I've been noticing that I've been writing less, but thinking more about what I want to write, which often leads to longer pieces. Hope no one minds this. It's how my brain is working at the moment so I'm just gonna go with it.
Ari Aster's Midsommar might have become my favourite film after seeing it this past Friday. One thing is for certain though, a film has never been so timely and so similarly curious about the themes that I am currently concerned with. It felt as though, no matter what turn it took, the film was made for me. The affinity was overwhelming at times.
The themes Midsommar tackle are, on paper, numerous, complex and, more often than not, not spoken of within the same breath. Anxiety, cultural narratives and relativism, suicide, the tradition of participant observation in cultural anthropology and violence are all explored in a way that is both perceptive, but absolutely never preachy or taken for granted. How the film creates a balance within this thematically dense framework is both simple, nuanced and cheekily self-aware of its own position. This self-awareness, however, doesn't venture into the space of meta to the extent that the film feels self-congratulatory or conceded, as though its achieved something that it hasn't earned yet. The film always keeps a curious eye towards what it is presenting and, in this respect, the story doesn't thrust itself upon you, forcing an interpretation upon its audience.
Spoiler's ahead.
I should probably give somewhat of an overview of what the film is about at this point. (I'm no beginning to realize that I might end up having to split this article into two separate parts; I guess we'll see). The film begins with a cryptic text sent from one sister to another reading something along the lines of "I can't take it anymore. I'm on my way and mom and dad are coming too." The sister on the receiving end of this message, Dani, frantically tries to get in touch with her sister and parents to no avail. For emotional support as she tries to figure this situation out, Dani gets in touch with her boyfriend, Christian. Christian feels as though the situation is similar to other one's in the past, where the bi-polar suffering sister of Dani's is blowing hot air and should be seen as more of a cry for help than an actual threat of violence. Dani pops an Ativan, calls a friend and vents about how much she leans on Christian for support which she feels like she fails to reciprocate.
Christian is shown with his group of friends discussing his ongoing struggle to break-up with Dani. All of his friends tell him to call it quits, but he can't bring himself to doing it since he feels like she wouldn't be able to handle it.
Eventually it's discovered that the threat was real. Dani's sister rigged up two car exhausts with hoses, one leading to the parent's room who were presumably sleeping during the process, and the other being duct taped to the sister's mouth. The film shows the murder-suicide scene with a degree of detail that is incredibly vivid. The detail that stood out most to me was the vomit on the sister's sweater, a result of having carbon monoxide siphoned from a hose directly down your throat.
Dani learns that her entire immediate family has tragically passed and is shown sobbing in Christian's arms.
K, so, there's a reason why I'm going this in depth into a sequence that occupies maybe ten minutes of the films 147 minute run time. It is immediately established that the film is concerned with mental health. However, I wonder if another would come to this conclusion as quickly as I did given two things; (1) I struggle with mental health and (2) that Aster's previous film, Hereditary, is also concerned with the perils of mental health issues. What caught me immediately in these 10 minutes was how the film established mental health as a theme in comparison to other films that handle mental health.
Many other films attempt to explore mental health head on, which establishes mental illness as a problem to be solved. This places mental illness as something not lived, but explored. I take no issue with this, but because the film has taken on such a lofty task, solving a character's struggle with mental health, there isn't much room for a satisfactory solution since mental illness is hardly ever really solved in reality. The films that take on mental health as a challenge are more often than not set in a world similar to ours, but present a fantastical take on mental illness that is divorced from the reality that the film is trying to replicate. Mental illnesses like anxiety and depression are emotionally dependent, so to suggest their possible 'curing' is to similarly suggest that emotions can be resolved, which is an absurd thing to suppose for the experiential human.
In these opening moments, what Midsommar does is explore mental illness as something adjacent to more social things, specifically family and sexual relationships. Also, by attaching it to actions, mental illness is also given a temporal treatment; mental illness is attached to actions both past (murder-suicide) and present (sobbing, phone calling, ranting). As much as a I was struck by Dani and her experience of anxiety, I was equally as struck by Christian and his struggle to deal with someone who was so dependent on them. I didn't feel as though the film portrayed Christian as unsympathetic, though I could certainly understand why many would think this way. I'm certain that this comes from my experience as being on both sides of this. I have been that person who thinks he leans too heavily on others for mental support, and I have been that person who thinks he's too heavily leaned on by others for their mental support. Coming back to the film, however, it is clear that mental illness will not be something explored, but established as somewhat of a potential. Mental illness in this film is given just enough attention for it to be a factor, but not so much so that the film becomes bogged down in its usefulness as a narrative driver and resolver. As events unfold, the film has established that it is fair to ask the question of mental illness, but doesn't give mental illness a weightiness where its effect can't be shaken. It is elusive, both and present and not. From the get-go, I could sense that this film was going to present mental health the way I understood it and the way I feel it.
I'll continue on from here tomorrow, beginning with the role narrative plays in Midsommar as a device for understanding and how meaning is an inevitable characteristic of the human experience.
Comentários