Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Midsommar
2019 · Ari Aster · Midsommar on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Look at the painted walls and hangings in every building. (setting)
Svensson covered the Hårga's yellow halls in runes, weavings and a mural cycle in folk-art reds and ochres.
Payoff: The décor is a text written into the place itself. In the reading: the readable image. The reading calls these lectosigns, readable images: pictures that ask to be deciphered.
Notice there is no darkness anywhere in the film. (light)
The midnight sun never sets. Pogorzelski keeps the whites high and the meadow greens flat, so nothing is concealed and there is no off-screen dark for a threat to wait in.
Payoff: Horror usually hides. Here everything is visible and you still cannot do anything about it, which is what makes the brightness oppressive.
Watch the camera rotate on the drive to the commune. (camera)
The image turns until the landscape hangs upside down over the windshield. Nothing in the plot calls for it. Elsewhere Pogorzelski locks into centered symmetry and slow creeping push-ins.
Payoff: The move announces a change of rules. From here you are reading a world rather than following an action. In the reading: the closed set (cadre). The reading calls the village a closed set: a frame with no outside, where everything that matters is already inside the picture.
Watch Pugh gasp and apologize while she is crying. (performance)
Pugh plays grief in unflattering registers: breath caught, sobs swallowed, the social work of saying sorry for having feelings at all. Reynor plays Christian as ordinary neglect, which is the point.
Payoff: The relationship is the real machine here. Watch what Dani has to do to make her pain acceptable to the man beside her.
Listen for wind, insects and singing under every scene. (sound)
Krlic writes swelling strings and folk drones that are genuinely beautiful rather than dissonant. Under them runs a constant field of outdoor sound. There are no night noises because there is no night.
Payoff: The score makes the commune attractive. You are being invited to find it lovely at the same time it turns monstrous.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the walls. Notice how much of the village is painted, woven, or embroidered.