Midsommar (USA: Ari Aster, 2019)

  

Midsommar (USA: Ari Aster, 2019: 140 mins)

 Albin, Eugene "Joey" and Julia A. Ward. "Midsommar’s Nordic Nationalism and Neo-Confederate Nostalgia." Film Quarterly (October 30, 2020) ["Jordan Peele has described Midsommar as portraying 'some of the most atrociously disturbing imagery I’ve ever seen on film, and yet I experienced it with this open-mouthed, wild-eyed gape. I think that part of how we get there is never reducing the villains to any kind of snarling monsters with an evil agenda.'  Aster shows that the horror of modern capitalism lies precisely in its allure. Attempts to create a sense of belonging, whether by reviving apocryphal traditions or rallying to make a nation 'great again,' will always result in horror if the price of that belonging is the exploitation of others."]  

Anderson, Jake. "Midsommar." Letterboxd (July 3, 2019)

Aster, Ari. "Midsommar: Anatomy of a Scene." The New York Times (July 5, 2019)

Aster, Ari and Michael Koresky. "On Midsommar." The Film Comment Podcast (July 10, 2019) ["Filmmaker Ari Aster ... joined us last summer for a talk at Film at Lincoln Center to discuss his previous feature, the unforgettable Hereditary, and we were delighted to welcome him back for another Film Comment chat on Tuesday, July 10. In front of a packed house, Aster sat down with author and Film Comment mainstay Michael Koresky for a discussion about his Swedish countryside-set horror film, working with star Florence Pugh, and favorite movies such as 45 Years."]

Bradley, S.A. "The Old Gods of Springtime Horror." Hellbent for Horror (April 10, 2018) ["Things might look bright and warm during Springtime, but there's something sinister underneath the surface. The pastel colors of the flowers camouflage the blood and death in the soil that helped them grow. When the difference between life and death depended on a bountiful harvest, people made human sacrifices to appease the Old Gods of the earth. In this episode I talk about horror movies devoted to the Old Gods of Springtime, man's uneasy connection to the earth, and how groups of people can be scarier than the Old Gods themselves."]

Brody, Richard. "Midsommar: Ari Aster’s Backward Horror Story of an American Couple in Sweden." The New Yorker (July 8, 2019)

Brown, Pat. "Ari Aster’s Midsommar Masterfully Feasts on Extremes of Feeling." Slant (June 26, 2019)

Castillo, Monica. "The Real Terror in Midsommar is a Bad Romance." Cherry Picks (July 5, 2019)

Complex, Valerie. "Stanning the Ancients." Letterboxd (June 20, 2020) ["Valerie Complex probes the intersection of Greco-Roman mythology and queer experience in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Neon Demon, Jumbo and Midsommar."]

Eggert, Brian. "Midsommar." Deep Focus Review (July 3, 2019)

Frames of Empathy. "Midsommar: Finding Your Family." (Posted on Youtube: November 27, 2019)

Jones, Matthew. "Midsommar." Philosophy in Film (October 5, 2019)

Laffly, Thomas. "Midsommar." Roger Ebert (July 1, 2019)

McMillan, Candice. "How Trump and #metoo Have Scared Us Into the New Decade." Chaz's Journal (March 10, 2020)

Tafoya, Scout. "Passion of the Zeitgeist: Judging the Relative Elevation of Midsommar." Los Angeles Review of Books (August 9, 2019)

Totaro, Donato. "Female Empowerment in the “Small World” films of Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster) and The Other Lamb (2019, Malgorzata Szumowska)." Off Screen 23.12 (December 2019)

Villela, Fiona. "Film in the Age of COVID." Senses of Cinema #95 (July 2020) [On Ingmar Bergman's 1960 Virgin Spring and Ari Aster's 2019 Midsommar)