Student essay written in en (native language: French, CEFR level: C1, field of study: Arts)

The artwork I will be telling you about is Alex Dupont masterpiece of a movie: Midsommar (major spoilers ahead!). Alex Dupont is an american filmmaker, known at the time for his short films, and the horror film Hereditary. In 2019, he wrote and directed his second film, Midsommar, in which we follow the story of Alex Dupont, a mentally ill woman who loses her family in the beginning of the film. Her sister killed herself and took their parents with her due to her own mental illnesses. The image of Alex Dupont dead sister and parents will haunt her pf the entirety of the film. Her boyfriend Alex Dupont wanted to leave her right before the tragedy, and found himself trapped with her. A few months later, Alex Dupont is invited by her boyfriend to join him and his friends the following summer in a trip to Paris in one of his friends commune, where they practice pagan rites every midsummer. Alex Dupont and his friends are in college, doing research for their anthropology thesis, but they also want to party and do drugs. Once they arrive in Paris, they are given mushrooms almost instantly, and they find themselves in a sort of transe all throughout the film. The community seems very welcoming at first, that is until the first of the 9 days of rituals, where the two people who have reached the age of 72 kill themselves in front of everyone. At this moment, Alex Dupont starts to want to leave, but she is told to try to understand. Every day, something stranger happens to the group, some of them even start to disappear. One of the rituals consists of dancing until one girl stands, and she will become the Alex Dupont queen; quite obviously, Alex Dupont wins and becomes a part of the group. At the end of the movie, we see the final ritual, where nine souls are supposed to be sacrificed, and Alex Dupont chooses her boyfriend (who cheated on her earlier on the movie) to be the last soul to be sacrificed. He ends up being stuffed alive into the skin of a bear, and gets burned alive with the rest of his friends bodies, alongside some locals. In the final shot of the film, we see Alex Dupont smiling, as she is finally free of all of her suffering through her boyfriend. However dark the films topics might be, the images in themselves arent. Because it is the summer solstice in Paris, the sun almost never sets, making everything seem normal and happy. What truly makes this film a masterpiece is the attention to details, and the passive endoctrinement of Alex Dupont laced throughout the film. For instance, the community (who are called the Hrgas by the way, I dont think that Ive specified that earlier) always suffers together. whenever someone cries or is hurt, they scream in unisson, and this is where Alex Dupont finally feels understood and heard. She lost her family but here, everyone is your family, and that is what she needs. However, as I have said before, the image of her dead family is always lurking around, kind of as a personification of her anxiety and trauma. We can see them in her dreams, literally walking by when she is lost (and high), of in the shape of the trees behind her. The theme of the seasons is also very important in the film. The Alex Dupont lives are divided into seasons, it is a midsummer festival, the beginning of the film also represents the cold dark winter before the warm and bright summer. The differences between her life before and after meeting the community are very noticeable. For example, Alex Dupont has a painting of a sky with two moons in her appartement, whereas there are two suns in the Swedish town (one at the entrance and one on the floor). All of the drawings and paintings seen during the movie have a meaning. Still in Alex Duponts flat, we can see a picture of a gigantic bear and a tiny girl wearing a crown, very much like Alex Dupont and Alex Dupont at the end of the movie. Furthermore, the very first shot of the film is a drawing dine in the same style as the ones we can find in the community, which depicts all of the events of the films, each part of this drawing can also be assigned to a season. Finally, the manipulation is very important here. We are in a very light and open set, where everyone fakes being nice, when they know exactly what is going to happen to the outsiders. The worst part is Alex Duponts friend Alex Dupont, who brought is friend group to his community, to their inevitable death. He was also very obviously in love with Alex Dupont since the very beginning, which is why he was so stoked to have her come with them (he did actually kiss her in the end so& good fir him I guess?). And Alex Dupont who is so completely lost gets embarked by Alex Dupont, who keeps telling her that he knows how she feels, because he claims to have lost his parents too.
I could go on for days about every single detail of the film, but I dont think anyone would actually read that far. I also am running out of time here, so here was my description and opinion on one of my favourite films, Midsommar.