The heavy focus on flowers in costumes, design, and the film's marketing, comes back into the story: the script explains that the local flowers are used to create the special tea.
Yellow seems to represent death. The parents had a yellow blanket and the tube feeding the monoxide was yellow. Her sister was wearing a yellow top. The 'temple' is a yellow structure. Maybe it's not death so much as it represents something else, maybe foreshadowing. Like the drink/tea is yellow. The flowers they follow to the village are yellow. It could represent the sun/summer as the creepy sun painting in the beginning illustrates.
Early in the film, a painting can be seen above Dani's bed of a young blonde girl in a paper crown kissing a disinterested bear. This foreshadows her and Christian's eventual fates and appears to contain shades of their relationship troubles.
The volunteer sacrifices screaming at the end despite being given yew to 'prevent pain' - pure placebo. Everything of the yew tree but the berries is poisonous, and yew has zero analgesic or calming effects. It may have just been some sort of last rite, but if by chance they were hoping the yew would kill them before the fire would...
Both in marketing material and in the film, the sound of exhaling is very much made. This might be part of the summer rituals, exhaling much like the sun in summer season is "giving life" out our lungs. In the film, the Hårga do this quite often among each other as a greeting, part of their Affekt language.
In what appears to be Mark's apartment, there can be seen both a scarecrow doll and a framed picture of Ray Bolger's Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz." These are fairly innocuous until you remember that scarecrows are stuffed with straw. Mark's fate foreshadowed in an incredibly subtle way early on.
The opening moments show a tapestry similar to the ones found at The Harga's village, essentially depicting the story of the film (albeit metaphorically) from start to finish. They even give Josh a stack of books and Mark a pipe he smokes.
As seen on the tapestry early in the film, the local love spell involves putting menstrual blood in the target's food. You might not notice it, but Christian's beverage has a slightly reddish tinge to it compared to the other's glasses.
There are a few shots in the first part of movie that have Christian included only through his reflection in a mirror (like when he and Dani argue over whether he told her about the Sweden trip, she's standing by the door, and the mirror next to her reflects him sitting at the desk). This puts Christian both right next to and completely separate from the people he's talking to at the same time—which perfectly suits both how bad he is at communication and the incipient failure of his relationships with the other characters.
Christian is seen in mirrors a lot because it symbolizes his self absorbedness
There's a flower on Dani's May Queen crown that almost seems to be pulsating, I thought it might've been her heartbeat, and it looks like it speeds up a bit when Pelle kisses her.
Notice on the opening mural that the skull (death) waters the earth of plants that grows through the five parts of the mural? The final "plant" is the Tree of Life, which points directly at the smiling sun (Dani)?This movie use the elements of nature to portrait the process of Dani from grief and alienation, to acceptance and community.
In the end of the movie, Dani and Christian's fates mirror each other. Dani, wrapped in flowers, symbolizes rebirth as a member of the Harga and Christian, draped in a bear carcass, symbolizes death.
More like both symbolize death. Christian dies physically and Dani dies mentally.
Josh, when initially greeting Uld of the Harga, is awkwardly snubbed when trying to bring up similarities to other traditions. It appears this is due to a language barrier, but it could be due to the Harga's subtly implied racism.
In the car, Mark and Josh discuss how Vikings would kidnap women and take them to Sweden, foreshadowing what Pelle is doing to Dani.
Dani was the name for an indigenous tribe of Denmark (a Scandinavian country like Sweden) . She was always supposed to be the May Queen.
It could be why an elder greets her by saying "Welcome Home!"
If you take a close look, there's a vase of flowers on Dani's mother's bedside table. The blooms appear to encircle a picture of Dani, hinting that she'll eventually be crowned May Queen.
The movie begins with a murder-suicide (Dani's sister killing herself and her mother and father) through carbon monoxide poisoning and firemen investigating the situation. The movie ends with one last murder, Christian's, and two last suicides, of Ingmar and Ulf, in an actual fire, by Dani. The movie parallels the beginning and ending events.
Dani is broken by the Harga by making her her worst nightmare, a murderer like her sister.
The white and blue dress Dani wears in the Harga and the oppressive May Queen costume symbolize the levels of entrapment the Cult is foisting on Dani, at first being exactly what she needs and then trapping her with no escape.
When Dani starts tripping, she hallucinates that grass is growing from her hand. Given that her hand is resting on the grass at the time, this can be taken as foreshadowing that she's putting down roots and that this place will be her home. The place seems to literally be absorbing her.
Throughout the early half of the movie, Dani, Christian and co are unable to sleep because of a constantly-crying baby. Halfway through the movie, you no longer hear the crying. So...what happened to the baby?
It was given to a Harga that was outside the community, similar to Pelle.
It’s already bad enough that Maja basically rapes Christian due to his being under the influence barring him from consent, but it’s even worse than that. Maja, despite Sweden’s laws, is still a teenage girl who was likely put up to this whole impregnating ploy by the adults around her and the general debauchery the cult employs regularly. She’s arguably just another victim in this who will grow up to think these actions are completely normal.
The fact that the rape is treated as a communal event in that women of different ages witness it and even masturbate as they do so, it’s quite clear that the Harga are supremely lacking in sexual boundaries even with each other, not just outsiders. It’s possible that many of the women committed the same rite (or had it committed to them) and view is as normal.
