Never Be Bored
25 July 2020
Daisies & Death
Midsommar, 2019 Ari Aster film. Hannibal tv show; Perfume by Patrick Süskind; Hozier and Wasteland, Baby! by Hozier.
Midsommar is a horror movie, and I like it so much I've watched it multiple times. If you know me, you know that's a big deal.
Midsommar is centered on Dani, played by the incredible Florence Pugh. It's the story of how she, her boyfriend Christian, and his fellow PhD students, Mark and Josh, visit a commune in rural Sweden for a midsummer festival, at the invitation of their other friend Pelle, who grew up there. I love the different scales of conflict in this move—Dani dealing with her grief for her recently decreased parents and sister, Dani versus her (pretty shitty) boyfriend, the outsider visitors against the denizens of the Hårga—it's like stories within stories.
Also, the visuals of this film are gorgeously unsettling. It's all clear blue skies and green fields, hallucinogenic mushrooms and wildflowers. This is not your typical thriller where everything is so dark and shadowed that you have to squint at the screen to see anything, it's just the opposite. I love this movie for how it plays with the juxtaposition between horror and aesthetic brightness, so if that sounds interesting to you, definitely check it out.
I probably never would have watched Hannibal by myself, but it's a favorite of one of my best friends so he convinced me to give it a shot and we watched it together. I actually ended up loving it. It's an extremely gory and dark tv show about a cannibal who's also a psychiatrist who meets an FBI profiler with an empathy disorder, but it's so excellently done. If you liked the mix of beauty and brutality of Midsommar, try this, which dials that up to the max—in one episode, a pair of victims are posed among flowers to look like Botticelli's painting Primavera.
Perfume by Patrick Süskind is the story of a very strange man in the 1700s who possesses an unnaturally good sense of smell. A historical novel with elements of fantasy, there's lots murder, detailed explanations of the art of perfumery, and rich descriptions of the things that the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, smells as he lives and works (and kills) in Paris and Grasse, France. It's originally written in German, but I can say at least the English translation is excellent.
Let's finish with something a bit softer. I adore the music of Hozier, and have listened to both his albums—his first, self titled, and his 2019 Wasteland, Baby!—many, many times. Several of his songs fit this post's theme, including one of my favorites, "In A Week," which is about two lovers' bodies decaying side by side. See also "Work Song" ("when my time comes around/lay me gently in the cold dark earth/no grave can hold my body down/I'll crawl home to her") and "Shrike."