfortable. And Josh, it's kind of like, yeah, I guess, but I don't really want to. He kind of does so reluctantly, but they all end up, for the most part, being okay, except for Danny. So Dany starts having a panic attack, and she goes for a walk, and we see that the trees start to distort as she's entering this outhouse, like a bathroom.
And she's looking in the mirror and she sees a girl in the mirror standing behind her. So she runs out into the woods and she lays down and falls asleep outside for like 6 hours and has a dream about her dead family.
So the poor girl can't catch a break.
Finally, Christian. And everybody finds her. And the sun is still out. Shocker. I know. Sweden in the summer. It's not like it's close to the arctic Circle or anything. It's not close to the top of the world. It's. No.
So they all walk finally to the actual commune.
And everyone is beautiful and dressed in white. And there are some children playing a game called Skin the Fool. And there's an opening ceremony. And during the ceremony, Josh, our thesis writer, takes a photo with his cell phone, which is kind of disrespectful, but whatever. He's not. He's not my. He's not in my life, but he's taking photos. And Mark is vaping. So everybody has their different priorities.
And there is a girl with red hair, and she does this common thing that is done in the movie where you breathe out before you breathe in.
So it would be like if that picks up for anybody, you push the air out and then you suck it back in really fast.
And, yeah, she's. She's playing skin the fool. She has her eyes on Christian. Dead set. Like I said, ladies or anyone else who like men, Christian is a prize. And if you don't want to date or marry a man like Christian, I'm sorry.
You're wasting your time. You don't know what you're missing. And so only Pelle remembers that this is Dany's birthday, actually. And he gives her a drawing, and she's so touched by it, she's kind of like, well, I really hope Christian doesn't find out about this. But only Pelle remembered it was her birthday, so fuck what he thinks.
On a tour, Connie asks how long Danny and Chris have been together. And I know this is really surprising. Christian does not know. He has no idea how long they've been together.
Danny answers, but Simon and Connie are engaged, so that's really nice.
There is a bear in a cage that we see in a tapestry of a quote unquote love story where a girl feeds a guy some of her pubic hair.
And this is in, you know, plain sight. And I know that it sounds like I'm saying this is really easy, but I've seen this movie four times, and I will tell you that I just put two and two together on this one. So it is a girl feeding a guy some of her pubic hair.
How would you like to find that in your breakfast?
They have these giant sleeping houses, like, you know, quarters full of twin size beds and everything. They look very cozy, actually. And for someone who doesn't like to sleep alone, that sounds like a dream come true for me.
They talk about ages as seasons. The commune believes that different ages represent different seasons.
So from zero to age 18, that would be spring.
From 18 to 36 would be your summer, 36 to 54 would be your fall, and 54 to 72 would be your winter. And everything in the community and your role within it are dictated by the season of life that you are in. So even down to where you sleep, everything is dictated by this season. A lot of emphasis on the seasons.
Pele secretly reminds Christian that today is Dany's birthday. So how fucking embarrassing for him. And Christian gives her, like, a piece of bread cake with a candle in it that he can't seem to light or keep lit at all, and sings her happy birthday in a very half assed way. That Dany is kind of, like, cool, I guess. Thanks. But I know that you didn't remember.
And now we have our first ceremony the next day, and only Josh knows what the ceremony is.
But if you take a nice look again at the painting, lots of paintings, lots of tapestries. If you take a nice look at the tapestry painting situation behind Dany's bed, there is a hint at what is to come.
So the next day, they sit down to eat a meal, and you stand up. Everybody stands at the table before they.
Before it feels right to sit down. So they have, like, this moment of silence. And when it, quote unquote, feels right to sit down, then you all sit down and eat.
At the very head of the table, there are two elderly people. One is a man, one is a woman.
Everybody eats. And then they go to a small cliff. I guess it's really not that small based on what I'm about to tell you. So I'm sorry, but essentially this is a.
Yeah, this is not good, what I'm about to tell you. So remember how I said that your winter is until you're 72 years old? And remember how I didn't say there was any other ages after that? That was intentional.
So everybody eats.
They go off to this small cliff mountain thing.
The two elderly people go up to the top, and you are to throw yourself off of this cliff because you're 72 and you're not allowed to live that long.
So they both jump off to kill themselves on impact, basically is the goal. And the woman does die on impact, the man does not.
So when you don't die on impact, it's okay. It's actually okay because there's a man with a ginormous life size, like, hammer from Looney Tunes Bugs bunny, okay.
That he can use to smash your head in for you. So it's okay if you don't die on impact because this dude will take care of it for you. So no worries.
And Danny's obviously freaking the fuck out because, um, I don't know if you remember or if anybody in this movie fucking cares that her parents are dead and they just died.
Just died.
Yeah. So honestly, if I were her, I don't even. I probably would have passed out. I can't believe she even know made it through the whole thing.
And yeah, Simon and Connie are protesting and yelling and being loud and obnoxious and, you know, trying to say, like, you can't make these people do this. Like, I can't believe nobody's helping. Like, you guys need to help these people. This is horrible. Why would you do this? Why would you allow this? Blah, blah, blah.
A woman in the community is basically like, guys, shut the fuck up.
We all do it. 75 years old, we do it. Or, sorry, 72. 72 years old. We're jumping. I'm going to jump. Everyone here is going to jump. It's fine.
We all agree to do it.
It's an honor to die this way. We choose when we die.
That's very humane, actually. I will say that. So Christian, after this, tells Josh, because remember, Josh is there for a thesis. And Christian is like, you know what? Fuck that guy. I'm writing my thesis on this, too. And it would surprise you also to know that Christian got into a graduate school program, which up until this point, I mean, what grad program on planet Earth would take this motherfucker? I don't know. Apparently one will.
And Josh is kind of like, well, that's why, you know, why would you do that to me?
And I did listen to an interview with Ari Aster that I'll link in the show notes with a podcast in the Ringer network, the big picture. And he tells the interviewer, like, I couldn't think of anything more hilarious than people fighting over a fucking thesis. I mean, how hysterical is that? That's so insanely ridiculous. So. And it is. It's really. It really is funny.
So in order to get a one up on Christian, Josh is like, okay, cool. So I'm gonna go to Pelle first, and I'm gonna ask Pelle.
There's some scripture, you know, around. And Josh is like, okay, cool. I'm gonna ask Pelle if I can write down this scripture for my thesis.
And Pelle's like, well, it's not allowed. And just in case you're wondering, you know, Christian already asked me and I told him the same thing, so I'm not giving each of you different information. It's not allowed. But Pelle, after that, he's very annoyed. But after that, he goes from being annoyed to having a heart to heart with Dany about her parents. And he puts this emphasis on home.
Does Christian feel like home? Does he make you feel held? Does he make you feel warm? And, you know, all the things that your romantic partner is supposed to make you feel?
And she's freaking out. She's very upset. And later that night, she asks Josh for a sleeping pill. People in this movie are just overwhelming her, right? Everybody overwhelms her all the time. So, you know what? If she needs a sleeping pill, she needs a sleeping pill. Josh gives her one, and she has a dream that all the guys get in the car in the middle of the night. There's no cars that I know of, by the way, but they all somehow get in a car and drive away and leave her there.
And in the middle of the night, the red headed girl who was looking at Christian while playing skin the fool is putting something wooden that we can't really see under Christian's bed. And Josh notices.
So it turns out it is a love rune that was placed under his bed. And we there again see a painting in this sleeper house of the next ritual that we are to expect.
And Pele, the next day tells Josh that he can use some scripture only if they don't use, like, any names or locations. And that he has to split it with Christian. So they, you know, he agrees that that's okay. He's gonna split it with Christian. That's fine. And Josh shows Pelle the love rune that was placed under Christian's bed, confirms that that's what it is and just kind of laughs it off.
Haha. Very funny.
Maybe topele. I don't know that that would be funny to me.
And when we remember our friend eyebrows, we see him peeing on a tree.
And that doesn't sound like anything crazy, honestly, because I don't know where they would pee other than those outhouses. And I didn't see very many of them. So Mark is peeing on this tree.
And an old man, an elder in the community, is freaking losing his mind over the out fact that Mark is peeing on this tree.
And other than the fact that Mark is a disrespectful american in another country, at first I'm kind of like, it is just a tree. But it turns out it's not just a tree. It is the communal ancestral tree. And so it's very important that you don't pee on it and don't do anything to desecrate it.
And Mark is kind of still upset even after. Even after it gets explained to him why you can't do that. He's like, still not really getting it, but whatever. This dude wanted to go to Sweden to fuck bitches and do drugs, and that is not what he got. So later we see elder ode telling Connie that someone drove Simon to the train station.
She's looking everywhere for him. And the elder is like, okay, Connie, there's no need to freak out. Like, she's clearly upset. And she's like asking Dany if she's seen Simon anywhere. And the elder explains that the truck only held two people. So, um, they're gonna send the truck back for her and they're gonna take her to the train station too, so she can get the fuck out.
And Christian, because of his newfound interest in this thesis that I'm not convinced he's ever going to write, is talking to, um, commune member and just asking some questions. And Danny comes up to him and is like, oh my God, did you hear that Connie and Simon are leaving? And that Simon already left? And he's like, oh, that's too bad.
Then he looks at the commune member and he's like, so there's probably like a big incest problem here, right? Because everybody looks the same name. And if it's such a closed community, like, how would you go about reproduction?
And Danny's like, why the fuck would you ask something like that to somebody? Not only that, but the guy explains, you know, bloodlines are well preserved. They have to invite outside people sometimes. And Danny is looking at Christian just horrified.
Josh is one upping Christian because while Christian is asking this dude about incest, probably because he has some incest porn fetish that he's suppressing from Dany. Josh is doing the real work for the thesis, and he is with an elderly in the community looking at the ritual books, and they're all written in these in like a symbolic language. So, like, he can't read it and only people in the community can.
And he's asking because the guy is like, well, we have, you know, well over, like, a hundred editions of this book. Like, it's ever evolving. We're always writing it.
And Josh is like, okay, that's cool, because, like, when you think about the Christian Bible, right? You're thinking, okay, I mean, somebody wrote it.
I'm not gonna debate you on who did, but it was a person, like a regular human.
So I'm not, I'm not debating that factually with anybody.
But since the Christian Bible is done and written and it's not being updated and it's not like an ongoing thing, you know, it's done, it's interesting that these ritualistic texts are being, they're being updated, and then they're constantly being written, which I think is kind of a cool, cool way of living. But anyway, the elder explains that the Oracles write in the books, and the oracles are people who are not bound by the same, like, restrictions that an ordinary person would be bound by. And I'm 100% do not not want to be disrespectful in any form or fashion when I talk, when I try to talk about this. But the oracles are what I can. And as the audience and what I've seen online can only be assumed, these oracles are a product of either incest or are born with severe deformities to the face, and they are the only ones who are not, who are able to continue to write these books.
And so Josh is doing the hard work.
Probably going to get a dissertation out of this one day if he makes it out right.
And Danny is looking around for people. You know, she's just. She's just a lost woman. I just feel so bad for her. And she gets invited to come help in the kitchen.
All the women are in the kitchen preparing lunch, and another woman, you know, says, you're so beautiful. And she's like, no, you are so beautiful. That's. Thank you so much. You know, it's very flattering. They all finally sit down to enjoy their meal. I it's always sunny, so I don't know, like, what time of day it is. And they're talking about how weird it is that Simon left without Connie. And Mark is like, yeah, I saw Connie earlier. She looked like she was trying out for the fucking sprinting olympics because she was running from something. And another guy interjects, and he's like, actually, no.
Simon called the landline, and he spoke to Connie, and he calmed her down, and she wanted to excuse herself. So I took her to the train station. It's no big deal. Everybody's fine.
And Danny's just like, I just don't know why he would leave without her. It's so strange.
But don't worry. Christian, the man of everyone's dreams, says, well, I'm sure it was just a communication. Like a miscommunication. It was just a communication issue. Like, I don't think he intentionally left without her. But Danny's like, um, you know what? Fuck you. And also I can see you doing that.
Mark is getting stared down by the man who yelled at him about peeing on the tree. And Josh and Christian get into a tiffy about asking each other questions about who got what information, when all of a sudden, Mister Christian is eating his meal and pulls out a hair from his mouth, which just so happens to be a pubic hair. So remember the thing I said about the love story painting where a girl cuts off her pubic hair and feeds it to a guy? Well, here it is.
A young woman asks Mark to leave the table so that she can show him something. And so he leaves, and Josh is stuck in, like, a state of. Just not sure. Angry, upset, what have you. Weird feeling. Danny gets another sleeping pill from him later that night, and good old Josh decides to sleep in his tennis shoes, which we only know that that can mean one thing. He is on the run.
But it's okay. He's actually not running far. He's actually only just going across the commune to try to get back inside of the library so that he can take photos of the text that he was already told not to take photos of.
But you know what they say. If you tell someone not to do something, it only makes them want to do it more. So, yeah, and now disrespectful after someone asked you not to, but gave you all the other information you could possibly need. So he's, like, taking photos. And there's a mirror. It looks like a two way mirror.
And we can see that there's someone sneaking up behind him. And it looks like Mark. I mean, Josh even says, dude, mark, why are you coming up in here? What the fuck is going on?
But on a second look, it's actually someone from the commune wearing mark's face.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: So.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not Mark, but.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: I.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Don'T really know what else there is to say about that. And this is where things take a turn for the worst. So fake Mark. Distraction. Another person comes up, hits Josh in the back of the head. He's convulsing on the ground bleeding, what have you.
He never goes back to his bed.
The next morning, they are told at the table by a leader that the 19th book of their text has been stolen or gone missing. And they don't want to point any fingers, but they just want to know, hey, can somebody bring it back? You know, we're not pointing any fingers or naming any names, but, you know, after lunch, some more elders say it's weird that your friend Mark and Josh are both not here. Where are they? And Christian is like, no, I swear, I don't have anything to do with this. We don't know anything about this.
And during this little interrogation, a woman in the commune says, can you come over to this house with me? They'd like to see you.
And there is some mixing up of some tea going on. Now, I don't know what tea. And this is like community tea. This is like Christian is somewhere else, but I don't know what's in this tea. It could be something psychedelic, possibly, or it could just be regular herbal tea, I'm not sure. But this is another ritual that they're about to go through. And this one is one in which all of the women are made to wear flower crowns and are dressed in these beautiful white and embroidered dresses and outfits. And they are to dance until they can't dance anymore. And whoever is the last person dancing is crowned the May queen.
So Christian goes in the house, meets with the woman Dani off dancing, and very, you know, she's thriving.
I don't know what drug was in that water, but she all of a sudden can speak Swedish, which is kind of crazy. And she's tripping balls off of whatever it is that she took. And Christian comes back to see her dance and see her win. And while he's sitting there watching her, another member of the commune comes and offers him a drink. And he's like, I don't want to drink this. I don't know what this is. And she's like, well, it's like spring water. It's fine. It's supposed to open you up to the experience and the influence and what have you. Like, it's okay. And he goes, well, I don't want to have a bad trip, you know? And the woman's like, you really won't. I promise. It's fine. Like, you have to trust me. Okay, fine. So he drinks it.
Dani wins.
She wins the competition, the dancing, and she is crowned May queen. And when she's crowned, she's given a really ornate and vibrant flower crown to wear. And a like vest to go with it. I also want to point out at this, at this time in the film that everyone is wearing white and is looking their best and Christian is wearing a sweaty navy blue shirt and doesn't fit in with anyone else. And he quite literally doesn't have a seat at the table.
Everyone else sits down to eat after Pelle gives a massive kiss on the lips to Dany when she wins May queen.
And finally, when Christian sits down to eat at the table, he looks so completely out of place and he's staring at her like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, what is going on? What is happening to me? He feels very targeted.
So Dani, because she won, may queen, is sitting at the head of the table and she decides when it feels right to sit down and eat, and she decides when it's time to actually start eating. So good for her. We love to see a win for the main character here. And even though she looks not very happy to be crowned this, this honor, Christian looks even less happy for her. So there's that. But because Danny won, she is required to eat a slice of herring in its entirety, which she tries to eat but spits out. I cannot imagine that. I hate herring myself. And I can understand the aversion.
Christian is almost in tears and is sitting at the table and asks someone next to him what the fuck is going on. His pupils are enormous and he clearly is so uncomfortable, he doesn't know what to do with himself.
The man claps in his face, basically saying to snap out of it. And he is so offended. He's like, why would you do that to me? And everything in the shot with him starts to swirl and contort and move like it's breathing.
And the woman sitting next to Dani says, you are now our family. We're like sisters. This is so great. And Dani just has pure joy on her face.
When we look back to Christian, though, he is looking at the girl with the red hair. Her name is Maja. And Maja is basically propositioning Christian to follow her away from the table with pretty exaggerated eye contact.
And they get up and they go off to this other little building like a ritual room.
Meanwhile, Dany is getting treated like a literal queen where she is being pulled in a chariot all on her own, which is really something special. And she asks if Christian would be able to ride in it with her. And she's told no. The. The queen has to ride alone. So you need to forget about his ass, especially because of what he is about to go do.
So he shows up into this building, right? And he. Majo went in there first. Majo is in there. He goes in there and he's wearing now fucking finally, he's dressed respectfully, wearing his dress whites, I will refer to them as affectionately. And he goes into this building.
Maja is butt ass naked on the floor.
Yeah, I mean, spread eagle. Okay? And he is basically there for the purpose of taking Maja's virginity. And it gets better because it's a spectator sport, these things. And so there are older women from the community, they are all watching and moaning with her and like mimicking her and like kind of like pretending like they are taking part in this as well. So this is like a virginity losing type of ritual.
I don't know that everybody's is like this, but apparently in the Hagra commune that we are in right now, this is how things are done. So after Dany's official, like, crowning the whole ceremony, song, dance, chariot ride, whatever is over, she sees through a hole in the door of the building that Christian is in, that Christian is fucking Maja on the floor. So she's obviously horrified and she starts to cry. She has a complete breakdown. And while she's crying, the other women around her feel the feelings that she's also feeling. They start to cry. They start to verbalize these feelings, you know, loudly. And I mean, at least she's not suffering alone. And now there's another painting, which is nice because you know what that means. Tells you what is coming up next, which looks like a bunch of people and some fun fire.
So, you know, it's exciting.
So Christian finishes everything post nut clarity.
Oh, shit. Where's Danny? Right? Remember the girl you came with? So he goes out to find Danny and tries to, you know, talk to her. Like this is ever going to get fixed.
Instead of, you know, finding her to talk to her, he actually is lucky enough to find the leg of his friend of Josh. Josh's leg is buried in the ground, and then he subsequently finds Simon dead, who's like in a blood eagle.
So he's hung from each of his arms and legs individually and is completely cut open in the back and his lungs are exposed. From the back we can see them and they are still moving. So he is very much still alive. But it's okay. Christian doesn't have to look at this for too long because someone comes up behind him and blows a powder in his face and knocks him him out.
And now it's finally time for some bad bitch energy from Danny. So as per tradition for, you know, the entire ritual, like, all of the rituals put together, is part of one bigger ritual.
And Christian wakes up.
He is told that he cannot move or speak. So all he can do is, like, move his eyes around, basically, and look at things.
That sounds terrifying.
And Dany is on a throne of complete flowers. Like, her entire body is covered in flowers, except for her face. And she looks absolutely beautiful. And we are told by the harga community that there is to be nine people sacrificed on this day.
And in line of tradition, two elders, four outsiders, two volunteers, and one chosen by the queen are to be sacrificed. So Dany has brought Christian as an option and another villager.
And, I mean, it took her longer than I would like to say it would take me.
It would take me about half a second. But she picks Christian. Okay? And so four people are already gone.
We have Connie, Simon, Josh, and Mark.
The two volunteers are Ulf, which is the guy who got mad at mark for peeing on the ancestral tree. And Ingomar and Pele gets a nice shout out because he brought some sacrifices, and he brought an outsider for breeding purposes, that is Christian. And he brought the new may queen.
So go off Dany. She picks Christian.
All of the able bodied men in the village take the fully grown bear that we saw earlier.
And in this bear, they are going to put Christian. So they kill the bear. Completely disembowel the whole thing, put Christian in the corpse of said bear, and then they take him, the dead corpses of Simon, Connie, Josh, Mark, and then Ingamar, all to the golden teepee, which Christian had been eyeing at the beginning of the movie.
And they set it on fire.
So Christian is like, we know, not able to talk or move. And, yeah, they all burn completely alive.
It's definitely a sight to see. But, you know, the villagers also sacrificed some of their own people, and there were some volunteers.
So it's an emotional day for them as well. And although it is part of, you know, sacrifice, self sacrifice ritual practice, the villagers still feel. Feel a sense of closeness to these people. And as they cry or scream or suffer, so do the living members of the harga. They cry with them. They scream with them. They suffer with them so that they know that they are not alone.
And we get a nice big smile on the face. Danny.
And that's the end.
So I know that probably took a little longer than you thought it would, but there's a lot of.
There's a lot of important pieces of information that I think are obviously relevant, which is why I decided to tell you about them, and hopefully it was helpful. So let's talk a little bit more about it.
Overall, I think we can all agree that this movie is very much about family, belonging, loss, grief.
It's a very complex way of showing it, but it's also a breakup movie. Right. And from what it sounds like, of all the things that Christian has made sure to say, he had kind of wanted to break up with her anyway.
And after all of this time of mistreatment, Dani finally got the revenge that she needed, and she's constantly made to feel left out by Christian and his friends, like her entire family is dead.
Christian makes her feel unloved.
He makes her feel like a burden. He.
He is all that she has at this point.
I mean, he forgets her birthday. He could not be a worse partner because, no, he's not doing anything quote unquote wrong in the sense that, like, he's not making her. Yeah, I mean, he just isn't treating her the way that you treat someone that you love.
He doesn't make her a priority. He, you know, doesn't really seem to care much about her. He was gonna fucking go to another country without even telling her. I mean, the whole thing is.
Yeah, but he knows he can do it because she doesn't have anywhere else to go.
So when Pelle invites her to come to this festival, she feels included, and, you know, she craves more of this feeling. And who wouldn't, right? If I had no one and nothing and I could find a family, a family that really loved me. Not a family or sense of belonging like the one I get from my. My partner, that is Christian, who doesn't really give anything at all. But if I could find a group of people that really made me feel like I was at home who appreciated me, I think I would want that, too.
I think anybody would want that.
Why not?
And, you know, I know that it's not the same.
It's not the same type of love as the love you get from your actual biological parents or your adopted parent, anyone who raised you right, like your guardian, your parental figure. This is a different kind of love.
The love in this harga community is about putting the needs of others before the needs of your own. There are disciplines to follow.
There are practices to live by.
There is a sense of doing things for a greater purpose, like throwing yourself off of a cliff at the age of 72 because that's your winter and you're not allowed to live past then.
So it's not familial love in the sense that we know it and talk about freely, but it is still a type of familial love. And she's shown this by the other Harga members, and she's finally, because of the love and compassion that she's been shown, is able to get the strength to leave Christian for dead, literally.
So, in fact, they love her so much, they, like.
I mean, they do whatever she says, right? Like, they make her. They crown her the May queen. They could very easily have said, well, she's an outsider. She can't be may queen. No, no. They were willing to accept her as one of their own from the very beginning.
That is something really powerful, especially for someone in her position. And, yes, there are sacrifices.
No, not everyone chose to be one.
Right.
The film also kind of. And I don't know that this was intentional, necessarily, but to me, it also comments on the broader idea of, like, religion or faith based practices of some kind, or, like, a worship based way of living in which these people in the Harga community are in a. What I will refer to as a closed group. Okay? They live in an isolated area. They are pretty much self sufficient. They rely only on themselves and one another, and they're not really looking to bring in outside people.
And I'm going to elaborate on that by saying they want you to come and be there, and they're willing to accept you if you are willing to assimilate.
Now, Connie and Simon were not willing to do that. They were not willing to do that because they are.
Or were. Excuse me, they were ferociously fighting against the practice of killing yourself at the age of 72.
They caused a ruckus about the whole thing. They were disrespectful to the practice. And you know that. It's kind of like when you go to another country and you tell them that their food is gross.
You might think it is, but they may not. I mean, that's fucking rude. You don't do that. You don't show up to somebody else's customs and be like, well, this is wrong. You can't do this.
Not everybody lives the way that you live.
That's number one. Number two, Connie and Simon weren't white.
And if you look at everybody else in the community, they are all viciously white. Like, it doesn't get much more white than the white that they are.
So they had to go, okay, Josh also not white, but also, he betrayed the wishes of the elders by taking photos of their religious text, their ritual text. He knew he wasn't supposed to do it. He did it anyway. He was very disrespectful. He was taking photos from people from. Of people from day one. He knew he wasn't supposed to do it, and he did it anyway. And we can talk all day long about the ethics of, you know, for example, anthropologists going and interviewing and filming and documenting other cultures. And I guess it's more like ethnography, but we can talk about the ethics of that all day long.
That's kind of where he's in. He's in this, like, gray area where they're being as open as they're willing to be. But he's asking a lot of questions, and he's not really.
He's not abiding by the rules. Okay, so he has to go. Mark number four. Mark has to go because he peed on the tree.
He has to go because he peed on the tree. Like it's an ancestral tree.
The ashes of the dead are sprinkled on it. He peed on it. He has to go. And I don't know if you remember, but at the beginning of the movie, the, um. The children in the commune are playing a game, and Pelle says, oh, they're playing skin the fool.
Guess who the fucking fool is.
It's Mark.
His dumbass eyebrows landed him in a position where he peed on a tree that he wasn't supposed to pee on, and some other dude in the commune skinned him and wore his face around.
He's the fool. He got skinned. Okay, there it is.
So everybody gets kind of killed off as a sacrifice for this greater good because they all do something wrong or they do something offensive to the group.
[01:08:58] Speaker B: Okay, great.
[01:09:02] Speaker A: This entire movie is more frightening to me because it's filmed entirely in the daylight.
And in the same interview that I mentioned earlier with Ari Asteroid and on the big Picture podcast, again, I'll link. It's really, really good.
The only other example that he and the interviewer could come up with were for, like, films, kind of like folk, I would say, but shot in the daytime or like, brightly lit movies was the Wicker man. And the Wicker man is a good example, and it's a close example. However, the Wicker man has a.
It's, like, overcast. So it's not purely bright, it's not purely sunny. And the fact that this whole thing is being carried out in broad daylight is even more interesting and even more jarring to the average watcher because we're not expecting these events to take place in the broad daylight.
And another interesting thing that I can't imagine how stressful this was.
Ari Aster mentions in this same interview and in many other interviews that this film was actually filmed in Hungary and not in Sweden.
And so when we talk about the fact that it's sunny the whole time in this movie and it's bright the whole time, it's. Because it's that much more, like, impressive as a film. Because in Hungary, the daylight isn't as long as it is in Sweden during the summer.
So the time constraints under which this was being filmed is really crazy. I mean, you're doing, like, sun up to sundown. And it has to look consistent every single day. Like, if it were to rain, which I was in Budapest in the summer once, and it rained the whole time I was there. So I'm very familiar of that.
Summers in central Europe are very interesting in terms of weather. But that's really a true.
A heroic feat, I would consider it. And another thing I really appreciate about this movie is that, number one, I mean, it looks like what I imagine a psychedelic experience on drugs looks like. And if you pay attention, this movie is not one that's really meant to be watched on a small screen. So if I were you and you are telling me that you only have an iPad or you only have a laptop or a phone to watch this movie on, I would say, please don't watch it until you have a full size tv to watch it on. Or if you can blow it up on a projector, that would be even better.
Because when you see the movie in a larger scale, you see that the flowers and the trees and everything in the background throughout the movie is flowing, flowing and moving and distorting in a way that mimics what the.
Like what the people in the movie are seeing. So, like, for example, when they were taking mushrooms at the beginning of the movie. And we see that, you know, in Danny's hand, there is grass growing through it. Like, it's. It's nice that we can see that as well as maybe Dany also, you know, experiencing it through her own eyes. So that I can really appreciate. And it's a really creative use of the background. It also reminds me of how the people in the harga are.
They are also participating in a lot of things. So when Danny cries, they all cry, right? When they have their sacrifices at the end, everyone is crying, right? Everyone is screaming and losing their minds. Like they're also dying. Everything is felt together.
Everybody moves together. And I think that's kind of why I like and appreciate the environmental aspect.
So it's just a really powerful way to examine what a family really means.
Okay. And I mean that in the way that sometimes you don't choose a family, and sometimes you do.
Dani doesn't have a biological family anymore, but this new group of people take her in, and they turn her into a family member. She chooses to become a member of this family, even though it may not be the family she thought she was gonna have growing up.
It may not be what she always thought, but I would argue that some family, or as close as you can get, would be better than nothing.
And it's interesting, whenever Pelle is talking to her throughout the middle of the movie, and he's like, does Christian make you feel held?
Does it feel like he's holding you? Does it feel like he's loving you?
She doesn't answer the question.
[01:15:16] Speaker B: But what.
[01:15:16] Speaker A: I can tell you is that if she were asked that question again after her newfound involvement in her new family, she would certainly say that these people make her feel held and loved and cherished, and at least, at the very least, they just make her feel valued.
And that would be really hard to accept, especially because, you know, the fact of the matter is that we as the audience are just as lost in this, like, new community as the people visiting it are.
We don't speak Swedish either, or most audience members don't, I don't think, and neither do the characters. So we don't even know half the time what is being said. Because the swedish language doesn't really have any subtitles in this movie. That's a choice I can appreciate, but I would like to know. But I guess that was kind of the point, is that we don't know what we don't know. And. And we also, too, learn whenever Dany, all of a sudden, can speak Swedish. Like, maybe that's our way of being involved as well.
She's dancing in the. Around the maypole, and all of a sudden she can speak Swedish. And it's like, oh, my God. Maybe that was, like, her first inkling of maybe I really do belong here. And that was kind of the first time that the swedish language was subtitled in the movie. So that was an interesting choice as well.
Quickly, before we wrap things up, there's a really interesting article from looper.com written by Jane Harkness that I'm going to link for you guys in the show notes as well. And it's about, like, hidden things, little Easter eggs in the movie, things like that.
Ari Aster is always a master of detail, and whether the details are intentional or not.
And this article really highlights a lot of the minor things that I didn't necessarily catch.
But if you've listened to my hereditary episode, you will be familiar with all of the things that can be going on in the background or just like in the dialogue between the characters and XYZ.
Now more obviously, if you watch the movie more than once, you will notice the tapestries and the paintings and everything. Okay? That literally tells you the whole story of the movie. But there's other little things in the movie. Like in this article, for example, I didn't realize the first time that whenever Dani is reading these emails from her sister before she committed suicide, she had mentioned that it's black. Like everything is feeling black, or looking black, or seeming black. Like everything's dark. Nothing is going well, everything is bad. And whenever Dany is dancing before the May queen competition, dance takes off, the announcer, the older woman is talking about the tradition of the dance and she says that the dance is performed as like an anti force against the quote unquote black one.
And we don't know what the black one feel like. We don't know what that is because they don't explain it. It could be anything from a spirit that they believe in, or we could be talking about Dani's grief. Dani, whether she wants to admit it or not, is also in a stage in her life where everything feels black. I would say she has no one biologically anymore. Her family is gone and her boyfriend is a piece of shit. I mean, she has very little to work with right now. I would argue that Dani's life is also not bright yellow and happy go lucky, but that was really one that I had not, I had not thought about. So this black thing entity could be grief, it could be sadness, it could be mental illness. It could be anything in life of the sort that is negative or bringing any pain. So I'm going to link that article. I really suggest, if you're having any trouble following this movie too, to take a read at it, because it has some things that even after four watches that I didn't catch and that's just one of them. So I wanted to touch on that.
But that since we are almost at an hour and a half, I think is going to conclude my show for today.
So thank you very much for listening. I really appreciate the support. If you made it this far, you can find this podcast on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and Pocketcast. If you enjoyed the show, it would mean the world to me if you left me a five star review. And subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts from. For any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, requests, you can email
[email protected] that's the number six. Or you can send me a message on Instagram at Final girl on six. That's the number six. Thank you so much again for listening. My name is Carolyn Smith Hillmer. I am 6th Avenue's very own final girl. And until next time.
