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https://www.amazon.it/Midsommar-4K-Blu-ray/dp/B07XVPJXQT Preorder for Italian 4K UHD release: theatrical version in 4K HDR (region free), director's cut BD (region B), theatrical version + featurette BD (region B). I believe this is the only way to get it in UHD so far. Out November 13.
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Oct 5, 2019 06:48
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Simiain posted:I'm re-animating a months old post because I dont think its unique wrongness was ever addressed. The idea of pointing to Hereditary as an example of agency in horror, when the characters being trapped and robbed of their agency is clobbered over the viewers head repeatedly in the narrative (the characters are trapped by a curse which pre-ordains and orders the 'agency' of the characters who are manipulated and terrorized by said curse), in the aesthetics (trapped within the confines of a terrorized and abject family unit and physically within the claustrophobic confines of their home) and by hammer-thudderingly subtle metaphor (the doll-houses for crying out loud!), is just a breathtakingly bad take. I think you are stretching my original point with this interpretation. Yeah, Hereditary sets its events in motion and moves the characters unrelentingly towards the conclusion. The concept is kind of baked into the title. My point was about the passivity of everyone involved in Midsommar. The characters in Hereditary attempt to push against the machinations working against them, regardless of whether they have the potential for success from a meta-textual standpoint is irrelevant. In Hereditary there are lots of problems that characters attempt to solve, but they just fail in doing so. In Midsommar there aren't really problems to solve. The biggest problem, the terrible relationship between Dani and Dollar Store Chris Pratt, is ignored. Then most characters just disappear and die off screen and nobody really gives a gently caress that everything is obviously bad. Except for the British couple. This is probably an intentional decision, but I wouldn't say that the two movies are as alike as you would make them out to be. Also to say that anyone was forced to take hallucinogens also ignores the explicit fact that the bros travel to the festival almost entirely to get hosed up and maybe sleep around. a new study bible! fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Oct 6, 2019 |
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Oct 6, 2019 15:28
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a new study bible! posted:The biggest problem, the terrible relationship between Dani and Dollar Store Chris Pratt, is ignored. Uh
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Oct 6, 2019 15:36
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In short: Hereditary is about spectacularly failing to solve a problem. Midsommar is about ignoring it until it is too late. Unless you are largely sympathetic to Dani in which case it's maybe a big happy ending?
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Oct 6, 2019 15:37
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They both spend the entire movie pretending that they actually (still) care for each other. a new study bible! fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Oct 6, 2019 |
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Oct 6, 2019 15:38
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a new study bible! posted:Unless you are largely sympathetic to Dani w.....why would you not be
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Oct 6, 2019 15:41
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T3hRen3gade posted:Is the Director's Cut actually worth watching? I watched the theatrical version twice and I loved it, but don't really want to subject myself to another watch unless it actually adds something to the narrative. Previous posts said it makes the subtext actual text and that turns me off, so I want to know if it is actually worth another go. I rated this a 4.5 out of 5 and am starting to think it should get full marks, I just don't want to jump into it again unless it's worth it. Also wondering this. I just finished it the other day and loved it, a rewatch so soon doesn't sound bad or anything but do the new scenes add anything interesting?
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Oct 6, 2019 15:46
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IDK. She burns someone alive and seems to enjoy it? Seems kind of weird to be on her team at that point. Chris sucks too. I mostly felt bad for the British couple, Chidi, and the dude who was only there to gently caress.
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Oct 6, 2019 15:49
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a new study bible! posted:In short: Hereditary is about spectacularly failing to solve a problem. Midsommar is about ignoring it until it is too late. I mean, it probably represents her finding meaning outside the relationship and being the one to end things before the relationship destroys her. But, you know, not in such a tidy fashion.
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Oct 6, 2019 15:53
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Yeah definitely. It's all about catharsis and the release from a toxic relationship. I get that. The film just generally wasn't for me, but I probably just want my horror to be more overt.
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Oct 6, 2019 15:58
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As someone who grew up in a house with a mentally unstable family member, that setup made Dani instantly sympathetic to me. She'd only have gotten whatever dregs of energy her parents had left to spare between dealing with her sister's crisis moments, which left her primed for a lovely relationship with anyone even marginally more attentive. Her friend tries to logic Dani out of caring so much about whether her needs are inconvenient, but that phone conversation feels like something they've talked over before. The friend pushes back against Dani's interpretation rather than just letting her vent about her feelings, which makes it seem like that friendship isn't meeting Dani's emotional needs either. Then the first person that speaks to her in the village says, "Welcome home." So for me, Dani's connection with the Harga isn't only about the support through this slow-motion breakup, it's about finding a sense of belonging that she's never had. I didn't feel much sympathy for anyone apart from the British couple. The Harga let Josh in on something special to them, and he abused that trust for professional gain. And when he confronts Christian about elbowing in on his work, it's clear that Josh already knows what kind of person Christian is. He was fine to just shrug his shoulders at Christian's poor treatment of Dani; the only thing that mattered to Josh was when Christian extended that same immature thoughtlessness to him. Mark was a shithead during the whole movie and sometimes seemed disrespectful to their hosts even apart from that pissing on the tree thing. The girl he went off with also had scratches on her face later on. Of course those marks could have been caused by whatever the townspeople did to Mark in the forest, but since that's never stated, there's a pretty strong implication to seeing her injured after she walks off with a guy who's spent months planning to gently caress Swedish girls. I guess I'm in a bit of a bubble or something, because after talking this movie over with a few different groups of friends it was a surprise to get online and see how many folks weren't mostly sympathizing with Dani. One of the people I watched it with still sometimes sends me a local news article about some dude doing something lovely along with the emojis for bear and fire.
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Oct 6, 2019 17:27
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I'm in that bubble too, I felt incredibly sympathetic toward Dani the entire film. It feels pretty obvious that the film does too
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Oct 6, 2019 17:36
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Yeah the final moments of the film certainly feel triumphant. Even though I didn't love the movie, I still think about it a lot, and part of that is because of the triumph of Dani's decision to kill Christian. Being burned alive seems pretty hosed, and I wonder if Aster sees it as a fair response to Christian's behavior. To me the two don't square up. At best Christian is an immature 20 something who strings his girlfriend along instead of breaking up with her. At worst he's a gaslighter, engages in emotional neglect, and cheats on her. To me, it doesn't feel like Christians fate is just, nor does Dani's decision feel like it embraces some darker more evil turn like horror movies do sometimes. It's just this weird middle ground. Same thing with the cult... It feels like she has found a home, but I could also see her waking up in a few days, realizing that she's an outsider and seriously regretting the circumstances she's in. I don't know what to make of it, honestly.
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Oct 6, 2019 20:26
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What happened to Connie? I’m pretty sure that was her screaming when Dani was making apple dumplings but I didn’t seem to see her body in the yellow cabin..
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Oct 6, 2019 21:05
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I definitely don't think it's meant to be justice, and even those of us who were right there with Dani at the end would consider cult-murdering a real-life bad boyfriend as an overreaction. I'm not sure if I can express this very well, but as a middle-aged horror fan, I've spent my entire adult life with movies about people getting murdered. And it's not just horror; senseless, undeserved violence drives plenty of dramas, thrillers, and is even sometimes played for laughs in comedies. People joke around about slasher rules against having sex or drinking or whatever, but nobody who invokes those is ever treating it like those people deserve to get chainsaw murdered for their "offenses." So to me, these kinds of Midsommar discussions feel strange because it's rare for me to see this much concern about whether someone earned their horror death. Is that just because Christian's emotionally troubled girlfriend, who's been being indoctrinated by the cult since she got there, made the decision? Did the recent movie Ready or Not, which ends with a man trying to kill his new wife after his family draws him into their occult poo poo, lead to a similar level of discomfort? Is Christian more relatable to people who don't think his behavior is all that bad? Or is it because we're all used to scenes with a young woman in a white dress tied to an altar but helpless male sacrifices are less common? And I know exactly what you mean about having some movies that you didn't necessarily like but still stick in your head.
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Oct 6, 2019 21:44
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The ending is triumphant for Dani, but not because she got revenge against her lovely partner. She's "happy" because this sacrifice is signaling the completion of the ritual, and her total assimilation into the collective of the cult, her new family. She believes she's now made whole, but as an audience I don't feel like we're supposed to be happy for her, or think her beau got his just deserts.
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Oct 6, 2019 22:02
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deety posted:I guess I'm in a bit of a bubble or something, because after talking this movie over with a few different groups of friends it was a surprise to get online and see how many folks weren't mostly sympathizing with Dani. She’s a female character and this is the internet
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Oct 7, 2019 00:35
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Escobarbarian posted:She’s a female character and this is the internet this movie is probably a good litmus test to find out who's an MRA
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Oct 7, 2019 00:39
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  Th...thanks, Jen.
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Oct 7, 2019 01:14
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a new study bible! posted:I think you are stretching my original point with this interpretation. Yeah, Hereditary sets its events in motion and moves the characters unrelentingly towards the conclusion. The concept is kind of baked into the title. You're right, I originally misread your post and went off on a harrumph about it that was slightly half-baked. Nevertheless, I think you're making a bit of a distinction without a difference when you point to the passivity of Midsommar's characters as opposed to what you see as the initiative taken by the characters in Hereditary. In both cases do characters 'make decisions', in Midsommar these decisions are fuelled by the navel-gazing self-regard of our male grad-students or by the traumatic bereavement and semi-abandonment of Dani. For the male grad-students, the commune is a benign exhibit which exists as a mere backdrop to the far more pressing concerns of how to 'good-guy' their way out of a relationship or exploit the locals to further their career, while for Dani its a 'home' where she can be adopted and have a new family. These are different motivations and actions to the kind of confused rage and terror of Hereditary, but only in so far as that reflects the nature of the characters themselves and the kind of trap that Aster is laying out for them. I think the films are fundamentally alike in laying out an intricate trap for the characters, from the outset, laying it all out for the viewer, from the outset, and forcing the viewer to watch as it unfolds to its inevitable conclusion, like the proverbial slow motion car crash. I love these films for this. But you're dead wrong on the hallucinogens point, any appetite for getting hosed up and laid is long-gone by the time dude-bro has a potent brew explicitly forced upon him. And even if it werent forced upon him, he's plainly having a bad trip, something which is a nightmare at the worst of times, let alone when all his friends have disappeared and the formerly welcoming commune are giving him the cold shoulder after stealing away his girlfriend. The terror of that scene rivals anything in Hereditary for me, potentially because I'm precisely the kind of hipster wanker who has flirted with hallucinogens and danced around the edges of a bad trip, so my reaction was a bit more visceral.
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Oct 7, 2019 02:50
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i liked the ending for the same reason i liked hereditary's - an absolutely horrific thing is treated as a triumph. it's not something you see all that often in horror.
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Oct 7, 2019 16:27
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I just watched this last night and I'm still trying to formulate an opinion on it, but it feels like the cult is a bit, I dunno, hypocritical? Like they go on about how death is a choice and they go into it happily and willingly, but that doesn't really jibe with luring unassuming outsiders into their commune for some ritual murder. And clearly that was the plan from the start regardless of what the characters might have done to "deserve" their fates, since neither Pelle nor Ingemar told their victims about anything that would happen beforehand (and in Pelle's case, actively being a really lovely liar about it). They even lied to Dani along the way (or at least were deceptive, trying to steer her away from seeing Christian doing the gently caress-ritual for example) so to say that she gets a happy ending because she "found her family" or whatever rings a bit hollow. Moral relativity just kinda flies out the window once you take consent out of the equation, you know? There also just seemed to be a running theme of the cultists trying to be blissfully ignorant of the consequences of their own actions, which I felt mostly in the scenes where they would wail or cry along with other people's pain in a way that felt more mocking to me than sympathetic. Especially at the end where the one dude (I think it was Ingemar?) realized what a terrible mistake he made as he started burning alive, with the people all thrashing and screaming outside as though they had any idea what that kind of horrible death would feel like. I couldn't tell whether all of that was supposed to be intentional or not.
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Oct 7, 2019 18:55
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At least with the mirroring, my read is that the cult, at least, are doing it in earnest. They genuinely are trying to express sympathy to the emotional or physical pain. How legit that is and how sympathetic you take that is probably a personal thing - Dani is clearly pretty confused and upset by the practice when they do it to her, and as a viewer it was an unsettling thing, I think that's all pretty intentional. I don't think they ever do the mirroring for someone who isn't a member of the cult tho - when they do it for the end it's for one of the elders I think, and when they do it for Dani she's already may queen? Wonder if that's A Thing
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Oct 7, 2019 19:39
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:At least with the mirroring, my read is that the cult, at least, are doing it in earnest. They genuinely are trying to express sympathy to the emotional or physical pain. How legit that is and how sympathetic you take that is probably a personal thing - Dani is clearly pretty confused and upset by the practice when they do it to her, and as a viewer it was an unsettling thing, I think that's all pretty intentional. I don't think they ever do the mirroring for someone who isn't a member of the cult tho - when they do it for the end it's for one of the elders I think, and when they do it for Dani she's already may queen? Wonder if that's A Thing It made me feel claustrophobic and seemed to me to be another way the cult obliterated any agency that the characters had, even in the expression of pain. The tears and wailing of the individual is subsumed and dissipated among the group, while the freedom of their movement in the expression of this pain is similarly smothered by their constant cooing presence. gently caress I hated it, which is to say I loved it. The silent hand-waving in lieu of clapping was fun though.
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Oct 8, 2019 02:08
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Simiain posted:The silent hand-waving in lieu of clapping was fun though. That’s clapping in Libras (Brazilian sign language) maybe in other sign languages as well.
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Oct 8, 2019 05:28
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Sombody on twitter pointed out a thing I missed. Ya'll notice anything in the top left corner in this shot?
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Oct 8, 2019 08:26
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Hedenius posted:Sombody on twitter pointed out a thing I missed. Ya'll notice anything in the top left corner in this shot? Yeah. Also we have blu-ray screenshots now.  Lotta other people claimed to see faces other places too and I had a scan and as suspected they're full of poo poo, this is the only background face.
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Oct 8, 2019 12:33
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I tried giving Hereditary another shot since I thought Midsommar was great, but it still left me with the same "yeah, I don't like this" reaction.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:32
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Just saw this now that it's available for rent. Definitely enjoyed it, I love the whole aesthetic but I think I was expecting to be surprised a little bit more. As someone who's watched The Wicker Man a bunch of times this movie just kinda goes down the predictable path all the way to the ending. I was hoping for a little more of a twist but it was still extremely well made and probably more of my thing than Hereditary was.
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Oct 9, 2019 01:18
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a new study bible! posted:Yeah the final moments of the film certainly feel triumphant. Even though I didn't love the movie, I still think about it a lot, and part of that is because of the triumph of Dani's decision to kill Christian. Being burned alive seems pretty hosed, and I wonder if Aster sees it as a fair response to Christian's behavior. To me the two don't square up. At best Christian is an immature 20 something who strings his girlfriend along instead of breaking up with her. At worst he's a gaslighter, engages in emotional neglect, and cheats on her. Your Gay Uncle posted:What happened to Connie? I’m pretty sure that was her screaming when Dani was making apple dumplings but I didn’t seem to see her body in the yellow cabin.. There's a scene that characterizes her death that I think is only in the director's cut: The cultists act like they're going to drown a boy, but spare him because he was brave enough to face the sacrifice. Connie is drowned off-screen and dressed in the same ritual costume. You could say they're punishing her for cowardice.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:05
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I like the way that Ari Aster uses foreshadowing with the grace and subtlety of a porn director zooming in on the crotch of the TV repairman the woman can't afford to pay. The obvious comparison to make with this film is The Wicker Man but I think a better comparison would be Zulawski's Possession which overlaps in theme and tone a lot but is better than this film by leaps and bounds. Zulawski never felt the need to clumsily telegraph every shock, unlike Aster at times literally flashing a painting to remind us of what to expect next and while a first time watch of Possession is loving harrowing, watching Midsommar is at best soporific because the shocks are always couched by these clumsy warnings of what to expect over the next 15 minutes, every 15 minutes. Worse, normally I give new horror the benefit of the doubt if its at least trying to do something new instead of being a remake or sequel, but Midsommar was far too close to a "re-imagining" of The Wicker Man (with, oddly enough, a bit of Hereditary baked in) to even qualify. Aster is a hard 0/2 for me so far.
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Oct 13, 2019 05:40
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charles. posted:this movie is probably a good litmus test to find out who's an MRA So, if you happen to think the person who joined a cult and sacrificed their significant other with fire is more reprehensible than a grating, douchey boyfriend, you're a men's rights activist? Gotcha!
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Oct 15, 2019 08:33
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I was meh-to-like on Hereditary and Midsommar but I thought I'd drop in and say one of my old high school friends connected the dots for me, and Ari was one of my good friends in my senior year of high school. I used to hang out with him a lot for the year we knew each other. Glad to see he's gone on to successful stuff, and he's a cool rear end dude.
MrQwerty fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 09:10
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Hedenius posted:Sombody on twitter pointed out a thing I missed. Ya'll notice anything in the top left corner in this shot? 
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Oct 15, 2019 09:36
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frenton posted:So, if you happen to think the person who joined a cult and sacrificed their significant other with fire is more reprehensible than a grating, douchey boyfriend, you're a men's rights activist? Gotcha! Did the retarded boy deserve to be drowned, or did the teenagers deserve to be murdered for having premarital sex in a cabin? It has to be one or the other! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 15, 2019 14:36
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MrQwerty posted:I was meh-to-like on Hereditary and Midsommar but I thought I'd drop in and say one of my old high school friends connected the dots for me, and Ari was one of my good friends in my senior year of high school. I used to hang out with him a lot for the year we knew each other. Glad to see he's gone on to successful stuff, and he's a cool rear end dude. Did you ever get high with him?
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Oct 15, 2019 22:27
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frenton posted:So, if you happen to think the person who joined a cult and sacrificed their significant other with fire is more reprehensible than a grating, douchey boyfriend, you're a men's rights activist? Gotcha! As with most horror movies, the subtext is more the point of the movie than the literal occurrences, so yes. charles. fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 00:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzVFugFcUto
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Oct 16, 2019 00:12
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charles. posted:As with most horror movies, the subtext is more the point of the movie than the literal occurrences, so yes. Whoa, man. That's really deep.
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Oct 16, 2019 05:34
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Halloween Jack posted:It's a horror movie. The psychological need to suss out which one of them is the good guy and which one of them is the bad guy is a problem in the first place. It's the murder cult and the lady who joins the cult. They're the bad guys.
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Oct 16, 2019 05:47
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