Hereditary bothered me; should I watch Midsommar?

I still think we're talking past each other slightly. I will attempt to better explain the (admittedly subtle) distinctions I'm thinking of:

If a child dies in a film, that would seem to cover the kind of ground you're talking about...without showing the actual death, or its aftermath, or the reaction of their loved ones, or literal decomposition over time, or lingering on all of those things. And even if you do all that, it can happen more or less, be explicit or implied, grotesque or reverent. And all of this can be done while giving horror and grief and tragedy their due.

It is not the subject matter I'm bristling at, it's the difference between merely depicting something, and gluing the audience's eyes open, Clockwork-Orange style, and then pulsing the Strobe Light of Doom at them. It's the difference between "hey, try this food, you might like it" and being turned into emotional foie gras.

I have loved many films that depict sad or upsetting things, for exactly the reasons you describe: it is all part of life, and it must therefore necessarily be depicted by art (even if we may reasonably choose to expose ourselves to some things more or less on the margin). But I would also argue that the more upsetting the subject matter, the more important it is that it be handled deftly. It's a high-wire act, and I don't envy the attempt, but part of the risk of the high-wire act is taking the brunt of the fall when the balance is off.

Wanted to quote this away from the rest because I think it's sort of a separate topic, but still worth addressing.

I mostly agree with this, but I think there's an asymmetry here, where the negativity (a very soft word for what I'm talking about, to be clear) is seen as somehow "higher" or braver or fresher simply because it's not as common, and not as safe. A director who likes the happy ending is "Hollywood," but one who won't (or maybe can't!) ever depict one can be seen as a trailblazer. I have to wonder if part of the response is to the novelty alone.

Also, and I know it seems like I'm constantly responding only to make very fine-grained distinctions, the "choice" I'm talking about is in the specific way negativity is depicted, not negativity itself. David Fincher seems like a nice counterpoint here: I adore his films, and find them to be much defter in depicting awful things without falling into the hole I'm talking about.

Except for :

1) Militant movies. Where shocking, disturbing, shaking the audience (out of apathy or indifference) is the point.

2) Thrill movies. Where the public wants to be disturbed and shaken, for ilinx' sake, as in a very brutal rollercoaster. To be overwhelmed by an emotion (fright, shock, disgust) in order to temporarily obliterate whatever else from ordinary life may be lingering in their mind. Some radical kick-in-the-groin escapism.

In these cases, tact is deliberately, and justifiably, thrown out the window. It is also so, more cynically, when your point as an author is to carve your work in the public's brain, for the sake of notoriety, dare or art boundaries. I mean, what is Un chien andalou still remembered for ?

You can be remembered for bad reasons as well as good ones. I can understand why that might be someone's goal, in the same way I understand why people debase themselves for fame, but I don't think that goal is a defense of whatever's necessary to achieve it.

If someone wants (as you so amusingly put it) "radical kick-in-the-groin escapism," fair enough. I kind of mind that less, because it's usually so over the top that it's difficult to find genuinely disturbing anyway. But people don't usually defend that stuff as high art or masterful filmmaking, either.

That's a good point - remembering that all the only murder that happens on screen in Se7en is the one that he policeman commits etc etc. He's an expert at technical things like that. But Fincher hasn't really made any edgy shocking horror films has he? His style is much more suited to thrillers where he can build a character's movement and behaviour to blend in with the narrative. Aster isn't in to that, from what I can see.

That's why I mentioned it without adding it as a 3).

Agreed, but I guess that's my point: some of the defenses of Aster here are defending very broad things like "hopelessness" or "negativity" or just depicting shocking things in any form, and Fincher is an example of someone who does all of that in a way that's actually very sparse and reverent of the seriousness of actual despair. I don't so much mean "Aster should be like Fincher" (though obviously I'd like him more if he was), but as a counterpoint to those broader defenses of Aster, as if his explicit way of delving into this stuff is inherent to depicting it at all.

Everyone's gonna have their own line here, of course. There's someone out there who's 95% like me except they think Fincher is the one who goes too far, probably, and I probably can't say much to them. But that works in both directions: I'm sure for most of Aster's fans, there's a world where he goes even further and it does, at some point, become too much for them, and they'd have the same reaction to that that I have to him as he actually is. I guess all I can say is: imagine what that would look like, what you would find to be too much to the point of distracting from his skill, and then you'll understand my reaction, even if your line is somewhere else.

I think I get the distinction youre making, that it isn't about sad material in general, but in how it is presented. I'm just trying to argue there can be a distinction in the purpose and the intent of those directors who use the strobe light of doom approach you are taking issue with.



Personally, I don't think a film being an emotional bludgeon should always be viewed with skepticism. For the most part, an artists job is to best articulate whatever vantage point they are committing themselves to, and for many, the most honest way to do this when dealing with profound grief or depression is (for lack of a better description) to punish the audience in some not so subtle ways. Because this is how it feels. All of those shades of grey disappear when experiencing loss, and so some directors may feel it would be a lie not to at least attempt to mirror this primal emotional state.



I use the concept of honesty a lot as a necessary virtue of cinema, and I think to be honest about all the shades despair can manifest itself as, sometimes it does need to run you over like a truck. Because for some it does feel as inescapable as a Clockwork Orange experiment, and to shade it with any kind of nuance, would be a disservice to how these sorts of negative emotions can manifest. It is why I mentioned something like Amelie as a logical counter point, in that there is absolutely nothing subtle about it viewing the world through whimsically rose coloured glasses from start to finish. It too never takes its foot off the gas, which has led to charges of it being similarly phony in its extremes. But it is in how the extremes of its positivity are articulated, that it reads (to me) as being purely honest. Naive, but in the best sense of the word, because I don't feel manipulated by its joy, but instead carried along by it.


This of course doesn't mean you shouldn't cast withering gazes at Aster. Or that you shouldn't accuse him of being cynically negative, or just shocking for shock sake. There are arguments to be had there and I'm not here to defend Aster in particular (even though I have liked his movies). I was only trying to defend the notion the option that there can also be room for loud, extreme, unrelenting approaches to quality cinema.


As for those critics who give more of a pass to 'feel bad' movies, and reduce 'feel good' ones to some kind of critical shaming, there is a lot to criticize about that approach. I can definitely see what that would irk a lot of people, considering negative movies are just as susceptible to being lousy as positive ones and I too generally really hate movies I feel are 'lying' about their negativity to gain a reputation (for example, I despise most of the torture porn type films). But I do also understand the frustration some have towards the general approach of studios that will twist arms to get films to adhere to a tried and true formula (which, more often than not, happens to involve unearned positivity) And while I don't think it makes a film good if a director refuses to go along with this, I get the exasperation some feel that this is consistently what is being encouraged by the gatekeepers of our culture, and why some might get a vicarious thrill from an artist basically flipping them off, even if the end result never really adds up to more than an empty gesture.

Can't/won't argue on any of those particular points, and appreciate you expounding on all of it.

I guess there's a good (but very tough) discussion to be had about people who feel a compulsion to depict something. On one hand, it's hard to argue with an artist depicting the things that motivate them. On the other, that feels like a form of art-as-therapy that's as much inflicted on the world as genuinely for it, and since it's compulsive and maybe even unavoidable, anyone else getting something out of it almost feels coincidental. I wonder if there's a meaningful distinction to be made there between artists who master the form and make lots of deliberate choices about what to evoke, and how, and those that just sort of express, sometimes for their own catharsis.

As for your last paragraph, I think you're right and we agree, there's an asymmetry in that rote negativity is often confused with profundity in a way rote positivity is not. To steel man the opposing argument there a bit, I suppose negativity is the first signal that something new and fresh at least might be happening.

I think you'd dislike Midsommar as well. They have the same plot, just different settings. I found Hereditary much better because it actually surprises you in ways, but Midsommar reveals itself somewhat early on, and from that moment, everything crazy that happens might as well just happen, because the pedal hit the floor a long time ago.

I don't know much about Aster's personal life, except that he seems to be doing well. The biggest disconnect that I get from his use of trauma is how vicarious it seems. He's enormously gifted as a filmmaker in conveying the mood of trauma and dispair, but there's little emotional intelligence behind it to show that he understands it as something other than a mode of cinematic stimulation and manipulation. Neither Hereditary nor Midsommer have much to say about the human costs of trauma, other than as artificial set-ups for his plot contrivances. This isn't just a case of fitting the genre requirements of horror, because there are many horror films (Babadook or Eyes of My Mother just to cite a couple of recent examples) which explore more deeply the psychological scars of such trauma. By comparison, Aster's films feel a bit gratuitous and cynical.


What I suggest by "vicarious" is that I don't see the indication that Aster has much experience with trauma himself, and may see it as a bit exotic, like a trauma tourist. It's almost like a Sullivan's Travels situation, where those who have actually experienced trauma understand the uselessness of indulging in it better than those who only understand it as an arousal device. It's emotional slumming.

On a visceral level, I think Hereditary understands trauma quite well. Or at least one articulation of it. Have other horror films portrayed it better or with more nuance. Undoubtedly. Something like Lake Mungo is always going to win this battle. But there is more to show about trauma beyond the quiet despair that makes up the bulk of it. Hereditary is an honest depiction of the anger and confusion that are also a part of the experience.


Now does this have anything to do with Aster's actual experiences? I can't possibly know. You could be right in saying he an emotional tourist, but if that is the case, he is at least a canny enough artist to put a hysterical version of grief on screen that resonates with me. Do I think it is a great enough work to deflect any criticism of this? As I've already mentioned, not at all. But I'm just using this particular movie as a trojan horse to make the argument that dwelling in the heart of misery can have lots of different virtues in filmmaking. Dealing with any kind of extremes can.

I'm just waiting for Stu to make his inevitable anti-Hereditary post here.

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Pahak wasn’t a fan of it either, as I recall.

I mentioned elsewhere that I don't really like David Fincher and cited a bunch of reasons that can probably be applied to Aster. I think the reason the latter works for me is his commitment to the subjective experience. To Janson's point it's likely that he's not pulling from real experience here, but I guess I find his use of the horror genre as an exploratory tool in this respect engaging enough to compensate.*

Stu doesn't like Hereditary? Surely that can't be right or he would've mentioned it once, twice or 367 times before now.

Pretty sure Stu loves it.

This is very disappointing, Rock.

Yoink!

This will make no sense when the thread gets resurrected years from now.

I've been counting and Stu mentioned he doesn't like it 366 times. Until he mentions he dislikes it once more, I'll believe that he likes the film.