History Headscratchers / Midsommar

** It’s also another brainwashing technique. In addition to being a form of love-bombing, it tells everyone that their feelings aren’t special and that they don’t have any individuality.

[[folder:The Harga's apparent empathy]]

** Who says the 90-year ritual is the ''only'' time these nutcases stage a HumanSacrifice?

* Who are the two already-dead villagers offered as sacrifice, the ones that are impaled on trees during the final ritual? They can't be the same elders that killed themselves by throwing themselves off the cliff: those had their faces smashed to smithereens and also their bodies had been cremated (we are shown as their ashes are thrown at the base of the sacred tree Mark pisses on later).

* After Dani is crowned May Queen we pan over to a table, a lump of brown with flies on it center focus. What the heck is it? Is it the herring they try to feed her earlier? I only ask because it looks distubingly similar to Charlie's head covered in ants.

* What would have happened to Christian if he had ''not'' been chosen to be sacrificed at the end by Dani? Would he have been killed anyway, or would he have to have lived out the rest of his life paralysed by the elders? Is there even an antidote to the powder used to paralyse him?

** Yes, it seems less like they're actually psychically / physically connected and more that this is their way of presenting their connection to one another, by mimicking screams and shouts of pain or any other noise, as they do with Dani.

** Being on the same wavelength is due to the brainwashing of being part of the cult (especially for those brought up in the cult, who's essentially programmed to be on that wavelength) and the shared pain is always something the cultists start to show after they hear screams and acting it out is a way to further their idea that they are all "connected".

* Do the cultists have some kind of psychic empathy with each other? They seem to all be on the same wavelength in general, and at the end, when the sacrified villagers are burnt alive, everyone watching seems to feel their pain.

** It sounds from his early dialogue like they celebrate both solstices every year. They might not do every ceremony every time (presumably if they killed four outsiders a year they'd be in trouble), but that doesn't have to mean they don't do any of them outside of the ninety year cycle. Also, the film is only the first four days of a nine day festival, so the barn sacrifice may not even be the climax of the festivities.

- 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 Hagards do this quite often among each other as a greeting, part of their affect language.

- After Dani find out that Christian cheated on her with Maja, she has an intense panic attack, several other Hagard women follow her into their sleeping quarters. They all start to mimic her as she cries and heavily breaths, they all do this until they are in perfect sync, creating a safety circle for Dani and displaying true empathy, something that Christian was never able to give her.

- How often does this ritual actually take place? Pelle says it's every 90 years, a once-in-a-lifetime event. But, his comments about his parents burning up in a fire make me wonder if that's true. That made me think that it takes place every nine years, since the cult seems enamored with the number nine. Plus, I think Pelle knew that this is Dani's 27th birthday, a significant happening.
--It sounds from his early dialogue like they celebrate both solstices every year. They might not do every ceremony every time (presumably if they killed four outsiders a year they'd be in trouble), but that doesn't have to mean they don't do any of them outside of the ninety year cycle. Also, the film is only the first four days of a nine day festival, so the barn sacrifice may not even be the climax of the festivities.

- How often does this ritual actually take place? Pelle says it's every 90s years, a once-in-a-lifetime event. But, his comments about his parents burning up in a fire make me wonder if that's true. That made me think that it takes place every nine years, since the cult seems enamored with the number nine. Plus, I think Pelle knew that this is Dani's 27th birthday, a significant happening.

- After Dani find out that Christian cheated on her with Maja, she has an intense panic attack, several other Hagard women follow her into their sleeping quarters. They all start to mimic her as she cries and heavily breaths, they all do this until they are in perfect sync, creating a safety circle for Dani and displaying true empathy, something that Christian was never able to give her.

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 Hagards do this quite often among each other as a greeting, part of their affect language