The Midsommar Special (From The Archives)

[00:00:00] As well as The Birdcage, we'd also recommend you to stream, currently, as of this recording, on Amazon Prime, Midsommar. That would be Ari Aster's Midsommar. Midsommar. Midsommar. Midsommar. And that is Midsommar. If Spider-Man and Spider-Verse isn't ticking all the boxes, then go watch Midsommar. Ari Aster's Midsommar. Have you got maybe a second film that people could watch this week? Yeah, Midsommar is definitely a film worth watching. And that is Midsommar.

[00:00:25] The next logical step from Spring would be Midsommar. Midsommar. Ari Aster's Midsommar. Then I think Midsommar would have a lot to offer. And there's obviously nothing as colourful as Midsommar. Ari Aster's Midsommar. Ari Aster's Midsommar. Obviously football's a winter sport, so I think the furthest you could get away is around Midsommar. So, you know, I'm thinking nice dinner flowers.

[00:00:53] It makes sense that you would want to watch Midsommar. That is Midsommar. Ari Aster movie starring Florence Pugh. And I believe his name is Guy from the Good Place. Ari Aster's Midsommar. Midsommar. Which is Midsommar. After some deep personal debate, I have settled on Midsommar. And also another movie that should definitely be made into a video game. And that movie is Ari Aster's Midsommar. Would be Midsommar. And that film is Midsommar.

[00:01:21] What it lacks in wrestling, it makes up for with cultiness, face smashing and bear stuffing. Is the Ari Aster cult masterpiece. Cult, in two cents of the words, Midsommar. Derailed my train of thought. Anyway. I think you're about to recommend Midsommar, Graham. You want slow burning, horrific horror that just is told brilliantly, acted brilliantly, looks beautiful.

[00:01:51] Midsommar. My choice is going to be Midsommar. And we're going to watch Midsommar. A film that is great for just kind of emotionally screaming is Ari Aster's Midsommar. And that movie is Ari Aster's Midsommar. If you don't like Manchester, Joy Division, the really happy, upbeat music that they provided us all, what better film to watch than Midsommar? There's no introduction because it is two and a half hours of pure fucking brilliance.

[00:02:19] And that is Ari Aster's Midsommar. You guys are making a podcast. Ugh, no one asked for this. Welcome to the podcast nobody asked for with me, Ian Harries. And me, Graham Jones.

[00:02:46] And this week we are wishing you all Glad Midsommar. Which is Swedish. And I probably butchered it. Lawless. So because this is being released on Midsommar, we are finally going into great and illustrious detail on the movie we have recommended you 37 times so far. And that is, of course, Ari Aster's Midsommar. Which I believe I pronounced it correct that time.

[00:03:16] Yeah, it's Ari. Which I only learnt from watching the featurette thing on the director's cut thing. They kept referring to him as Ari. So we'll do the same because I assume they know what they're talking about. To be fair, I researched this thing because, you know, that's what we do. We try to maintain at least an illusion of amateur professionalism. And it is people pronounce it however they want to pronounce it. So maybe we should just ask him. Not that we have any guests.

[00:03:45] It would be nice. But, you know, who needs people actually involved in the movie when you have us? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure by the time Midsommar rolls around next year and we do our updated version of the Midsommar episode, I'm sure Ari will be clawing his way to get some exposure on the podcast nobody else will. Yeah. We'll give him a mug and everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's what everyone wants. They want the mug. So... They just want the swag, Ian. Everyone's in it for the swag.

[00:04:14] I've played rugby long enough to know that is the only reason people play sport is for the swag. Not the podcast swag. That would be weird. So, uh, the socially distant sports bar sponsor a rugby team now. So, you know, weirder things have happened. So, what, what we're going to do today then? So, because we're aware that not everybody has watched Midsommar, regardless of how often we've been harping on about it, we're going to stay away from spoilers during the introduction.

[00:04:43] So, we're just going to talk about Midsommar, the plot of it, why we think people should watch it, why we loved the film, why we recommended it 37 times so far. Because what people are probably going to be asking is, hey, now you've done this detailed analysis, are you going to keep recommending it? And the answer is yes. And then once we've done the intro, we will have like a, some kind of spoiler klaxon.

[00:05:08] And then after that, we're going to go into our top three lists of moments that stuck with us from Midsommar. We've talked about it at length numerous times about how this film is something that kind of embedded itself in our brain and stayed there. So, our top three lists this week are going to be those scenes.

[00:05:29] And so, if you haven't watched Midsommar, stay up to the klaxon and then politely and respectably fuck off and watch Midsommar. And I think, am I right in saying 5th of July it's coming onto Netflix? I want to see. Oh, is it? Yes, 5th of July. So, if you're listening to this on to the 24th, that's what, like a week and a bit? Yeah. Not long to wait. Not long to wait at all.

[00:05:56] And hey, first person to message us asking us to buy Midsommar for them, I'll send you the DVD. So, yeah, stay up until the spoiler klaxon if you haven't seen it. Hopefully we do a decent Alec Baldwin style pitch for you and then go watch Midsommar and rejoin us once you've watched it. And I think before we delve into the intro that we've kind of teed up there, today, if you're listening to this today, well, of course you're listening to this today because it's always,

[00:06:24] if you're listening to this today on release day, the 24th of June, there are various points where we could be throughout our day today. So, just to highlight the hold that this movie has over us, our plan today, today release day, not today whenever you're listening to that because that would be weird. I mean, if someone's listening to this like... Our plan today, today, which is even funnier because we're recording this a week in advance. Yeah.

[00:06:53] Our plan on the 24th of June, 2021. That is a better way of putting it. So, depending on when you're listening to this, if you're listening to this first thing in the morning, which I'm sure most of you do, it's the first thing that you do on a Thursday. Of course. We're probably still sleeping. Separate beds. We don't live together or sleep together. Well, no, no. It's like Bert and Ernie. Separate beds but the same room. We've got a picture in between. Yeah.

[00:07:18] If you're getting to us about midday-ish, we're meeting up in London, going to grab some lunch. Any point between about midday and let's say five o'clock, we're planning to hit up as many Swedish slash Nordic bars in the capital as possible. Evening time, I think about seven-ish, we've got some food booked. And then from 8.30 onwards, we will be at the Prince Charles watching Midsummer on Midsummer

[00:07:46] because what else do you do with the 24th of June? And we have both taken a full day's holiday to engage in such festivities. I'm contemplating taking the Friday off as well. Sorry, today's tomorrow. Not today's, like today's, today's tomorrow. Friday the 25th of June 2021. Which is my brother's birthday. Oh, happy birthday, Tom. I'm sure you're not listening, but happy birthday.

[00:08:14] Which also means it's 12 years since Michael Jackson died because he died on my brother's 18th birthday, which I'm fairly sure is something I drunkenly told you this weekend. I'm pretty sure you did, yeah. Nice. Is Midsummer. So what better time to have our Midsummer special. So I made a couple of notes on Midsummer, the actual event. So it's a celebration that predates Christianity

[00:08:41] and it's found in a number of cultures throughout the globe. A lot of those, so Midsummer, as a lot of festivals were, was then co-opted as a Christian festival and is celebrated as St. John's Day in a lot of places as well. So there's a lot of unifying features, so to speak, of a lot of these festivals. But so Austria celebrate Midsummer with a procession of ships down the Danube

[00:09:07] with fireworks and bonfires on the banks. Bulgarians celebrate something called Enyovenden, which again I'm sure I've butchered, where they believe if you see the sunrise in the morning, you'll be healthy throughout the year. And it's also a time of year, which is a thing which a lot of areas seem to believe is, like, medicinal herbs will be more potent. So you're supposed to, that's when you're supposed to pick all of your stuff. It's a secular holiday in Quebec,

[00:09:37] where again, they light massive fires. Denmark also has bonfires, but they're there to repel witches and spirits. Estonia, it's more of a family singing and dancing event, but there are also more fires. Norway, they have more fires and mock weddings. So I'm not sure how joined up those two events are, but that sounds like a horror movie in itself. In Romania, it's called Dragacchia,

[00:10:06] which is celebrated with a lot, again, a lot of dancing. There is, somebody's going to be dressed as a bride with like a wheat wreath. Sweden, there's again, obviously everything kind of you'd expect from watching Midsommar. There's a lot of dancing around Maypoles. You're supposed to put greenery over houses and barns, which is supposed to bring good fortune and health, but I don't think that's things people do now. There's also the idea that if you, again,

[00:10:33] a common thread through all of them is like dreaming of your future husbands. So in Sweden, apparently, if you pick seven different flowers in silence at midnight, you're supposed to dream of your future husband. Okay. I might try that today. There's also yesterday today. Yesterday. Oh, is it midnight going from the day before? I'd assume so, especially with a lot of Nordic countries celebrate the day, like the evening before.

[00:11:03] Yeah. I was reading that it's so big in Sweden that a lot of people would prefer that to be their national holiday. Yeah. I think there's a real movement for it. Yeah. It's a movement. It's in circles around the Maypoles. Concentric circles. Of course. They also like a bit of skinny dipping after schnapps on Midsommar, but I'm not sure I'd go skinny dipping in Sweden because regardless of how midsummer-y it is, that sounds fucking freezing. No. However, I mean, we're not too far from the serpentine today today.

[00:11:34] True. Yeah. Never say never. I'll bring the schnapps. I'm fairly sure skinny dipping in the Thames is just going to bring another pandemic along. Well, or if you listen to James Acaster, we'll both end up with type 1 diabetes. Yeah. In the UK with Midsommar, bonfires feasting in Merriman. It kind of petered out after the Reformation where it was clamped down on. And in Wales, as is a lot of the case with Welsh things, it petered out because England didn't like Wales doing Wales things.

[00:12:04] In Alaska, they play a midnight game of baseball in Fairbanks at 10.30 and with no artificial lighting. And apparently you can just keep playing it because it's one of those, well, Midsommar. So it's midnight sun territory. Yeah. The general celebration themes that go through every culture's event is food, family, bonfires, dancing, health, fertility, and rebirth. And these are all features in Midsommar, the film. Yeah.

[00:12:34] I think now is as good a time doing, I won't do a fanfare, but I think we should talk about the movie now. Yeah, it seems appropriate. Should we go back? I mean, so we saw this in the cinema together for the first time. Odeon, I believe we went to. Yes, yes, it was Odeon because I remember the, yeah, I don't know why I'm worried about sounding creepy. It's something we've said before. I remember the car park. Yeah, but this is it. It was,

[00:13:03] my memories of watching it are more that period of time afterwards than actually watching the film the first time around because it was, I think it's just so unique, right? Like, for a horror movie and I was thinking about this a lot and I know we always bring up the whole it's all shot in brilliant daylight, blah, blah, blah. And we'll talk about that a bit later but it is, right? And find there's very few horror movies that do that and So, there are three scenes

[00:13:32] that aren't in daylight and one of them is a dream. Yeah, and most at the beginning, right? One at the beginning. Yeah. One is a dream and one of them is Is that in the director's cut? No, no, no, no. So, in the actual regular thing. So, it's cheesy you gotta find the book. Oh, yeah, yeah. But that's one thing, right? I don't think there's too many horror films that, I mean, I don't think there's any horror films that have as much brightness and daylight

[00:14:01] as this film does and it got me thinking about how, so, one of the big things with Nightmare on Elm Street when Nightmare on Elm Street came out was like the reason it was so scary is the whole idea was that, well, with anything that scares you, you can go to sleep and things okay because, you know, you're not dealing with the scary things anymore but the whole point of Nightmare on Elm Street was to take away that security blanket of going to sleep and it feels like Midsommar's kind of done the same thing with like, well, you know,

[00:14:31] when stuff's scary, when stuff's haunted, whatever it might be, it's all happening at night. When daylight finally comes around, you can kind of relax a bit because things are, you know, the creepy, creepy crawlies, not the creepy crawlies, the ghouls, the ghosts, whatever it might be aren't there but all of the horrifying things happen in that scenario in Midsommar so you kind of, again, it takes away, it feels like it takes away another like, safety blanket in the context of horror films. Yeah, and it also means

[00:15:00] that it completely flips what you would expect from a horror movie on its head because like you said, even Hereditary, so Ari Aster has referred to this as like a companion piece to Hereditary so both are about family and codependency but Hereditary was about things hiding in, like, he hid things in the background of scenes in darkness. Yeah. With Midsommar, everything you need to know what is about to happen in the film has been on display

[00:15:29] for the whole thing. Well, I mean, even in the opening 30 seconds just right in front of you. Exactly. So what we'll quickly do is I'll just kind of go a brief synopsis of what the film is. So it is about Danny played by the incredible Florence Pugh and her anthropology student boyfriend Christian who is a absolute piece of shit played by Jack Rayner as well. Jack Rayner is actually very, very good in this. I just hate the character and I seem to blame that on him. They're on the cusp

[00:15:59] of breaking up and then this tragedy happens in Danny's life which kind of forces them to stay together. That puts more strain on their relationship and it is in that atmosphere Danny agrees to join them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Sweden for a festival and this festival only occurs every 90 years in their friend's ancestral commune the Horga. And yeah, that's as simple and unspoiler as I could put it but it's so much

[00:16:28] like I don't think it's even fair to say it's a horror. It's just horror is the most similar to what it is. I can't think of another film really like it. Like there's a lot of comparisons to the folk horror stuff so things like The Wicker Man but it's not the same. It's very different. Yeah, I would say Wicker Man and to be clear the original Wicker Man not Nicolas Cage

[00:16:58] and the bees. Though Nicolas Cage was in a bear suit at one point. Yeah, true. I think there are definite similarities but I think they end at the point of like outsiders in a weird culture. Yeah. But there's so much more that is happening in Midsommar. Like there's the arcs of all of these characters particularly Danny. You've also got the way that it exposes the flaws of all of the Americans

[00:17:27] I guess. Yeah, so that's made notes on that while watching it as well because it stuck out a lot more on the second time for me. So usually in a film like this or films in general like you have your outsiders and you have your kind of weird group right? So the Wicker Man it was the island and the outsider was the policeman coming in. In Midsommar the outsiders

[00:17:56] they're constantly shown as being you know like self-serving uncaring general kind of fuckwits but the evil cult though crazy bizarre are shown as being nothing but friendly. They go out of their way to help people. they're the only people the bad guys are the ones who are the only people there for Danny's character and are championing the idea of expressing your emotions. Yeah. But that then

[00:18:26] makes you feel so uncomfortable because it would be like you feel like you're cheering on to use your example it would be like cheering on Freddy Krueger. You're trained that the main characters are on your side. Oh is that not a thing we're meant to do? I've always been Tim Freddy. Tim Freddy? Yeah I've got the jumper and the hat and everything. Oh I was wondering and the new tattoo which just says Tim Freddy. Yeah yeah. I should have read into that a bit more. But yeah it makes

[00:18:56] you it's it just adds to how distinctly uncomfortable the film is because it's not like I said it's it's not it's like horror it's horror and thriller adjacent. I feel like we need another word for it. We'll call it attention. Yeah I think I agree with that because you've not got there's certain things and tropes in horror movies like there's not a single jump scare in Midsommar. No. There's never a moment where you're having that. It's just this general and there

[00:19:26] are elements of gore but they're few and far between. Like when they happen they're they're in your face and they're very prominent but it's not like a hostel for example where it's you know or sore where it's bang bang bang bang it's there is and I think you put really well I think it is just this level of discomfort and that just sits with you throughout the entire and I think even before you get to

[00:19:55] Sweden there's even elements of that I think at the beginning which will again we'll discuss in a bit more detail later but yeah throughout the whole thing you're just kind of feeling a little bit like yeah uneasy uncomfortable well and what what adds to that as well is the fact the soundtrack is incredible like there's the score behind it is basically a character in itself oh it's so good and it is it's a complete it's it's it's like certain songs are both kind of ramping up the tension while also

[00:20:25] either sounding quite positive or also being quite slow like it's completely contradictory to what a soundtrack should be it's both happy and sad it's I yeah I'm not I as as explained previously if it's if it's not a song that sounds like fight star my musical theory is very bad so I can't explain it it but it adds so much to every scene but I think that that's again like the soundtrack is very similar to the film right

[00:20:54] because the the soundtrack and like you say there are quite slow songs and but I think in the same way that the film is quite slow burning and makes you feel uneasy I think the soundtrack kind of does the same thing like there's definitely songs in there where again they kind of they go on for quite a long time and you do just feel a little bit uncomfortable listening to them as well well that's that kind of brings me on to one thing I didn't appreciate the first time and

[00:21:24] with hindsight is probably why I love this film so much is all the takes are really long yeah like you said like the like the songs it's Ari Aster is very it's nearly like it's filmed like a play so a lot of the scenes you're seeing people basically full length it's a very slow movements of the camera he's letting things unfold in front of you which then adds the tension as well because you're it feels like you're building up towards something happening and that

[00:21:54] like you said that there are some very gory bits but there are films that are a lot gorier than Midsommar there are gorier things in there are definitely films which are like you said hostile is just a bloodbath from middle to end there are certain scenes in films that are a lot gorier and more realistic than Midsommar but the difference is where a director would usually cut away from something Ari Aster just lingers on it and that's why I

[00:22:23] think it seems so much gorier than arguably it is is because you know a scene where a normal horror director would cut 20 odd times and you would have not to dive too deeply into my future notes where you would have like loud music and loud sound effects you know like your foley team will be going fucking mental kind of thing it's just very weirdly understated and you see it from beginning to end yeah and you

[00:22:52] don't again you don't really get that in films which again sets this out from everything else but I think and interestingly it kind of puts you in the shoes of the Americans and the brick couple as well in that they're seeing these long extended weird things playing out in front of them right and they can't look away and I think there's there's an element to that that feels like yeah you're being put

[00:23:21] in their shoes because the cultures the rituals and everything of the Haga are just yeah I guess as alien to us as observers as they are to the people that have been brought along to experience yeah and I think I think that's why it was such a visceral experience watching it like we said it's so unlike anything else we've seen and because it does kind of have that the guys you've been trained to

[00:23:50] root for when you're watching films you shouldn't be which then starts bringing up the questions with wait well if I'm not rooting for them am I condoning all of this evil cult shit and that's all while like you said watching it through the eyes of kind of the outsiders to everything that's going on all while you're waiting for shit to go down because the tension has been building solidly for an hour it's just I I've never seen anything like it it like we

[00:24:20] said before we sat in we sat in the car park after watching this film in basic silence and then I think it was just that was that could be the best film I've ever seen there was also a period for a good week or two I think afterwards where one of us would text the other one's like I'm still I'm still thinking about Midsommar I felt numb afterwards yeah I didn't know not not in not in the film that shan't be named way yeah in in the there was so

[00:24:49] much to take in and it affected me on such kind of a deep level that I basically had to proper psychoanalyze myself to figure out what was going on yeah so that's that's why we recommend it all the time is it is it is I think I messaged you about this yesterday so I haven't watched it since we saw it in the cinema and I rewatched it earlier this week because we're doing a podcast on it

[00:25:17] it makes sense for me to rewatch the film and I was terrified that I would watch it and I wouldn't feel the same way because I would have to pretend like we'd set ourselves up too much for me to then turn around and go you know what it was only the first time how it hasn't it hasn't stuck with me maybe I was having an off day but it still hit me and it still gave me it was a lot of the same things hit me and then

[00:25:47] you're also a lot more open to seeing the other things like the foreshadowing in the film is fucking crazy like we said because it's all in brilliant dazzling daylight for 99% of the film you can see things in the background all the time which are relevant later yeah that's that's crazy like some of the stuff that's there throughout there's also some there's some really cool bits that I found out I saw in pictures afterwards and then when I read on rewatches notice them but like the you know images

[00:26:16] hidden in the trees and things like that yeah and one thing that also that was really clever with some of the I guess editing techniques is I don't think this is too much of a spoiler right now to say there's element there's a bit where there's some drugs are involved and some there's psychedelics are a big part of this film yeah but there's but the way that it's so subtle the editing that it's making parts of the screen kind of flicker and move

[00:26:46] to the point where you're watching it and you're like did that did that move like what's that like yeah it's subtle enough but it's just yeah it's just so so well done yeah it's as you can guess given you are listening to an episode called the midsummer special on a podcast where we've recommended this every week it's just great yeah isn't it I mean yeah yeah where'd you go from I tell you where we go from there Ian

[00:27:16] what should people watch this week I think it's your movie recommendation is it this week yes yeah so what I'm gonna recommend is midsummer the director's cut excellent choice that's that's the version of the film I watched this week hadn't seen it before it's one of those rare direct a lot of the time director's cuts you can tell where the scenes are added in and you also know why they were taken out yeah not not so with this a lot a

[00:27:46] lot of the added scenes actually added a lot of context and a lot of weight it's it didn't necessarily elevate the film yeah but it definitely didn't detract from it and it didn't ruin the viewing experience either I thought there was for me there was one scene that I was like oh this didn't necessarily have to be there which is the scene at the lake however later on there's a part where you're like yeah I was like oh oh okay which yeah

[00:28:15] like you say it does it does add the context to it so yeah it's it not having that context was fine yeah like it didn't it didn't ruin the viewing experience but having the context it was a proper like ah there we go yeah yeah that's what this is okay so the director's cut is is verging on about three hours right it's it's a hefty piece of cinema if people haven't got three hours to invest into watching the midsummer director's cut what do you think they

[00:28:44] should watch in instead this week okay so if you don't have three hours to watch a film which is fair enough you know not everyone has those hours in the day what I would recommend you watching though is Ari Aster's midsummer so it's still still a fairly hefty 148 minutes long but it's 148 minutes well spent it's like we said it is still a a weirdly streamlined film given how

[00:29:14] colossally slow burning it is but it just makes sense doesn't it it's it has to be midsummer yep so that's midsummer or midsummer midsummer or midsummer nice okay so if you haven't watched midsummer thank you for listening to an episode entirely dedicated to midsummer we appreciate the uh the effort your time you've put in but I would strongly recommend you stop listening now otherwise we will just be talking in detail

[00:29:43] and full spoiler territory about midsummer so we would want you to stop listening and then come back once you've watched it like I said the first person who tweets or instagrams us please buy me the film we will send you the director's cut I mean what more could you want we're the podcast that keeps on giving we just yeah so uh spoiler klaxon spoiler klaxon spoilers ahead warning spoilers ahead warning seriously we're going to be talking

[00:30:13] about everything right so now it's just now it's just us appreciate you guys for sticking around I know some of you haven't seen midsummer but you've stayed after the klaxon anyway and we appreciate that but you can't angrily tweet or instagram us now like we did our bit whatever hilarious sound effect I just did you knew what the deal was you know what you've signed up for so before we go into our top three list I want to run you through some notes I took while we're

[00:30:43] watching this because I'm I'm quite happy with these you don't deserve her in capital letters so true communicate you prick in capital letters he's the worst which took up a quarter of a page quickly followed by manipulative cunt nugget they seem remarkably calm watching the possible murder of a child an hour and a half in she suddenly clicks that shit is fucked tree pissing so many cunts and

[00:31:10] sacrifice bingo I like how a good 60% of that was just about Christian it's such a fucking bellend man one one thing I do want to talk about as well before we go in just to emphasize a point I made earlier which I couldn't embellish a bit more is about how the outsiders you view quite negatively and they're the ones who should be supporting the weirdest thing is like the friendliest guy in the film is the guy who's

[00:31:39] brought them to this cult that he knows are gonna murder them yeah Pella is his name isn't it I think is it Pella or Pele I think it's Pella Pele he used to play for Brazil and he was in escape to victory but yeah he was and for legal reasons we don't believe that Pele has taken any Americans to their death at a Swedish Midsummer Festival so like we said what we're going to be doing is we're going through our top three moments that stuck with us from Midsummer or

[00:32:08] or stuck with us as the case maybe yeah that's just got an umlaut over the year right stuk moments that stuk with us and uh yeah I think I should go first god we're throwing we're throwing caution to the wind this week Ian caution caution to the wind the first moment that has stuck with me from Midsummer is the opening of the film and I mean literally like the first

[00:32:37] 20 seconds of the film so we're imagine Graham and I sitting sitting in the dark elbows accidentally touching and it feels strange and surprising but it also feels so natural I love I do love a furtive elbow touch yeah we have you know it's got a big thing of popcorn ice blast has obviously been drunk during the trailers because nobody has ever had any of that left during the film no and we've you know the the middle because this was obviously pre-covid we we

[00:33:06] put the middle armrest up we didn't we didn't want that obstructing anything oh yeah yeah you don't want that so film opens and it's a painting it's a painting with weird jarring ethereal folk music in the background and it's not a painting like on a wall in a house or like a painting he zoomed in on it is just a picture to show the audience

[00:33:35] and it's such a weird way to open a film and it kind of really adds into what we were talking about where this isn't like anything I've ever seen before I'm fairly sure when it happened I said what the fuck it's just so it's a painting by a guy called mu pan and yeah it can only be described as really fucking weird so I'll include a link to it in kind of our

[00:34:03] episode notes but with hindsight the mural tells the entire plot of the film yeah I was just about to say the same thing it shows everything the first panel shows kind of the specter of death over Danny surrounded by kind of it's her parents and her sister floating around her and there's a skeleton that's cutting the umbilical cord between or that's connecting Danny and her parents so obviously that's the

[00:34:32] the horrific murder suicide that opens the film and kind of is her being alone and separated from family and the support that has so the second panel has Pella drawing which is what he often does and he's above Christian and Danny kind of we will say spying on them Danny is you know inconsolable she's crying and Christian's got his arm twisted behind his back because obviously this is twisted his arm into staying

[00:34:59] with her third panel we have Pella as the pied piper leading the gang through a forest I'm not going to say cheesy again I'm going to say his actual name so Josh played by William Jackson Harper and William Jackson Harper is famous as cheesy from the good place I found a great comment online which is William Jackson Harper is the first actor to be typecast as man with a violently self-destructive passion

[00:35:28] about his PhD it's very true also the guy is ripped oh yeah abs abs for days so he's got so he's the only one who seems to give a shit about his PhD and he's arguably the reason why they're going to Sweden and this Midsummer festival you then have Mark who's played by Will Poulter who is wearing a justice hat because he's a fool do you remember the game that is played during Midsummer they play a

[00:35:56] game in Midsummer called skin the fool yes they do yeah and and they do as this is a spoiler special and you guys know what we're talking about Mark ends up getting skinned we then have them walking through the entrance into kind of the commune we have the at a stupa guys jumping off of the cliff in the top there's skulls and goblets there's the bear there's a lot of references to kind of there's crops

[00:36:25] in the background and then the final panel is the smile the sun shining down on them which has a horrific character chore of a smiling face but it also looks exactly like the final shot of the movie you have the feast table you have again more skeletons in this scene outside of the skull above the family in the first panel which I think supposed to

[00:36:52] be death you have nine skeletons in the picture well six skeletons and three skulls and that's the sacrifices throughout the film so it is it's literally everything in the film and he's shown you that in the first 20 seconds and it's such a unique art style that it just especially the the sun

[00:37:20] has really it lives rent-free in my brain it's kind of like the it's like the teletubby sun but like on acid the teletubbies aren't that far very few changes to make that into a horror movie true just a different soundtrack yeah yeah exactly it's such a weird beginning to the film especially when it's then juxtaposed with cutting to snow at

[00:37:47] nighttime yeah it's also I mean I know the likelihood of someone taking all of that in working out the plot of the movie is quite slim but at the same time it's a very ballsy move to put the entire plot of your two and a half hour slow-burning horror movie on the screen for the first 20 seconds yeah and then combined with the music as well and it was it it knocks you off kilter

[00:38:15] immediately yeah which and then obviously as you're kind of a bit mentally unbalanced by that everything else that is about to happen completely smashes you what one thing with the art as well just and I think it I think I read there's the same guy that did it throughout but there's so many so so the first one was a different guy right throughout the film which I was going to talk about as well there's a lot of murals and artwork that appear there yeah that's predominantly done by a

[00:38:45] guy called Ragnar person that's the one I read yeah and he did it in collaboration with Henrik Svensson who was the production designer and a graphic designer called Niall Svensson it's I just think and I'm sure you'll talk about a bit some more but like artwork is so prominent throughout even in the I think it's in Danny's apartment there's there's some quite prominent artwork I think above her desk that shows stuff there's obviously

[00:39:12] the big tapestry out in the field in with what do we call it the pubic tapestry that's that sounds like a tapestry that was woven with pubic hair well maybe she loves you yeah and obviously all of the the artwork in the as I think I termed earlier in a text message to you the pre-sex hut the pre-sex hut yep but there's so many instances of this that was the that was the the working name for

[00:39:40] pizza hut but they after market research they had they had to change it because not unfortunately not everyone gets laid off to go into pizza they were hoping yeah but unfortunately it is only the crust that gets stuffed yeah and also you know for us for us lactose intolerant folks it's the last thing you want to do after pizza but yeah there's some that there are some incredible paintings and again they're all done in such kind of a weird art weird isn't fair because it's all very good it

[00:40:10] reminds me a lot of have you ever seen Vic Reeves's artwork yeah I have actually like it it looks quite similar to that yeah it's not it's it's character jewelry so are we officially starting the fan theory that Vic Reeves is behind the harga yeah yeah yeah 100% but it's so there's paintings that show details of the the at a stupa ritual there's the fertility

[00:40:40] ritual shown in it there's obviously a famous picture of a burning bear which I don't think we really need to go into detail on but there's also a couple of rituals that were cut from the film entirely so there's one with a burning a burning boy in the middle of the lake yeah as in floating boy for ships not a child but given it's midsummer yeah you be forgiven for thinking it was the latter any other film I wouldn't have had to feel like I had to make the

[00:41:11] clarification so there's burning boy surrounded by women and it's just again it it's so weird but it doesn't feel out of place which is a very fine line to walk I think with surreal stuff like this is that it none of the bizarre shit that happens seems out of place no and it's this it's the same with the artwork and the opening mural is it seems so against the grain but perfectly sums up the film

[00:41:40] not just because it goes through the plot but it's thrown this thing at you out of absolutely nowhere and you have to figure out what the fuck is going on and really that's I think that's midsummer in a nutshell yeah and I guess as well the other thing with it is like as you say it's not bad artwork but like take the tapestry for example right yeah makes you feel uncomfortable yeah like these this is this is the kind of art that you know I could see it 100% the kind of thing that

[00:42:10] would be they potentially like hung up in the tape or something but not in a way that you go to I'm gonna really like go and enjoy the aesthetics of this it's like this art is it's challenging you it's like it's making you ask a question like what the fuck's going on why do I feel like this watching yeah you you wouldn't you wouldn't have the Ferris Bueller moment with the pubic tapestry I think that's what we're what we're getting at here is it's yeah

[00:42:37] it's crazy but but like I said the reason it stuck with me I mean number one it's so weird yeah weird sticks with you but it's the perfect setting out of your cards for what the film is going to be like it is weird it is going to surprise you a lot of things are about to happen and it is going to be unlike anything you've seen before and the the other reason again with why it's kind of stuck with me is it does

[00:43:05] completely blindside you and it given we've we this was the second Ari Aster movie after hereditary we all obviously had a lot of assumptions of what his style would be and you're sitting down and the first thing you see is this painting with weird music playing in the background and it's just not what you're expecting and like I said that

[00:43:33] then completely juxtaposes with the fact it then cuts to snow and darkness and it's it's just incredible but like I said that the the sun especially in the painting just lives with me yeah yeah agree it's um it's something that's the first midsummer moment that stuck with me uh what what about you what's on what's on your uh midsummery list

[00:44:03] so for me I guess should we should we be doing this whole episode in Swedish I think um we'll get we'll get a dub I think fair enough so we'll sort we'll sort out I'll leave that to you to to to lead yeah I think actually when I did I did the ancestry DNA thing a while ago I'm fairly sure I've got something like it's a good like in the teens percentage of of Nordic in me for a brief moment I thought you were going to

[00:44:30] say uh I did that uh the DNA thing and it said I could speak Swedish it's like okay you should be able to speak Swedish Graham why are you not speaking Swedish so first on your list first on my legale regale me with midsummery culty goodness so first on my list is a moment that I've probably spoken about more than any other on the podcast um I think I spoke by when we did the Oscars episode definitely referred to it in a few other instances but it's Florence Pugh as Danny

[00:44:59] and it is her portrayal of just I would say grief it is Danny's grief but it feels even more than that it's the most it's primal yeah it's so visceral like I don't I'm hopefully like obviously the the scene that leads up to it as you mentioned earlier is the murder suicide of her younger sister who is obviously going through a lot of depression

[00:45:27] she's messaging all this cryptic stuff to Danny anyway it turns out that she kills herself by running the fumes from the car but she also kills Danny's parents as well so it's you know it's it's like you mentioned it's like the entirety of Danny's family unit has gone this is the scene is in just as it slowly pans throughout the house I was gonna say it takes a good three four minutes to reveal yeah what's going on and you know

[00:45:55] with five minutes minimum before the reveal you know what's happened yeah and then you get the shot of the fireman going into her right and she's on the floor with it like gaffer tapes over her mouth yeah I did I didn't want to mention that because I was worried you were gonna cover it but yeah so that the scene of the fireman I'm turning the keys off in the car yeah to the reveal of the sister's body is between two and a half and three minutes yeah yeah yeah it's yeah it's

[00:46:24] it's it's crazy because like you say you kind of know what's coming but it's still sure and again like you mentioned within true Ari Aster fashion when you do see her it lingers the camera but it's not it's not gory no no not at all but other directors it would have been flash and that that's it yeah it would be very they would have done that whole scene

[00:46:51] in 10 seconds and I'm not gonna I'm not even gonna pretend like I've been through anything close to that I have had moments in my life where I have had that kind of breakdown utter sadness like it's you are inconsolable that FA Cup final it's definitely up there actually you say that this is a weird segue to having a film about we deal with things with humor but um that was even though we were

[00:47:20] getting absolutely pissed on by Mansea the atmosphere in the Watford End was just still a party atmosphere we were just happy to be there that that that's why you're not susceptible to cults yeah but yeah I like I'm sure I'm sure everyone's had moments like this right in their life where it is like you are inconsolable for a period of time something awful has happened and I could I don't think I could describe

[00:47:46] that feeling but I could point you to this film and say that that is that's what that feels like because the way that I just cannot get my head around how well Florence Pugh acts this like it is as if this has happened to her own family yeah because it's not it's just outpouring yeah it's not quite it's not crying it's not screaming

[00:48:16] it's both but neither which that's really wanky but you know what I mean it's just it's like it's a primal scream like it barely sounds human in places but like you said but you're watching it it's like yeah I can kind of get that yeah although were you just searching the band primal screams yeah I was just gonna I was just finding it see just finding a song title

[00:48:42] I know you too well I'll keep the I'll keep the tapping typing noises in there so people know what we're talking about yeah and something about something about rocks get your rocks off but there's but there's also that and that is the instant when you get that bit of bad news like the the instant that your whole world is

[00:49:07] is crushing in itself and I think she portrays that so well but even after that right even when we see her like where she's clearly been sleeping all day for example where she's really like meek and quite quiet she's kind of on edge really vulnerable and she's kind of just going along with whatever Christian wants to do right like there's the whole bit with the party

[00:49:33] and like she's just like oh yeah like oh well come along with you don't worry blah blah and yeah I think that again it's not just the initial reaction but the whole like and shout out to a podcast that's much more successful than us and does not need a shout out but grief cast um with carriard lloyd is a podcast that is incredible and did a lot for me

[00:49:57] but carriard lloyd in that talks often about how grief is like grief isn't something you can easily define grief isn't something that hits you in the same way one day to the next it it's it's it's awful it's always there it will hit you big it'll hit you small and have a lot of different impacts on you and taking that into the context of this film I think it's it's really well portrayed

[00:50:22] because she does have these like moments of obviously sadness there's like the panic attack bit where it goes from her plane from her room into the plane and stuff like that but yeah I just think it's it's so well done and speaking of Christian you mentioned him at the top of the show of the show that's the thing we're saying now throughout this in the in the pre in the prelude you mentioned Christian but throughout all of this we properly see how little of a shit he gives

[00:50:49] about Danny like he doesn't tell her about going to Sweden he's she's clearly been like sleeping all day and then gaslights her yeah saying that um he kind of told her and you know I maybe I was thinking about going but yeah it works the conversation I think this is where I wrote manipulative cum works the conversation so she then apologizes to him yeah yeah and it was like oh no no no no no no yeah that's not how that's gonna work no but yeah she's clearly been like asleep all day she's

[00:51:18] like in the throes of grief and he's clearly planning to leave her at home and go to a party like it oh yes I know he's a dick isn't he um he does he does that annoying thing which dicks often do where he he always does the right thing yeah but he goes out of his way to show how much effort it took

[00:51:43] to do oh yeah without a doubt without I loathe when people do that it's like just just don't just be selfless a little bit yeah yeah but also you can't you're not truly being selfless if you're making if you're making a point out of how great you are in doing it but similar to the like the opening artwork this kind of whole opening grief sequence I think tees up of so much again of what's to come

[00:52:07] in the movie right Danny needing to find her way on her own take control of her grief cut Christian out of her life find acceptance find confidence again and whilst obviously the key part of Midsommar is the festival and all the things that go on there I think it's so important that we have this piece at the beginning to have the context in for Danny's arc right and again going back to what we

[00:52:33] said earlier like about it being like a horror movie adjacent like it is a horror movie it's all about all of the things that happen in Sweden with the Haga at the festival but actually I would say the more important thing here is the thread of Danny's story arc throughout and also I guess if you didn't have this you didn't have this context and what happens at the end of the movie you'd arguably say

[00:52:57] well actually maybe Danny's the villain right because of well that's where she gets to yeah so apparently the film was brought to Ari Aster as just like a Swedish slasher film right okay like he decided to rewrite it because that would have been shit but he'd just gone through a really bad breakup yep so centered the thought to center the film on this kind of deteriorating and toxic relationship

[00:53:24] because in the in the theatrical cut they don't even kiss there's always a distance between them and it is just he doesn't want to be the one to break up with her because he's a prick and she doesn't want to break up with him because she doesn't feel like she has she's got nothing anybody else yeah yeah yeah but yeah I just think this is such a it's it's such a it's such an important part to the

[00:53:53] entirety of the film but just in and of itself that that portrayal of of grief and loss that Danny is going through is I mean I've not seen anything like it in cinema I think it's unsurpassed and as I said previously throw us a few deserve an oscar for this performance oh god yeah that was that I always thought she was going to be a big deal but that that opening five minutes of the film was like

[00:54:20] oh no no she's not she's a superstar yeah she's gonna be she is gonna be huge yeah so yeah that's that's my first piece that stuck with me and now I'm gonna tend to the dickhead dog because he is um being a dickhead rename him rename him christian moving on from the uh happy subject of grief and uh murder suicide that takes out somebody's whole

[00:54:49] family and on to the more uplifting story of ritual senicide so I am of course talking for this moment that stuck with me is the the attestuper scene which is more commonly known as I believe Graham uh base jumping about parachutes there we go so this is referred to by a lot of people as the

[00:55:15] quote unquote gorious scene in midsummer so the attestuper is so it dates back to nordic prehistory apparently researchers are also seem to be torn with the minority saying it's a thing and the majority saying yeah this never happened the idea is that the elderly threw themselves off of cliffs when they were no longer able to support themselves or assist in the household there is a brilliant

[00:55:40] sketch about it on the series norseman it's fucking hilarious it comes from the idea comes from an old icelandic saga called gortrek's saga so like I said it's a bit up in the air whether this is something that happened but it definitely happens in the horga in midsummer so basically they're they're at this

[00:56:04] feast actually no let's start at the beginning shall we just to really hammer home hey and because I'm annoyed at him now because I'm annoyed at him now Graham I'm going to refer to him as chidi so the night before when Pella is talking about their plans he mentions there's going to be this attestuper and chidi being the diligent phd researcher he is sits up in his bed a bit and says oh because they all

[00:56:34] sleep in the communal barn thing not because they were sleeping together sits up in his bed and says oh really they're going to do that so he knew what was coming yep yeah he knew what was coming and he didn't think to flag to the person currently going through severe psychological trauma around death that maybe she shouldn't come because chidi is a self-centered piece of shit so the idea in this

[00:57:00] community is that once you reach 72 years of old years of old years old once you reach reach 72 years of age get a nice feast you get nice fancy like bluey gray robes and then you get carried to the top of this cliff on your fancy little blue chair and your your swanky feast you cut your hand

[00:57:24] you smear it on a rune stone at the top of this cliff and then you jump off the top of it and you smash into a big rock at the bottom it's basically like suicide pride rock so imagine the beginning of the lion king but they drop simba instead which would have been for a very different and interesting

[00:57:47] film in the film midsummer dot lion king it's it's really jarring because it's like we've said we've mentioned brilliant sunlight before but this scene is basically devoid of any color like it is so bright white and the cliff faces are all white and the ground is white that everything everything seems

[00:58:09] really kind of just brightness and it's yeah it's just very jarring from how colorful the commune it was so that kind of knocks you back a little bit the music's building which is then increasing the tension and what else is increasing the tension is you along with some of the characters you know what's gonna happen like i think danny clocks to it just before it happens as well

[00:58:39] and everyone reacts in a different way so the brits power to him are screaming and shouting and saying how fucked up this is yeah chidi is basically jacking himself off over it christian is throwing up and danny is basically completely numb so you cut to her and it's very similar to the get out kind of hypnosis scene like the sound just kind of drains away but again chidi should have said

[00:59:07] something but he didn't because all he cares about is his phd again and it's the whole scene like i said it's so masterfully done in terms of tension building and that's before we get to the actual jump as we've said ariasta doesn't cut away from things so the first one to jump is this old woman

[00:59:31] she smashes face first into this rock and gets what can only be described as a flappy face the the interesting thing with these shots as well similar to how you're talking about like the full shots of people you get the full shot of the clip so you see yeah sort of real time the drop as well and the thud like because again this is a moment i seem to remember where like there's kind of

[00:59:56] no noise everyone's silent and then you just hear the on the rock yeah but but that's that's the thing so the first one you're seeing it from kind of danny's point of view yeah so you see this woman step to the edge and then you follow her down but like i kind of mentioned earlier you hear the thud but it's not a over-the-top character chore of a thud it's closer to like a pop yeah like because obviously the

[01:00:22] characters are quite far back when they're watching this that's what they would hear it's just done very realistically and you then view the crowd with the foreground just being this woman smashed in face and like i said there are gorier films and there are gorier things in films than that but the fact that he lingers on it for as long as he does yeah is what's disconcerting because again like

[01:00:48] i said it's usually it would be like jump loud smashing noise cut to reactions face back away from that like it would be a have to pause it kind of thing the next person to come up to the edge once everyone knows you know what's going to go down let me rephrase and chidi's had it confirmed that this is what has happening it's then an old man who jumps and that's the one where you see it

[01:01:13] from a lot further back yeah and you see the top of the cliff and the bottom and you just see doesn't pan away camera doesn't move you just see him jump and smash into the floor old man though screwed things up a bit lands on his legs so he's about to say alive and kicking he's alive what then happens is his family i assume it's family that was my interpretation of it anyway his loved ones get

[01:01:41] given a massive hammer and they walk over and very lovingly smash his face in with the hammer and then give it to another family member who get another blow in and another family member who get another blow in yeah there's it's difficult to watch there's definitely at least one too many blows like after the second one it's like you probably don't need a third one yeah it was definitely a rich it there was a lot less effort put into the last one i think it was just so you can say you

[01:02:11] know you did your part do you remember that time we all we'll smash grandpa's face in i know i didn't get to do it you'd already you'd already taken him out in the first two oh yeah no i wanted to but no one gave you the fucking hammer it's so difficult to watch and what is then quite interesting again from the the whole the theme we were talking about before of the the outsiders are the cunts

[01:02:37] the cult seemed to be not nice but you know a lot more friendly than other people is then they're they then explain what's happening and saying like oh it's an it's an honor for them to do this no one's forced them to do it is a big part of our culture and they yeah they try to explain it and the problem is by that part of the film because you're so kind of disorientated that your your main

[01:03:04] characters are all assholes and the traditional bad guys in a film like this all seem to be nice you don't know how to interpret what's happening but there's also a part of that right that you kind of like with anything that's not your culture there's an element of like i know this is in the extreme but like there are parts of other cultures that make people feel uncomfortable but the right

[01:03:30] thing to do is to you know respect cultures right and you know people not everyone's the same they weren't thrown off the cliff no they were carried to the top and jumped themselves you can lead a harga to the edge of a cliff but you can't make them jump off exactly that's the dream but so what was quite interesting in looking into this is that 72 isn't a random number so the entire commune

[01:03:56] revolves around the number nine yes the seasons right so the ritual lasts for nine days there are nine sacrifices even kind of the the life or the cycle of life that the horga people have is in kind of multiples of nine so 18 is the end of childhood youth lasts up to 36 maturity is 54 72 is the age you jump

[01:04:22] off the cliff obviously the feast itself is celebrated every 90 years and the importance seems to be that nine is like it's a big kind of nordic thing so odin was hung up upside down for nine days in igrisil uh the tree of the world in order to bring kind of knowledge to people oh see i thought that

[01:04:47] they just really liked that 2009 film with daniel day lewis in it yeah no big big fans what which one was that nine i am aware that wasn't this the little sack people one was it no but that came out at the same time and that was nine as the number ah okay there was nine as written out which is like

[01:05:11] a kind of like a musically kind of thing it's all oh okay based in italy whereas nine i think it did come out the same yeah they both came out in 2009 which is really confusing well that's obviously because of odin yeah yeah the attestrupa is the one of a better word better and more imaginative word is hugely fucked up the reason it kind of i think sticks with you as much as it is is obviously

[01:05:37] the lazy answer of it is super gory it's filmed in such a way that you see everything which then burns itself into your retinence and won't leave but also it has an even bigger impact because arguably an hour into the film this is the first out and out horror moment yeah like you you do have the the murder suicide at the beginning which is horrific but you wouldn't necessarily call it a

[01:06:02] a horror moment i know because that could happen like in a in a drama right that could be the catalyst for the beginning of someone's journey or whatever it might be exactly so this is the first point that even an iota of tension is released and it's an hour into the film and that

[01:06:23] really sticks with you because it's it's so weird because usually in a film in a horror movie if you have build up for an hour and then this moment happens that's when it's like right shit's getting real now guys and then shit hits the fan for the next 45 minutes yeah but here it goes straight back

[01:06:47] to tension building like it doesn't quite dial it back down to one but it goes it just slowly starts ramping up again yeah it's like um it's like that scene in friends where monica's going through the erogenous zones and you know it takes up to seven but then it's back down to four seven yeah obviously odin is is number nine odin is the ninth erogenous zone yeah odin is the ninth

[01:07:13] erogenous zone you just have to you know stroke his uh raven ravens yeah you need to get the bifrost sorted out it all gets very ends up very expensive so yeah for me this it does sound like the lazy answer because it's so visceral and both out of nowhere but you also see it coming yeah and i just

[01:07:38] can't stop thinking about it cinematic equivalent of an rko yeah it's off the top of the cliff which is a bit more high flying than an rko but we'll take it so the attest stupa which i think is what a lot of people when they think of midsummer think of it's it's one of the more i guess iconic scenes right or even it's one of the scenes that maybe people who haven't seen the film have maybe yeah or or at

[01:08:06] least the blood on the the rune stone at the top yeah yeah so yeah attest stupa flying in at number one and uh and and for your your your next choice so from one ritual that's highly debated of its historic authenticity to another so i'm skipping a bit further ahead in the movie here and i want to

[01:08:30] talk about the there's no other way to say it but the blood eagle uh there's no other way to say it because that's its name it is we obviously spoke about the brutality that is seen during all of the cliff diving etc but i'd say this is again it's kind of one of the most brutal scenes in the film but it's not you don't see anything happen and actually you're also viewing it that's the thing so so nine

[01:08:57] nine people die yeah how many do you actually see um three four four slash five because so you've got there yeah there but then there's two hager in there one of them's alive one of them's sedated and then you've got the two face jumpers ah yeah of course which still but out of the out of the main

[01:09:22] group of friends out of the main group of fantasy one is one yeah which for a horror movie given horror movies usually uh well 30 people died it was crazy like a lot of the action of this film happens off screen yeah well also you know bearing in mind that the people that like have any reaction to themselves dying is also one right because there's the one guy who's who is very aware that he's about to be burned alive and start screaming but two of the others in the temple are

[01:09:51] sedated the two that jump off the cliff were quite happy to do so so actually like a person kind of suffering i guess i believe the phrase you're looking for is murdered well no because the others are murdered but they're just like they because they're sedated like christian sedated with the bear the other guy's sedated like yeah they whilst obviously what's happening to them is horrific it's not like a um you don't feel the kind of suffering as such yeah okay but blood

[01:10:19] eagle though but the blood eagle so the blood eagle so christian um stumbles across this in i guess what it's like in a shed it's a chicken it's a chicken coop yeah it's a chicken coop yeah was it a yeah chicken coop or greenhouse or something i think it's a chicken coop you i think you're right there you know you should never you should never keep an eagle in a chicken coop old old swedish proverb unless it's got sunflowers fries this is true yeah yeah so christian stumbles across this after

[01:10:48] he's after i'm pretty sure it's after he leaves the wailing sexy times uh so he's he's running naked from a sex whale fest yeah and yeah he stumbles upon this and again like it is clearly one of the more gory things that you see in the film but it's also kind of weirdly like you say with like the flowers and the eyes and also how decadently it's been done unlike with precision it's kind of

[01:11:14] presented in like this i don't want to say beautiful way because that sounds really messed up but it's kind of it's do you know what i mean yeah so assuming we we do have some uh and again guys we appreciate you but we may have some people who did ignore the spoiler clacks and and thought fuck it i'm not going to watch midsummer i want to hear what's what's so great about it um maybe maybe paint

[01:11:38] paint me a paint me a bloody word picture what what what is a blood eagle so what is the body so the blood eagle is a ritual method of execution it is detailed in late scaldic poetry so there's a couple of instances where it's mentioned in it's just called the sagas i don't know if they're the same sagas that you you spoke about earlier i know different different sagas okay in the instances where it's

[01:12:07] mentioned in in these writings the victims are placed in a prone position their ribs are severed from their spine their lungs are pulled out through the openings to create a pair of wings and then they're they're kind of displayed outside the body um so yeah essentially your lungs become your wings hence the term blood eagle uh happens uh quite graphically in vikings oh nice yeah but yeah and as

[01:12:34] you mentioned like there's a there's a debate whether this is whether it was a like a literary invention to kind of just you know a really gory thing to write in stories or if this was well it was on vikings so i don't think vikings is fake it's basically a documentary right basically a documentary yeah talking heads yeah um it would be great if they interspersed vikings with talking heads

[01:13:01] so we decided to do the blood eagle on him and it was it was a bit crazy and then floki floki was all like hey why do we have to do this and i was like hey blood eagles do you have the sunflowers for the eyes well that's the worst thing when you forget the sunflowers so one thing that's depicted in the film is that simon so simon is the british guy who is um has been blood eagled if we can use it i

[01:13:26] believe i believe that's i believe that's the right verbiage right and in the film you kind of see that he's still alive throughout all of this as well now i was reading into it and there's a few debates about the likelihood of that being possible lungs operating i i took that scene the first time i watched it to be kind of like what you said earlier on he's tripping on sex smoke yeah is he alive or is it the distortion of what he's viewing stuff like how do you view it yeah so well these these are the

[01:13:55] two arguments that that people say because like the idea if he's alive is that lungs aren't made to operate outside the body you need the negative pressure of a rib cage and all that kind of thing to for lungs to work so yeah a lot of people think exactly that that because he's had sex smoke and also sex smoke just makes me think of the song uh the mouse rat song sex hair and i just want to sing

[01:14:18] sex smoke you got it from me uh but anyway i was dead sex smoke to me has to be sung to the tune of sex bomb sex smoke sex smoke you're my sex smoke it just or you know what makes more sense is maybe sex smoke is just the um the natural consequence of one's sex being on fire oh that does well you know there's no sex smoke without sex fire it's i mean let's one last one sex smoke is obviously a

[01:14:48] funk band from the 70s like but so as i say yeah this is so it's to your answer to your question yeah i do think it probably is the hallucinogens that are having this and the the editing is very clever but as i say simon he's been subjected to this fate and this is the first time i really think that it kind

[01:15:12] of paints the harga um in a more kind of terrifying light than you first kind of see throughout the film and for me that's that's not necessarily the fact that they did the the ritual sacrifice because we've obviously seen that that's you know that's their jam but his transgressions are not really this on par with the other outsiders right a lot of the other outsiders have done things that okay maybe they don't

[01:15:40] warrant uh their fates but you can kind of understand the transgressions and how they got there everyone everyone else was put into a position where they could make the wrong choice yeah so chidi was given all of the materials needed for him to try and sneak into this place and steal pictures of a book yep and that's where he got killed by a guy who i think was donald ducking

[01:16:06] but i'm not sure wearing the face of uh will polter i 100 thought you meant donald ducking as that was the name of the actor like donald ducking i get what i was i was worried you took it to be like cockney rhyming slang or something um yeah he got he got head bashed in there um yeah christian obviously got you know you know which character it was that did that right it was um the one who was annoyed that he'd pissed on the trick yeah yeah yeah which i

[01:16:35] found out today i was never i always thought it was uh for some reason i always thought it was the oracle i did as well i 100 i 100 did as well but yeah it just feels like he's like simon clearly gets very animated at the um the base jumping ritual and he's the like you mentioned he's the first one to kind of call out say this is really fucked up and stuff but outside of that it doesn't feel like

[01:16:59] he necessarily deserved like everyone else is clearly very flawed and maybe we just don't see his flaws and what leads to his his ultimate fate those those two were the only ones that felt like they had a bit of self-preservation to them yeah as in the cult killed them because otherwise they would have gone and told people about their cliff diving experience yeah i i think so and also like

[01:17:27] for him to suffer probably arguably one of the worst fates of i mean christian gets pretty bad as well but actually so does will will porter get skinned alive there's but it's still it's it's you know i i wouldn't want to be blood eagled no that's a yeah i'm not i'm not going to ask the obvious question that that led up to but yeah i wouldn't want to be blood eagled i also wouldn't want to be

[01:17:52] burnt alive in a bear costume or skinned alive no as as if if blood eagles were real this isn't going to be the first time this has been said but the blood eagle did feel a bit overforce but also there's there's a real irony in it right because one of the things like obviously christian is a dick in how he's treating danny but he also is a real dick in how he treats

[01:18:21] chitty's character because he's kind of muscle he's like wants to do the same paper right and he's he's kind of gets a bit competitive with him trying to get the scoop on stuff blah blah um but there's a certain irony in the fact that he wanted like the the big scoops from you know and the insights into this culture he stumbled across this ritual sacrifice in the form of a bloody

[01:18:49] yeah good point which would be an amazing thing to be able to write about just unfortunately for him he gets knocked out and stuffed inside a bear yeah they kind of they green missed him don't they yeah yeah now another another wrestling reference for people who don't actively watch wrestling we make a lot of wrestling references i mean i yeah i was gonna say i i don't watch wrestling at all i haven't watched it since like um one second my dog's ripping up the sofa

[01:19:18] bowie no so yeah it was i just found it funny and it kind of stuck with me on the rewatch that um the idea that christian would have killed for this like that kind of quality to put into his paper of like a ritual that you know arguably assuming that miss summer takes place finding finding evidence that it happened would have been huge yeah exactly right for something that people are debating is is

[01:19:47] whether it's just a thing in old writings so yeah there's there's definitely a certain irony there and also good because fuck christian i hate christian more than i hate you're on the same page for something there i i too hate christian a lot more than i hate bennie yeah so yeah blood eagles also struck strongly recommend vikings as an aside great show dips a bit in the middle but not enough that it's a you gotta get through it thing it's still entertaining but it it

[01:20:17] quality definitely improves not enough so it's uh is it oxide neutrino that did gotta get through this i don't know i just know that that was like the one lyric from the song oh yeah that was the only lyric from the song you gotta get through this what was the song called uh wait oh shit no i can't say that because that's not actually the title of the song anyway it's like uh remember uh right here

[01:20:39] right now right here right now right here right now right here yeah we could keep this going for a while we're both we're both stubborn in the ways you like being funny but yeah again blood eagles absolutely horrific and definitely is one of those images that kind of sticks with you i think it's up

[01:21:06] with the creepy son right and that's the the image of the son not the the creepy oracle son right so on onto my uh my my my final my final choice for our moments that stuck with us and we are of course going to be talking about what i will like to refer to as the communal sex wailing party

[01:21:30] so this is kind of the combination of two scenes because this is our podcast and i can do what i want so both scenes happen kind of in parallel to each other so the first part we're going to be talking about is the sex wailing party so christian gets drunk and led away to a fertility ritual um the idea

[01:21:53] is that because it's kind of covered in a chidi i think asks them early on about incest because obviously they're they're a very small collective what happens with that side of things and the idea is that they bring in outside blood to make sure things are diluted it's it's a weird i don't know

[01:22:17] the terminology to talk about with copulation in a small cult but anyways reverse eugenics yeah christian is this outside party who is basically a sperm donor they take him into a to to use the term uh graham coined earlier the pre-sex room where they have a very quasi-legal conversation with him yeah about you've been selected you're very compatible like i think they talk about like

[01:22:46] horoscopes or something like that yeah there's there's something in there there's there's some some level of compatibility between this cult member and his little swimmers so they they lead him into what could only be described as a sex room in the attic above the sex room is the oracle who is the inbred one because apparently being inbred means you aren't clouded your mind's not clouded

[01:23:15] which means oracle yeah there is no spoon there is there was never a spoon yeah it all gets a bit bit weird still not sure why he has to be above all of this happening so the cult members lying on what can only be described as like the weirdest wedding centerpiece so it's just like all of these flowers in the middle of the room which you know might sound romantic but she's also surrounded by a lot of old

[01:23:45] naked women these old naked women women are all singing songs they start mimicking the noises so the the cult member i believe is called maya they start mimicking the noises she's making at one point one of them get behind christian and just kind of push his butt so they're singing swaying and

[01:24:07] puppeteering everything that's going on and then you get what can only be described as sex echoes yeah of them copying the noises she's making and being there for her there's a bit where i feel like it's her mum like reaches out and holds her hand and starts singing really close to her while christian's

[01:24:30] face is right next to hers yeah i also the weird thing with all of this is is i can like that noise that they're all making like it's it's so vividly implanted in my brain you you you have we have we have referred to it relatively consistently on the podcast as yeah sex whales yeah it does sound a bit

[01:24:53] like whale song but yeah it's that obviously sticks with you because i i do not have the grasp of the english language that is good enough to accurately convey how fucking weird that is like given the weird shit that's happened previously like we've just had a scene which i was very close to picking

[01:25:18] which is like the the maypole dance off florence pew's character gets uh dressed up with all of the other kind of girls from the commune they they're tripping balls off this like psychedelic tea and they basically do this dance around the maypole where it's basically like the royal rumble it's another wrestling reference for people who don't watch wrestling who it's the last person standing becomes the may queen and it's very psychedelic it's all very very weird with how it's

[01:25:46] happening it's like oh i don't think this film could get any weirder you know and then you cut to the sex barn yeah also just as an aside not the weirdest not the weirdest like take on sex in an ariasta film and i'm not talking about midsummer i i haven't seen the short yet but feel free to ruin it on account for the podcast so there is uh a short that ariasta did for i think his uh degree uh called the strange

[01:26:16] thing about the johnsons it is probably single-handedly one of the most messed up things i've ever seen i feel like it's is you can watch it in its entirety on youtube um we can probably just stick a link to it and it's about 25 minutes 30 minutes long it's a short but yeah if you think like the approach to sex in midsummer is a bit out there give give 30 minutes to the weird thing

[01:26:42] the strange thing about the johnsons because i mean yikes yeah i will i will for want of a better word give it a go so while all of this sex wailing is happening and puppeteering and general weirdness um and it's from it's from that scene once he's uh finished up that's then when he runs off and discovers that the blood eagle yeah but while he's mid-act this is where danny finds him so

[01:27:10] she arrives back from her kind of may queen procession where she's gone around and like blessed the crops basically and heard this noise coming from the barn so in like the weirdest episode of through the keyhole she she looks through the keyhole and obviously sees what's happening and just has a full-blown panic attack out in the open and speaking of kind of things building like this

[01:27:34] has also been building for the entire film so from the outset so before even she finds out what's happened with her sister and her parents she knows something's wrong and she hesitates in calling christian yeah every time she's been upset or crying she has excused herself from the room and hidden to go off and cry herself and this is the first time she's just let it out kind of quote unquote

[01:28:02] in public and it's also the first time she's had people rush to her so she has a full-blown panic attack and all the girls and women she's with rush to her hold her whisk her away to safety back to kind of the the communal halls they live in and they have again what i think is one of the other kind of iconic

[01:28:28] scenes from midsummer where kind of grief 2.0 yeah so it's quite similar to the first scene but this time she has someone there because in the first scene you've kind of got christians holding her but he doesn't seem to really he doesn't know what he's supposed to do he's just sitting there while she's kind of screaming here the cult which is their thing are copying the sound she's making and the

[01:28:54] action she's going through and it's for something that's kind of so jarring it's obviously really kind of cathartic because it's the first time she's really been able to start processing anything that's happening it's the first time she's had people there there's a there's a line earlier in the film where pella talks about how does she feel held and this is the first time she's really held and the

[01:29:24] supports there because and i cannot stress this enough every single other person in this film is a cunt and it's yeah it's the first time she's been she's had people around there who are willing to share in her grief rather than push her to keep it to herself and that's why it sticks with you because it is so i don't want to say weird again it is it's finding it's finding that

[01:29:52] love and support in the most unlikely of circumstances yeah exactly and but as a again kind of from what i was talking about earlier about how you're trained to watch films these are the bad guys yeah so in being fuck this podcast going for another fucking hour in

[01:30:13] in understanding like you said that not to go too tropey danny has gone a bit vin diesel here and she's found her family right does that mean we're getting nine of these yeah yeah one of them is going to be in space too midsummer too furious or too fast too midsummer which way around would you do it too mid to summer too mid to summer yeah yeah too mid to summer in space yeah so she's found her

[01:30:41] family and you're you're you're you're happy for her because she it finally appears you know she's got this support around her but in being happy for her are you condoning what the cult has done do you get what i mean yeah there's obviously a very deep and detailed conversation to have about that but it's midnight um she's found her people but should they be her people right yeah but like

[01:31:10] it's such a fine line between understanding and condoning that again it's because the film's always kind of got you from the outset it's knocked you off balance you just don't know how to process what's happening which is why i think we sat in silence after watching the film because this this should be

[01:31:35] her friends like any other film it would be her friends have found her right but this would be like something horrible happening and fucking mike myers or jason has turned up and just got you know what do you want to talk about it let's talk about it let's go let's just go sit by the lake and we'll just talk through this yeah yeah have you got an axe to grind nice um obviously it was a machete though yeah i'm you know i'm i'm i'm taking artistic license i liked it that's the important thing but

[01:32:03] that's for me is why it stuck is because it it for the for the for the sex wailing part of the scene it's it's just so weird and that sound is never gonna leave my brain like you said and for the danny part it it's so you just don't know how to interpret it and because there's so many ways to interpret it i have been thinking about it since i watched it for the first time and we've all like

[01:32:28] like you said kind of we've we've all gone through moments of grief where share like people process things in different ways but at some point with grief that there is a part where you have to kind of process and share yeah if if you're gonna yeah if you're gonna move through it it needs yeah and for everybody again if people are going through things that point is different for everyone i've had some moments where i've got to that stage immediately i'm still going through a stage now where i'm not

[01:32:56] quite there yet but it happens for everyone and and seeing this happen to her it's just it's beautiful would be the wrong word but it's again it's impossible to describe because you still don't know how to interpret what's happening yeah yeah because there's also elements i suppose of like you know if you if you're thinking about of like symbolism and stuff in in a film like there are

[01:33:23] times where people will maybe seek solace in the wrong places in times like this in their lives right so like and that could be anything that could be the wrong people it could be like in in the comfort of substances or whatever it might be but that's another crutch that you have in a in a time of grief is that you if you can get the support even if it's the wrong support you're going to take the support right and again that's kind of what's happening here but it's that's that that that also then buys

[01:33:52] into things like you know this is why people are drawn to cults yep like you know people people aren't there's a lot of stupid people out there but people aren't like inherently stupid like there is there is a reason people are drawn to cults and communes and kind of the lifestyle that is and this kind of i i think is a great insight into it but like i was saying because you can understand i i'm a i'm about

[01:34:22] to go far too deep on this because you can understand why she's accepting this help from people have we also been brainwashed by the cult right that's the kind of level we're playing on that that's where my brain still is and i don't have an answer and that's why it's still stuck with me is because i am still working through everything that this scene means and that's why this film is

[01:34:47] a fucking masterpiece i'm also very aware we are very slowly encroaching on territory from your next section so should we just music and move on yeah why not let's music and move on we went from so the first the first thing that we spoke about in these in these moments that start with us was obviously the opening scene those opening 20 seconds the image on the screen

[01:35:10] um and the last thing i'm going to talk about now is the very last scene um actually there's a um because we should respect the credits we should respect the credits yeah which which are um they're they don't scroll no they're done as long continuous takes with a load of stuff happening in front

[01:35:34] of you yeah so many levels and there's oh fuck i forget there's a really cool twitter account that i forget what it's called but it is basically like the the first it shows the first and last shots of movies side by side i i have a feeling this is just going to be called like first and last shot i think it probably is something like that oh it is i future ian i'm going to keep this one

[01:36:02] short because this podcast is already over two hours long so the twitter account graham is referring to here is first final frame it's well worth checking out now back to the guys anyway there's there's a twitter account that does this but it works really well in this scenario because this last shot i think is is so perfectly done and we'll talk about the the build-up to it

[01:36:28] but the the shot itself at the end is full screen it's focusing in on danny um she's in her full may queen regalia and um she's watching something horrific happen in front of her and similar to what you were saying just now with the whole like finding finding solace in the wrong kind of places and stuff

[01:36:52] you see her smile arguably for the first time in the film i think probably the first time in the film that she smiles she there are there are moments especially during like the may dance yeah where she she seems to catch herself getting into the moment but then snaps back out of it yeah but this is definitely the first time where it feels like this could be it feels like it's a it's a step yeah so she's and i was going to pick the whole kind of burning ritual

[01:37:21] at the end as my as my piece here but i think the the moment that truly sticks is that last shot but so so you've got the all of the sacrifices you've got christian being stuffed inside a bear and put inside the temple to be burned oh we can finally have the discussion go on so i'm assuming you were talking earlier the thing that suddenly made sense was fuck wasn't it the british girl um i can't

[01:37:50] remember simon's other half uh connie connie yeah so connie is the uh so blood eagles other half goes missing and it looks like she's been drowned which seemed to kind of come out of nowhere but then on the director's cut there is a ritual that happens in a lake yeah and clearly they'd recreated that with her but not stopped at the last minute yeah yeah exactly that yeah and you're right it

[01:38:15] gives yeah it gives that additional additional context but yeah so we have the whole the whole ritual that ends the festival they've built that you see it throughout the film but they've built the big wonderful yellow pyramid that's imposing on the the site that they're staying on and there are a number of people who have sacrificed in this burning ritual and there is a point in this where

[01:38:39] danny gets to choose whether or not christian is one of those people and she decides that yay fuck it is um so prior to this after discovering the blood eagle christian gets knocked out and later finds himself stuffed inside the innards of a grizzly a grizzly bear brown bear one of the two bear a bear so he's sat in the middle of this temple there's a number of other people in there a few of them already

[01:39:07] dead there's ingmar i think is one of them who is the guy who bought the british people there's another one i think actually it's the guy who got offended by the by the pissing on the tree is in there as well i believe it is us yeah which is the guy who yeah got annoyed and killed walmark's face yeah walmark's face and it's weird that we've spoken so many times about wearing people's faces

[01:39:32] on this podcast isn't it at least it's a different face this time this is true yeah yeah mum will be so happy yeah it's not hers it's will porter is that that's that is that that's the answer isn't it what you would use will porter's face instead yeah i'll just use will porter's face brilliant we're on but yeah so they they have this and then obviously it gets set on fire there's danny is kind of opposite it when we see this final shot and she's watching i guess her actions

[01:39:59] her choices play out in front of her christian is being burned alive christian is still kind of paralyzed and drugged so has no reaction to this which i think is arguably worse right great bit of eye acting though yeah very very good it's not quite frodo tier yeah but it's it's it's definitely up there with the best of them frodo tier because he cries or uh no so that's frodo tears okay i thought

[01:40:27] it was frodo tears no so the frodo tears is why he's in the frodo tier okay but again going back to what you were saying earlier this is the point you see danny and the she she goes through a few expressions on her face while she's watching this there's kind of the there is a little you feel like there's a tinge of sort of horror and confusion but ultimately ends up in this kind of quite twisted

[01:40:49] smile and i think i'm on danny's side in this like i think you've you side with danny at this point um you certainly sympathize with her in the moment she has and talking about the whole arc that she goes on throughout the film right she's arguably yes it's in the wrong places but she's taken steps to rid herself of all of this toxicity in her life christian not the system of down album but albeit

[01:41:15] in the most like extreme manner and she's found her people whether or not they're the right people but they're people that are there for her and she's gone from this person who was essentially ostracized at the beginning because of her grief to the most celebrated person in the hugger culture at that point in time as being the may queen and i think again there's this other

[01:41:40] part about you talk about the brightness and all the colors and everything and this is one instance where there is this real juxtaposition between the visuals that you see on screen so you've got florence pugh's face at the center of the screen she's completely surrounded with all these incredible flowers of all different colors you've got the bright flowers she's smiling and that shot in anything else you think oh there's a you know well i guess there is a celebration of sorts going on

[01:42:09] but you think happy times everyone's celebrating well actually what is unfolding when you really think about what is unfolding i.e what there's seven eight people being burnt to death in front of her like the contradiction between the two is just i don't know i think it's one of the best shots closing shots in cinema i think it's so so good but like i was saying it's finding that and again

[01:42:38] which is it's such a weird feeling to leave a film on is oh hang on did i just did i just condone all of that yeah so like like dead to i i know it's more complicated than that i'm just kind of trying to i'm trying to process why it stuck with but you get what i mean it it's it's like to be happy for her there do you also have to be happy about the blood eagle do you have to be happy about everything else that has happened that you know because like everyone was shitty but they didn't necessarily

[01:43:08] deserve to die no yeah and then obviously this leads to the good place but no you're right i i can't think of uh i i can't think of many closing shots of films that are as powerful as is that no and it is i do really feel like this it's ariasta's idea of a happy ending which is hilarious as well

[01:43:30] but is in its entirety like this this film it truly is danny's arc right like in the con yes it's a it's a film about cults yes it's a film about different cultures and countercultures but boiled down it is a film about her relationship yeah it is it is absolutely well i think it's i think it's it's a film about i think her her dealing with her grief and also it's a it's it's a breakup

[01:44:00] movie yeah right yeah ultimately there's there's just so much to unpack yeah not least that dress which i think um i think ariana ariana grande tried to buy it oh really i think i remember because did she she wore something or she or she tried to buy it and she was going to wear it like a fancy dress buy so she um tried to buy it because they auctioned it uh a museum like a motion picture

[01:44:27] museum um ended up winning it right ariana grande went on to have a her 27th birthday as a midsummer theme i'll throw in 26th 28th 25th 29th 72nd i i can't believe any of this because ariana grande consistently looks like she's only 16 years old i'm not the i think everyone's gone

[01:44:52] through the age where they uh try and fob off pop music but she's great at what she does she's 27 as i've said to you ian olivia rodrigo's album is a fucking banger and i've listened to it over and over and over talking of breakup movies yeah i didn't i didn't realize how depressing that album that was it is a proper you could tell it was written by a teenager yeah yeah absolutely it's absolutely yeah i just want to let her know everything's going to get better it's going to

[01:45:21] be okay so yeah i don't know what this is what i've read obviously when we're doing a midsummer special i'm going to google ariana grande's birthday so yeah her 27th birthday was midsummer themed okay because my birthday is the 26th of june so day after my brother's oh nice happy birthday ariana i'm sure you're listening my brother though not as good a pop star no will occasionally go through phases where he will sing everything like it is uh narration from les mis i can get on board with that yeah saying that i have yeah last time i saw him was in a car park to give him presents so

[01:45:51] you know uh my favorite uh as we've got on the subject of ariana grande my favorite ariana grande factoid is the fact that she thought she was getting seven rings tattooed on her hand in chinese um and it turned out to be the rough translation was like small korean barbecue yeah oh as um as unfortunate tattoos go is is definitely up there yeah definitely but from small korean barbecues

[01:46:20] to massive swedish ones and we're back we're back on topic yeah it's it's a hell of an ending right like it's it takes as i said it takes us full circle and it it does the really interesting thing of yeah like you say it it kind of makes you question a lot of who you root it's as you mentioned earlier it's like getting to the end of friday the 13th part two obviously not part one

[01:46:49] because jason in part one but end of friday the 13th and being on the side of jason so yeah you know those camp counselors shouldn't have been having sex man and they deserve every slash they got yeah it's again that it's so many different layers to it uh and i think that is why as a film it sticks with you like it does because it completely goes against the rules of a horror movie yeah uh like i

[01:47:16] said after you building tension there's then supposed to be not a payoff but you get what i mean like a an act of the film which is all there's like a volley action and things like that things happening yeah yeah there's no shadow you can see everything that's happening like we said there's only three scenes in darkness you've been given the entirety of the plot in the first 20 seconds of the movie

[01:47:38] the main characters outside of danny aren't likable yeah yeah it goes against everything that you are trained as a viewer to watch a film as which and then when it breaks all of that it's so difficult to figure out what you're supposed to think and that's why it is fucking great it is and as i say this is the this is the perfect perfect end shot for this film and any movie i think well

[01:48:09] not every movie just just at the end is just florence pew just being like yeah yeah so you have morgan freeman walking across the beach to his his old friend from shawshank and as you pan up to the sun you just see florence pew's face come out and smile i like it because obviously she's superimposed over the fire right oh of course yeah yeah yeah so just superimpose there on top of other films i

[01:48:35] yeah i don't get behind that i'm all about that the hobbit door closes and the florence pew's smiling face velociraptors attacking the t-rex and then florence pew's smiling face so that was our our top threes so we will we will go through you know there's obviously more i think spoilery midsummer conversation we could have but as is tradition out of yours what was your top

[01:49:02] three my top three we we obviously regaled them in a chronological order yeah my top three would be um third place the blood eagle it is it's horrific but i think it's if if it wasn't in the film it would still the film would still be as impactful uh second place danny's smile i think that as i said

[01:49:29] yeah it's such a perfect ending to her story arc and it really draws you in and makes you ask a lot questions of the film and of yourself but then yeah number one has to be danny's grief it's it's so well portrayed throughout the film in the beginning and then throughout the entirety of the movie so yeah that's that's my top three yeah so for me i think number three i'm going uh the opening mural uh like

[01:49:56] i said it was massively jarring and it's incredible but it sets the scene very well for everything else that's happening and those things that are happening include my number two which is the atis stupa scene so the base jumping without parachutes it sticks with you for so many reasons so many reasons i'm just sorry i'm just thinking about it now um and then number one for me is the

[01:50:23] communal sex wailing party and the danny grief scene that kind of goes along with it for a joint top three and hopefully you're on board for this i say we combine the sex wailing party in that grief yeah with danny's grief and we just have like a danny grief double bill which sounds horrible but i i i

[01:50:47] think they could fall under the same umbrella yeah i agree so i would say number three the atis stupa scene uh number two danny smile just because it is like we said it is the perfect final shot of a film and even like like we said we could we could we could do two hours just on that one frame at the end of the film and then number one just because it is the so relatable that danny's grief in the opening

[01:51:14] scene and then in the kind of the hall of residence yeah we're good we're good for that we are we are absolutely good for that good but yeah so as dear listener you enter probably like hour three of um the midsummer special this is why midsummer wasn't on our list of movies we could talk about for 10 minutes without researching because yes we could talk about it for fucking hours and that's the thing

[01:51:42] and and that's that's also why i think we had to stick with our our patented top three format because unstructured this this would never have ended no i mean i can only imagine today today when we are post post watching midsummer on midsummer after many hours of drinking beforehand

[01:52:09] what that tube journey home is going to be like in terms of dissecting this film for the half the time yeah and like you said that there's so much to i i kind of i i touched on it touched on it passing earlier it it stands up so well to repeat viewings because it is everything is so layered both in terms of even like we said fucking set design that there's so much foreshadowing and everything

[01:52:35] is so layered you do pick up on more things and because it is done in such a way where it goes against both horror convention and film convention the first time i i've i've used the phrase a couple of times now but you're so kind of like off kilter and unbalanced watching it the first time you miss a lot of stuff yeah yeah so the second viewing when you know what's going to happen opens you up to a lot more kind of

[01:53:03] interpretation of everything and i've never had that with another film there's very few films where i could talk about um things like star wars for this long but that's predominantly around me explaining to you how i could have done it better yeah yeah like there aren't other films i i can talk about at this level and i i don't know if it's because i don't know if it's because the central theme is grief

[01:53:32] and that's something that's the whole mental health side of things is something that's quite close to my heart and things like that i don't know if that's drawn me in more because of that side of stuff i don't know if it's because it's so different i don't know if it's because there's so many different kind of interpretations of things i or a combination of them all there's just something there that won't let go of me yeah i and i can say it stands up after i think by the time we watch

[01:54:00] this today today it will be i think my sixth viewing of it and i i'm not sure i'll get bored of it it's it's it's so such a good film interestingly so i i like this a lot more than i still liked hereditary but i like midsummer a lot more than hereditary i'm really interested to see where ariasta goes next so ariasta goes next sounds like some kind of like disney movie um it's that

[01:54:27] ariasta goes next is like his curb your enthusiasm yeah but he's so you you've heard of his his next endeavor um i it's a dark comedy but he described it in a really weird way he described it as a four hour nightmare comedy there we go it's called disappointment boulevard it's got he doesn't he he mentioned it on his the reddit ama we've referenced before that he doesn't want to go back

[01:54:57] to horror yeah yeah so obviously you go you go for nightmare comedy yeah joaquin phoenix in his first role since he played joker yeah it's apparently it's a decade spanning decade spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time that's it that's all he's released about the plot of it but i cannot wait because it's worth again we we didn't talk about it at length

[01:55:22] but this is his second film it's the fact that we're talking about this for a director's second film yeah is insanity so i think he did he's had he had two shorts so he had obviously the strange thing about johnson's and also one called munchausen which i haven't seen but yeah in terms of features you're absolutely right he's he's done her registry and he's done this

[01:55:47] okay no i'm i'm very excited to see what he ends up doing um obviously i think when we left this i think we both said florence pew was going to get an oscar nomination she did just not for this so she's going to be um yeah um i i was going to say i'm i'm worried the mcu will draw too much of her time but everyone involved in the mcu has also been doing other films so i don't think it will

[01:56:13] i still think she's going to be in some very interesting things yeah i i hope i hope she still continues to pick stuff like this alongside um alongside those bigger movies but you would suspect um being in a relationship with zach braff you're probably gonna pick the odd film here and there because obviously i mean she's gonna turn up into zach braff like whatever zach braff does next

[01:56:37] surely she is oh is she i think she is no she's not she was in a short he did okay so it was a competition by adobe called the movie poster movie contest right and you basically had to design a movie poster and then the best one would inspire a short film and that short film was called um in

[01:57:02] the time it takes to get there uh which is about the according to imdb anyway uh the routines and strifes of a disenchanted social media influencer are reimagined with an 18th century backdrop and that social media influencer is played by florence pew okay it's quite cool it's on youtube it was actually very funny i i i prefer zach braff a lot more as a filmmaker than when he's in his own things yeah i i would i would agree with that because when he when he's in his own things it feels like

[01:57:32] he's just trying to be jd again when he's directing other people like he he did a episode of ted lasso okay oh yeah because he's he's good friends with uh what's his face isn't he jason sudecus no no oh of course no it's bill lawrence yeah but bill lawrence did tell us but jason sudecus's ex-partner is olivia wilde okay and florence pew is in her next film so the follow-up to booksmart booksmart which is

[01:57:56] talking of like yeah debut films yeah so i'm fairly sure florence pew's doing doing the follow-up to booksmart okay so you can only imagine that's going to be incredible yeah yeah obviously we've we've ended a marathon episode about midsummer talking about olivia wilde yeah so just to i mean let just to really hammer it home hopefully we have now proved that we aren't joking when we recommend

[01:58:21] midsummer each week it's been it's been asked so we had a question was it yourself but was it in vaccine yeah it was whilst i was you were stuck in a vaccine queue for two hours in a vaccine queue for two hours and did um an ama on the instagram account and someone someone asked when you started doing the midsummer bit did you know it was going to be a bit and the answer is no because i think we the the

[01:58:48] second ever episode we did so that the first episode was always intended to be kind of like as a pilot second episode because over lockdown i did hang on let me find the actual title of it because i gave it a really stupid name surely not so over lockdown i did movie recommendations nobody asked for but ian is going to do anyway because everybody is stuck inside and it's a good way to get people watching films i've wanted to talk about for a while this time last year it was the truman show

[01:59:14] because i was doing that we thought it would be a good idea to kind of do it on the podcast as well so that was the first nobody asked for i did yeah thought it'd be a good idea to do it on the podcast we weren't sure whether to go midsummer or not because midsummer is a film we recommend people all the time we wanted something that was more in keeping with the theme of the episode and then we decided oh we could just do we'll just do both and then i think i jokingly said oh we should just do it

[01:59:41] every week and then we decided you know what we should just do it and then i think that the week after that was your choice and then you threw midsummer in after that and then it became a bit and now it has become a comedically timed masterstroke which i'm rapidly running out of ways to uh to crowbar in but um yeah it's whilst it is a bit it's a very sincere bit because it is such a good film

[02:00:08] and yeah as as it says i think over the past what i'm gonna guess is about two hours by this point i hope you can kind of understand why okay so the podcast nobody asked for top three moments from midsummer that stuck with us number three we have the at a stupa scene or face jumping without parachutes number two we have the final shot so danny's smile and number one we have danny's grief squared

[02:00:37] so both danny's grief at the beginning and danny's grief after the whole sex wailing party uh but yeah i think that was that was good and i'd be really interested to i'm kind of jumping the gun here and we're gonna do things the other way around um just to mess with your muscle memory but i'm really intrigued to hear what you guys think about midsummer if you love it as much as us if

[02:01:04] you don't like it for whatever reason might not talk to you again but yeah just just really interested to hear people's thoughts on it really and if you have any of those send them over to us on twitter at nobody else for pod the number four you can also find us there on facebook uh and you also find us on instagram at the podcast nobody asked for and at ko-fi.com forward slash the podcast nobody asked for where you can buy us a coffee and all that money goes to well buying a copy of

[02:01:34] midsummer for the first person to ask for one and generally making the podcast bigger and better the other thing that we would love is some more juice for the apple algorithm and you can give us apple algorithm juice by leaving us a positive five star review in that review uh give us episode ideas because we love to use those for inspiration i think our next episode is probably going to be

[02:01:58] based off one of those and yeah more more apple juice please algorithm type not not the not the drinking but you should try and drink glass of fruit juice a day get your five a day in so yeah that was by far the longest episode of the podcast nobody asked for if you have stayed this long we really appreciate it we hope you enjoyed midsummer and our ramblings as much as we enjoyed midsummer and rambling um but yeah what was our movie recommendation again today

[02:02:32] no one asked for this this podcast is part of podomity the uk's podcast comedy network why not laugh at what else we've got visit podomity.com