Flawed And Intoxicating

Rating: 7/10 (5 August 2019)

When I went with a friend to see Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar', the first thing my friend said to me as the credits rolled was an apt summation of the film: "Well, you certainly can't accuse him (the director) of lacking ambition". Interstellar is flawed; but like all Nolan's films, the flaws somehow enhance it. The scale of his vision is intoxicating; his work consistently sweeps me up. I'd far rather see a film that shoots high but falls short than one that is shrivelled by lack of ambition.
There's something of that in Ari Aster's first two films. I found Hereditary to be, for the most part, a chilling and occasionally shocking study of grief, loss and trauma. The last 20 minutes, when it suddenly turns in to the bizarre lovechild of Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man didn't work, but was also kind of endearing even as it let down what had gone before. Midsommar takes those last 20 minutes and turns them up to eleven.
As with Hereditary - and many other horror films - the film deals with grief, loss and trauma. It also throws in the vivid experience of a slowly dying relationship being kept alive long past its best. The film's opening chapter - laying the groundwork of the trauma and loss that sets the film's agenda - is superbly evoked. As the characters deal with the aftermath, the film shifts to the increasingly bizarre and horrifying, isolated, neo-pagan Swedish community for the Midsommar festival. Central to this is a mesmeric performance from Florence Pugh who imbues her character with more complexity than the script might try to give her. There are many touchstones as things unravel - The Wicker Man (again), and crucially The Crucible. It's visually and technically stunning - the cinematography, the colours, the composition are all exceptional. Many hauntingly beautiful images remain the mind for a long time.
The film is gripping, and I love that the narrative is unhurried, given room to breathe. But if it's seeking to be a horror film, it never really manages to be; plenty that's horrifying happens, but it's not frightening. The general arc - if not the specifics - is pretty clear from a long way out. There's plenty that's problematic (to put it mildly), that's hard to get past; the familiar trope of American movies that 'bad things happen if you go to Europe'; the wafer-thin (to be kind) characterisation of people of colour; to a rape scene near the film's finish that is used as a troubling motivation for a key decision; the film's use of mental health issues in characters is unhelpful.
Hard as these are to get past, the scope and ambition of the film remains intoxicating; and I do wonder if Ari Aster is consistently, if subtly, trying to suggest throughout the film that none of the events actually happen - a fantasy of sorts in the mind of its central character. Ari Aster hasn't said this publicly (or at least, that I've heard); if this is the case, what's problematic in the film would remain so even with this explanation.
How to summarise? Impossible to do so; if ever there was a film that shows the reductiveness of rating a film out of 5 or 10, then this is it. It overreaches significantly, but is endearing and intriguing almost because of that. It has many problems that are hard to get round. Ari Aster has a great film in him that he hasn't yet made; that much is clear. To get to it, maybe he should leave The Wicker Man further behind him.