Midsommar is a straightforward narrative and a morally complicated film, one that, like any good piece of art, seems to have grown far out of the intentionality that birthed it. Director Ari Aster’s called Midsommar a break-up movie, and in some ways it is. There’s definitely an argument to be made that the ritualized suicide that the Harga engage in when one reaches the ripe old age of seventy-two is a metaphor for ending a relationship that’s well past its expiration date. It’s better to end something than to let it limp along, one could say. And one could read murder/suicide as a distinct metaphor for a breakup as well, since it’s usually one person choosing to end things for both partners. But I think the movie is actually a little more complex than that. It’s ultimately about a woman turning into her sister, and how what I like to call the Mask of Exoticism prevents many viewers from actually understanding what’s going on.
Murder and suicide recur throughout the movie, and in every instance are partnered together. The film opens with a murder/suicide, the midpoint of the film is a murder/suicide, and the end of the film is a murder/suicide. But how differently do we react to the murder/suicides in the Harga village, versus that first murder/suicide in a snowbound house in Minnesota? Dictionary.com defines exoticism as “the quality of being attractive or striking through being colorful or unusual.” Each event is fundamentally the same, if you peel back what’s happening to the relevant first principles, and yet again and again I’ve heard people describe the Harga’s ritualized suicide as beautiful[1], in its own way. Why is that? Because the flower dresses and the pageantry and the breathing and singing in Swedish obscures what’s going on. The associated cultural relativism is even discussed in the movie, when Christian says “It’s - cultural. We abandon our elderly to nursing homes. I’m sure they find that disturbing.”[2]
Let’s talk about each murder/suicide, and how they might compare and contrast. First, the film opens on Terri Ardor running hoses from the exhaust pipe of a car in the garage of the Ardor home, duct-taping one to her own face and the other to the crack under her parents’ bedroom door. While we can’t know the exact circumstances, it’s assumed that Terri has made the decision to die for all three of them. Her final email to Dani reads “ i cant anymore - everything’s black - mom and dad are coming too. goodbye[3].” We’ve got a blend of willing and unwilling death, with Terri as the engineer.
Next, near the midpoint of the film we have the ritual of Ättestupa. In Harga culture, when someone reaches the age of seventy-two, they jump off a gigantic rock and (hopefully) smash their head open on a much smaller rock, killing themselves instantly. In one of the more unsettling and tense moments in the film, Dani watches as two village elders sing to each other, ascend the rock on litters, cut their palms open and smear blood all over a rune-etched rock, and then jump to their deaths. One can argue that the driver for this behavior is societal pressure (what’s never mentioned in the film is what would happen if a 72-year-old opted out of the ritual), and therefore the decision to die is not being made by the elders, but by younger people in the village who would presumably ostracize them or maybe finish the job themselves if the elders refused to jump. This parallels Terri’s murder of her parents, but in this case “Terri” is the entire village. The Mask of Exoticism descends, and prevents us from seeing that the seeming “choice” of the Harga elders is no choice at all. The film puts a capstone on this idea when the male elder[4], having succeeded in maiming himself but not dying during his jump, is dispatched via mallet by multiple younger villagers.
Directly after this shocking event Dani, traumatized and in tears after seeing what amounts to a reenactment of the deaths of her family, stumbles off alone while Christian shouts after her “Good idea. I’ll find you in a bit?[5]” (In the film, the line is changed to “Just take some time to yourself, okay” which is much more effective--all he gives her is time to herself). The nature of the idyllic community is revealed at the same time as the nature of her relationship with Christian is revealed to her. In the wake of her family’s death, he was only half-heartedly there for her, and now he’s abdicated any sort of responsibility completely. This reveal completely informs the final scene, and Dani’s subsequent behavior--horrific as it is to watch two people leap to their deaths she does start feeling more at home and mingling with the villagers afterwards. One could argue that’s because of Christian’s emotional abandonment, but I would argue it’s because she sees her own family in the Harga.
A few scenes later, the British couple who freaked out during the ritual and disrespected the village’s tradition in the eyes of the Harga (Simon and Connie) disappear. We later find out they’ve been murdered, making this scene in the middle of the movie a true murder/suicide. This is one of the changes from script to final film that made a lot of sense. In the script, they linger on for another twenty pages, and the ultimate confrontation between the Brits and the Harga involves a totally different ritual, the sacrifice of nine animals. More closely tying the deaths of the Brits to the ritual of Ättestupa makes a lot more sense for the narrative. One, for most people it’s more impactful, since Ättestupa involves the deaths of human beings. Two, it turns the Ättestupa ritual into more of a clear murder/suicide, effectively tying the scene to both the opening and closing scenes.
Finally, at the end of the movie nine people are sacrificed in the Sacred House. Some of these are unwilling murder victims (all of the “new bloods” as the movie calls them--Simon, Connie, Josh, Mark, and Christian), while some are not--Ulf and Ingemar get the “honor” of sacrificing themselves, since they were the ones who whacked the various visitors who dishonored Harga traditions. Ulf and Ingemar effectively commit suicide, in the same way as the two village elders from the ritual at the midpoint of the film--in fact their suicides are directly tied to the murders of Josh, Mark, Connie and Simon, since by Harga custom by killing these “new bloods” they signed their own death warrants. Dani presides over this final murder/suicide, in the same way as her sister Terri did at the beginning. She chooses Christian, sentencing him to death just like Terri sentenced their parents to death. Here it’s cloaked in ritual, done with fire instead of carbon monoxide (although positioned in the middle of the Sacred House, it’s possible Christian dies from smoke inhalation rather than the fire itself, which more perfectly mirrors the opening deaths--either way, the source of the carbon monoxide is a combustion engine, and fire is a more primal version of that very thing), but both Dani and Terri are engaging in the same activity--deciding that someone else should die, and then taking their own lives.
But wait, Dani doesn’t kill herself at the end of the movie--she’s watching Christian die and smiling: “A SMILE finally breaks onto Dani’s face...She has lost herself completely, and she is finally free. It is horrible and it is beautiful[6].” Except, in choosing to end Christian’s life, she’s also chosen to commit suicide. Yes, perhaps it’s another forty-six years in the future, and there’s always the chance another one of life’s perils might get her, but in this moment, by choosing the Harga, by choosing to feed the problematic person in her life to the flames, she’s choosing the ritual of Ättestupa.
And in doing so, she’s transformed fully into Terri, the nominal source of the grief that’s plagued and powered her for the past six months. The Mask of Exoticism prevents both her and most audience members from seeing this, and to be fair we experience the end of the movie with Dani while only seeing the aftermath of Terri’s actions. The tragedy lies in the fact that Dani thinks she’s found something different when she’s actually just traded one family that engages in murder and suicide for another (although due to the Harga’s size, it’s at least a bit more sustainable). In the end, Midsommar starts and ends exactly where it began--a fitting form for a movie about a recurring festival.
[1] Well, aside from the really dumb and superficial takes like “The Harga are eeeevvvvvillll.”
[2] Aster, Ari. “Midsommar.” 2018. 61. http://a24awards.com/film/midsommar/Midsommar_script.pdf
[3] Ibid, 1.
[4]Who, in the screenplay, is named “Dan”--an interesting allusion to our protagonist that I’ve not yet been able to parse.
[5] Ibid, 55..
[6] Page 115.