In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Midsommar, we talk about themes that help us understand the film.
Cast
- Dani Ardor – Florence Pugh
- Christian – Jack Reynor
- Josh – William Jackson Harper
- Mark – Will Poulter
- Connie – Ellora Torchia
- Simon – Archie Madekwe
- Pelle – Vilhelm Blomgren
- Ingemar – Hampus Hallberg
- Maja – Isabelle Grill
- Ulf – Henrik Norlén
- Inga – Julia Ragnarsson
- Written by – Ari Aster
- Directed by – Ari Aster
The themes and meaning of Midsommar
Winter and Summer, Grief and Renewal
Midsommar is actually a simple story told in an elevated way. Dani, after a period of grief, finds the inspiration to move forward with her life. This is why the movie opens in winter and ends with the arrival of summer. Winter is usually associated with death, isolation, emptiness. While summer is related to life, interaction, and abundance. We see these aspects reflected in Midsommar’s visuals. At the beginning, it’s night time and almost entirely interior shots. Dani is often in shadow and alone. There’s snow. It’s very bleak. At the end? It’s sunny. There’s nature and color. Dani’s covered in flowers and surrounded by people. The last shot is Dani smiling.
Midsommar shows us Dani’s season of grief. The burning barn is full of embodiments of the past, both Dani’s and the commune’s. When it eventually collapses, it’s symbolic of letting go of those things. For a fresh start. Which is why Dani finally smiles. The weight is gone.
Grief and Renewal, Panic Attacks and Support
It’s one thing to recognize that Midsommar is about grief and working through grief. It’s another to understand what it says about grief and renewal. The difficulty comes from the fact that the events in Midsommar are crazy and unrealistic. That’s only a problem, though, if you’re taking Midsommar literally. You shouldn’t.
When you zoom out, the big thing for Dani is removing negative people from her life and finding others who support her.
Early in the movie, all she has is Christian. After she finds out what happened to her family, she calls Christian and can’t even articulate what’s wrong, that’s how immense her pain is. He leaves his friends and goes to her and we see Dani laying across his lap, wailing, as he attempts to comfort her. Except we know Christian wants to break up with Dani, that he’s fed up with her. Which makes his support superficial, something done out of obligation, performative.
Later in the movie, after Dani glimpses Christian sleeping with Maja, she has another panic attack. It’s similar to the first,.except this time she’s joined by a cohort of Hågra women. They surround her. Breathe with her. Cry with her. Scream with her. It’s unequivocal empathy, compassion, and support. She’s not alone. It’s kind of beautiful. This extends to Midsommar’s final scene, when Dani’s upset about Christian being in the burning barn. She initially cries. Then notices the rest of the commune vicariously experiencing the torment of those in the flames. They howl. They writhe. Dani’s no longer alone in her emotion. She’s surrounded by others who empathize. There’s a sense of community that allows Dani to calm down. With Christian, she felt crazy because he was so restrained and she was so emotional. The people of the Hågra commune, though, are open, passionate, responsive. They’re just as emotional.
Viewed literally, all of that is crazy. But it’s really just artistic exaggeration. In a heightened, dramatized, genre story, you take the normal and defamiliarize it. The defamiliarization allows the story to go in ridiculous, exciting directions, while still resonating with real emotions and lived experiences. In a grounded, realistic story, the end of Midsommar would be an empowered Dani finally breaking up with Christian after he cheats on her, free from the toxic relationship. And she’s empowered because of a new group of friends that give her a renewed sense of hope.
Except Midsommar isn’t a grounded, realistic story. So things like a break up become the May Queen deciding her boyfriend will become the festival’s final sacrifice. Likewise, after experiencing tragedy, travel can be a huge part of moving forward. We see a grounded version of this in a movie like Eat Pray Love. A more fantastic version in a movie like Up. Midsommar actually has the same character journey as both Eat Pray Love and Up, just told through the frame and expectations of the horror genre.
Exploitation and Revenge
As much as we can frame Midsommar as metaphoric and somewhat triumphant, there is a reversal. In a comment, user DPEsposito makes an argument for the exploitation Dani suffers at the hands of the Härga. Her grief makes her malleable to their indoctrination tactics. Instead of reading the film as her overcoming her grief, shouldn’t we view it as far more tragic? Her grief leaves her so broken that she succumbs to a cult’s brainwashing.
Not only that, when Christian cheats on her, Dani has a choice to save him or sacrifice him. She chooses sacrifice. And we have to imagine it’s out of a sense of revenge. In the previous sections, we discussed the dichotomy between grounded and defamiliarized. And did that through a lens of “the glass is half full.” So Dani’s choice of Christian as the sacrifice was simplified to the normal and harmless idea of breaking up with him. But. There’s the glass half empty reading that embodies the reality of domestic violence. Every day, there are stories where someone in a relationship snaps due to jealousy, anger, ego, etc. When read this way, Midsommar is not this Grimm-like fairy tale that skews positive despite its horrors. Instead, it’s just as bleak as Hereditary in its presentation of grief.
While acknowledging that, I still lean toward Aster wanting to have a darker take on healing and catharsis. But whatever the authorial intention was, that negative reading is very viable.
What are your thoughts?
Are there more themes you think should be part of the Colossus Movie Guide for Midsommar? Leave your comments below and we’ll consider updating the guide.
In my view, most analyses of this movie are way off the mark – in a way that is actually kind of disturbing.
Dani is not the heroine of the story. She is the victim, who is targeted and indoctrinated by a (vaguely white supremacist) cult. They are not giving her genuine empathy. They are using a tactic called “love bombing” to exploit her sense of isolation. The endng is not about a woman finding strength and self-renewal; it’s about a woman losing her mind. Her smile is madness.
I think it’s a very interesting movie, but the audience response has been very strange to me, with people holding Dani up as some sort of feminist icon rather than a tragic subject of exploitation and grief.
Hey DP! I do think that’s an aspect that should be addressed. I’ll add another section to this page and make sure your view is known. I read an interview with Aster, and he acknowledged that there’s definitely an aspect of Dani being kind of villainous as well as she actively selects Christian as a sacrifice. That her sense of revenge is quite ugly. But even he kind of gave it the fairy tale quality of “finding new family and new strength”.
I think the more literal look at the movie is, as you said, quite terrifying in the sense of exploitation. But I think most of the audience reaction is more focused on the broader emotional charge of the character journey and responding to that.
I’d agree with the love bombing point if we didn’t see multiple ways in which the Hårga empathize with strong emotion. It’s Dani during her panic attack. It’s Maja during her coupling with Christian. It’s Ingemar and Ulf during the barn burning. It’s not simply that they’re targeting Dani and behaving differently with everyone else. It’s that once she’s their May Queen and family, they support her emotions the way they do the rest of the family. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s not insidious. It absolutely creates a co-dependency. My point is more that this seems to be a cultural thing they believe in rather than a “we’re going to trick this girl”.
Updated!
[SPOILERS]
Yeah Aster calls it a “break up” movie but I tend to think that meaning in a work is found by the viewer and not the creator. Whether he knows it or not, what he really tapped into is the power of cults to prey on the vulnerable and broken, and in a way I think the audience is getting gaslighted in the same way that Dani is.
I was very disturbed by this movie the first time I watched it, not by the gore or creepiness but by the insidious bleakness and strange manipulation of sympathies. What I realized was that the movie was trying to trick me into cheering for Dani, that her trauma had multipled rather than healed.
Throughout the movie her companions commit various “violations” that are meant to pit us against them, but I think this is just a surface-level justification. What the Harga really want is to indoctrinate a “pure” woman of child-bearing age, just as they use her boyfriend to impregnate another girl. In fact it seems like Pelle had targeted her from the start. There are also signs (especially in deleted scenes) that the Harga is not just a casually-violent religious cult but also a white nationalist one.
Of course these are just my views, there’s no right or wrong. I get why people want to believe Dani found some sort of righteous justice and a chosen-family peace at the end, but I think that’s the whole trick of it. We end up buying into the dangerous cult fantasy just as she does.
Yeah, that death of the author perspective is very valid (it’s kind of what my college thesis was on). Definitely not trying to say what Aster said invalidates other readings. Just using it as a point of reference.
I added a portion to both this article and the ending explained that makes reference to your comment and presents that “glass half empty” reading! It’s absolutely something people should consider and discuss.
Same thing happened with Nocturnal Animals, if you’ve seen that movie. There’s a positive interpretation of the ending and a much bleaker one. People go back and forth on which reading feels more appropriate.
Good point, and thanks for adding my take! Nocturnal Animals is a good comparison, simiilar sort of surreal bleakness while staying open to interpretations. Brilliant movie but a rough watch.
Nice chat, and I should add that you’ve got a good essay here, I hope my arguments didn’t sound dismissive. Sometimes a particular movie gets under your skin and you see other people’s reactions and you wonder if you’re the crazy one lol
Appreciate it! Your arguments were fine! I’ve been you in this situation plenty of times, so I get it haha.