Greatest Movies of All Time

[honorentheos]

...because Mormonism is a virtual community within the greater context of American society, economy, and law.

While I do think Mormonism is a semipermeable bounded cultural group within American culture with American traits, perhaps there is value in thinking of Mormons as a mechanically integrated group in the context of the discussion?

A mechanically integrated group is an isolated society (or portion of society) that is committed to the same task. It might be workers in a company, hobbyists meeting in a townhall, or a congregation in a church. Over time, these groups establish strong social norms or mores. There are rules established — sometimes formal, but often unspoken. In parenting groups, this might be something like, “Don’t make disparaging remarks about your daughter,” or, “Spend as much time as you can with your son.” All mechanically integrated groups have these norms. Those who violate them are labeled deviant and then reprimanded or shunned.

https://bigthink.com/thinking/anomie-er ... oneliness/

[Kishkumen]

I read a book on the psychology of cults around the time I was working my way out of the Mormon church that proved instrumental in my contextualizing the experiences I had which I still qualify as, "spiritual". The book explored numerous peoples experiences in numerous groups and includes interviews with both adherents and disaffected. The almost exact overlap of others experiences, swapping out nouns being about the most one needed to do to make a Moonies experience or a person in AA basically be my own was initially shocking as I had been raised to see Mormonism as somehow unique, including what one experienced as one sought whatever it is to be found in seeking therein.

It is what it is. I don't think the movie portrays a specific parallel with Mormonism, just that Mormonism is what is familiar of this kind of thing to folks who participate here.

Indeed. On the whole, I couldn’t agree more. There may be bits that are more applicable to Mormonism than other groups, but that requires discussion to test plausibility/utility on a case by case basis. Obviously, I see the movie through my Mormon lens. Interestingly, I thought very little about my Mormon experience, at least in specific terms, when I saw the movie.

[Kishkumen]

Setting the Mormonism parallel question aside and getting back to the topic of film, I think this is really what defines folk horror as a genre. (Authentic being maybe an extra adjective to suggest what most of us might today call a community is only a shadow of what that means "in our bones" as our tribal, eusocial biology urges us to seek meaningful belonging.)

Nice way of recasting "authentic" in more precise terms.

Hereditary kinda papers over this with the focus being on the core family and painting the demon cult as patently evil, but it's still at the center of that Ari Aster film, too. Wickerman is the classic example of people reaching backwards into a pagan past with community Identity superceding that of the individual revealing a new type of horror to those raised on Western ideas about individualism.

Yep. That is why Wickerman is *the* go-to classic of the genre. You hit the nail on the head here, as you do throughout the rest of this post.

I believe the genre is decidedly modern in origin because it couldn't have existed before modernism had emerged first, followed by folks finding it difficult to live without the mores and norms of community leading to culture wars, anomie, and whatever it is we are doing these days as a society.

Bingo. Folk horror is modernist propaganda. Punkt. It tells you to be very afraid of traditional societies. Anything that is pre-modern is primitive, ignorant, anti-individualist, regressive, and subliminally horrific. The subliminal comes to the surface in folk horror, reaffirming why you don't want to be in any situation where your individuality is compromised in any meaningful sense.

ETA: I do think it is not meant to show the protagonist from Midsommar "got it right", so much as she found something to hold to there even as she emoted, lashed out, and ended the film in a cruel joy watching the remains of the hut collapse on the representation of her past in a parallel to the fire in which her sister and parents perished. But it is no less a suicide as her sisters was. She is just as dead as her boyfriend she sent to die, now existing as a member of a new whole which will one day ask of her to again do something horrible. There is no "her" left to reject that demand or reconsider it. What is left ends the film as the May Queen, but tomorrow will be another community member, and perhaps a volunteer in the next cycle of sacrifice.

I can't gainsay your perceptiveness here. My major difference with you is in calling this a suicide. It is suicide according to modern, individualist propaganda. Of course, I am biased precisely in the direction that leans more toward the world of this Scandinavian pre-modernist society. Life does not make sense to Pugh's character and so she very nearly falls into the same hole her family did. I guess what I am suggesting is that the ultimate horror for a modern, individualist "society" is the one that makes it confront a workable alternative that is non-individualist. Pugh has found a place where she can thrive, but it requires that she leave the modern world behind. I don't see that as a symmetrical suicidal choice.

[Gadianton]

It is what it is. I don't think the movie portrays a specific parallel with Mormonism, just that Mormonism is what is familiar of this kind of thing to folks who participate here.

I hadn't heard the mechanization terminology before. I'd have to follow up on that more, it is an interesting idea.

Sure, the AA is a proto-religion, but it's not anywhere as detailed as Mormonism is. Of course, the problem with Mormonism is that as time goes on, its intricacies are lost as main ideas are summarized and mass printed for a broad audience.

One of the more interesting parts of the film in its shout-out to Mormonism was the temple rituals. The AA and other mechanized groups don't have a temple -- although Today's McTemple may not count as much as previous iterations of temples did. I don't know.

While the Hagra are a sex cult Like Mormonism, there is tension with this parallel. From what I remember of the movie, there wasn't a ham-fisted portrayal of Mormon polygamy, with one guy who is the leader fudging community rules to where the end state is getting with all the young girls. Such would have been a direct connection to Joseph Smith and Brigham, but "sex cult" goes well beyond one horny leader surrounded by dupes. And it did so for Mormonism at the very least because polygamy was eventually stamped out.

In the movie, it was the outsider who had sex with a community member while a bunch of women from the community watched. Again, the insect parallel: the male is lured, used for sex, paralyzed, and disposed of. This also may have been a good liberal writer turning the tables on men. But to my (admittedly poor) memory, the movie took pains not to have a Swedish version of Waco. Yes, your point about the danger of folk religion stands, but at the same time, the Hagra weren't the simple reduction of what modernism sees as religion either.

In Mormonism, "procreation" is the highest of all doctrines. It's a unique doctrine that isn't taught anywhere else to my knowledge. The highest truth that you aren't supposed to talk about openly is that Mormons have sex for eternity and create endless worlds. Whether the relationships are polygamous or monogamous doesn't really matter. In this regard, Mormons are different from the Hagra, whose religion seems to be based on sustainability and balance, rather than endless expansion of the hive. The important connection is the utter reverence and sacramentalizing of human sexuality in the context of reproduction to whatever end that may be.

This highest doctrine in Mormonism is not only backed up by the temple rights, but by the Book of Abraham and its mysterious symbols that we all stared at in our quads at youth during sacrament meeting. So this to me was a huge connection, even if the two communities diverge substantially in theology. And I have to point out, the temple is weirdly sexual. I suppose I'm not supposed to talk details, but I'll say this much: I had at an MTC teacher and also a fellow missionary reveal the exact same fear. "I was scared to go to the temple because I thought for sure there was this one part where everybody had to be naked". And everyone laughs it off. They didn't think that because of ant-Mormon literature. We all had similar thoughts, I'm sure.

The one part that does diverge with Mormonism is the role of intoxication. Perhaps that's due to Mormonism's external influences, The Kirtland Temple dedications seems to indicate Mormonism could have evolved in another direction.

[honorentheos]

Parallel to Midsommar is the 2005 movie, Hostel, by Eli Roth. If folk horror is built on the terror of ancient, distant ways and norms that do not necessitate metaphysical evil to succeed in scaring audiences, Hostel is the mirror of this. Instead, relying on our innate awareness that the lack of fulfillment often experienced in a modern capitalist society combined with money can create all too easily real monsters of the very human kind.

It follows similar beats as Midsommar. American tourists and a European friend are persuaded to go off the beaten path to a special location where they can find what they are really looking for in a form much less constrained by the norms of law and "civil" society. Where the students in Midsommar are looking for a voyeuristic etic view of a pagan religious village, the college-aged guys in Hostel are looking for free sex. Both movies play on American stereotypes of European countries, with Hostel taking full advantage of our vague sense former eastern bloc nations aren't quite modern. The bright blues and whites of Midsommar, almost washed out at times by the light, is a welcome difference compared to Hostel making ample use of dark, green-tinted filming. But those choices fit the themes respectively so that isn't much of an issue, in my opinion. Hostel relies on the awareness we have that sex, drugs, and all the other pleasures available for a price only provide temporary fulfillment and takes that to an extreme we all likely assume isn't purely fiction.

Is Hostel a good movie. Hell no. I do think it is more on point as a contrast to Midsommar than, say, Squid Games. Eli Roth captured what makes the concept horrifically plausible, stating the inspiration came from a Thai website he had been made aware of selling the opportunity to shoot someone in the head for $10k. The impoverished victims there reportedly signing up to give their life so their families would receive a portion of the payment. That is plausible. People the world over are killing their own bodies and souls so their families can barely get by. And those who don't know what it really means to want can very easily find the void they experience unfillable.

I won't argue there are multiple ways to interpret the results of Dani's choices in Midsommar (looked up her name). Clearly a theme of the movie was how she was struggling in her life and relationship, and the experience of having others be aware of her needs and show concern they be met was the hook shown her throughout the movie. Ari Aster said he had previously been pitched the idea of doing a movie about a Swedish pagan community luring in American tourists and killing them and it didn't appeal to him. It wasn't until he was going through a difficult relationship breakup that he said he found the movie that became Midsommar because he wrote it as a break-up movie. He stated in one interview he saw himself in Dani, and that there is a certain kind of wish fulfillment in the arc Dani takes in the movie. My take on it being a suicide in mode if not explicitly in act is that there is no Dani left at that point. Not that Dani has grown, evolved, and shed the old her. Dani is dead. The May Queen is a summer flower that will wilt and be replaced by next year's flower. And the community member left behind where Dani had fertilized the emergence of the May Queen will have no more of an identity than her dead family or deceased boyfriend.

I personally do think we need alternative ways to find community, belonging in modern society because modernity is failing so many people. But I absolutely do not want to hold up Midsommar as the model that should replace it. There are healthy ways to find community, to deal with post-modern cynicism, to find authenticity past the veneer promised in a corporate driven society. What Midsommar depicts isn't better, and its not the way.

[honorentheos]

It is what it is. I don't think the movie portrays a specific parallel with Mormonism, just that Mormonism is what is familiar of this kind of thing to folks who participate here.

I hadn't heard the mechanization terminology before. I'd have to follow up on that more, it is an interesting idea.

Sure, the AA is a proto-religion, but it's not anywhere as detailed as Mormonism is. Of course, the problem with Mormonism is that as time goes on, its intricacies are lost as main ideas are summarized and mass printed for a broad audience.

One of the more interesting parts of the film in its shout-out to Mormonism was the temple rituals. The AA and other mechanized groups don't have a temple -- although Today's McTemple may not count as much as previous iterations of temples did. I don't know.

While the Hagra are a sex cult Like Mormonism, there is tension with this parallel. From what I remember of the movie, there wasn't a ham-fisted portrayal of Mormon polygamy, with one guy who is the leader fudging community rules to where the end state is getting with all the young girls. Such would have been a direct connection to Joseph Smith and Brigham, but "sex cult" goes well beyond one horny leader surrounded by dupes. And it did so for Mormonism at the very least because polygamy was eventually stamped out.

In the movie, it was the outsider who had sex with a community member while a bunch of women from the community watched. Again, the insect parallel: the male is lured, used for sex, paralyzed, and disposed of. This also may have been a good liberal writer turning the tables on men. But to my (admittedly poor) memory, the movie took pains not to have a Swedish version of Waco. Yes, your point about the danger of folk religion stands, but at the same time, the Hagra weren't the simple reduction of what modernism sees as religion either.

In Mormonism, "procreation" is the highest of all doctrines. It's a unique doctrine that isn't taught anywhere else to my knowledge. The highest truth that you aren't supposed to talk about openly is that Mormons have sex for eternity and create endless worlds. Whether the relationships are polygamous or monogamous doesn't really matter. In this regard, Mormons are different from the Hagra, whose religion seems to be based on sustainability and balance, rather than endless expansion of the hive. The important connection is the utter reverence and sacramentalizing of human sexuality in the context of reproduction to whatever end that may be.

This highest doctrine in Mormonism is not only backed up by the temple rights, but by the Book of Abraham and its mysterious symbols that we all stared at in our quads at youth during sacrament meeting. So this to me was a huge connection, even if the two communities diverge substantially in theology. And I have to point out, the temple is weirdly sexual. I suppose I'm not supposed to talk details, but I'll say this much: I had at an MTC teacher and also a fellow missionary reveal the exact same fear. "I was scared to go to the temple because I thought for sure there was this one part where everybody had to be naked". And everyone laughs it off. They didn't think that because of ant-Mormon literature. We all had similar thoughts, I'm sure.

The one part that does diverge with Mormonism is the role of intoxication. Perhaps that's due to Mormonism's external influences, The Kirtland Temple dedications seems to indicate Mormonism could have evolved in another direction.

Honestly, Gad? I think the more you looked to paganism and other -isms, the less Mormon Midsommar would seem. I agree it is closer to early Mormonism than many folks sitting in the pews today would be comfortable acknowledging. But the temple rituals are derived from freemasonry which did not originate their symbology. Sex as ritual is much more blatant in, say wiccan practice though actual sex isn't required to perform the very obvious symbolic rites. Mormonism is a touchstone for Mormons. But the movie isn't really reflective of Mormonism as it is reflective of something much more diverse and ancient.

Frankly, it's kinda modern Mormon to make it about Mormonism. Points for the just so story, for sure.

ETA: To build on the above, it's easy to overlay what one knows at the points that seem familiar and then fill in the rest. The discussion about polygamy in your post being an example where the ritualized sex serves as an alignment point that one may work around like a mopoligist trying to make the Book of Mormon fit Mesoamerica. We all do that when we engage in a narrative such as film, bringing ourselves into the interpretation of it because what else could we do? But the power dynamics of Mormon polygamy is far away from how the community in Midsommar is portrayed to the point relying on the comparison may be doing damage to understanding the film. The movie deliberately shows the community as committed to a reciprocity of concern that I think the warm bread without the cold shoulder reputation of Mormonism better portrays. The older women of the community who had born children participated in the ritual because the act of sex in the community was for the community's survival. Sex was just another manifestation of how individuals are subsumed. The older women sing and comfort the girl chosen by the elders to receive the "new blood" into the community, and she proclaimed she could already feel the baby in her seconds after the act was completed.

The movie isn't about Mormonism, even at a tangent. The Mormonism parallel works because those familiar primarily with Mormonism, and are inclined to see in it something akin to the negative aspects of the community in the movie, are seeing exactly that in it. I'd argue the same for trying to see good in the community, too. It's a horror flick for a reason.

[Kishkumen]

Another amazing post. Thanks, honor.

I won't argue there are multiple ways to interpret the results of Dani's choices in Midsommar (looked up her name). Clearly a theme of the movie was how she was struggling in her life and relationship, and the experience of having others be aware of her needs and show concern they be met was the hook shown her throughout the movie. Ari Aster said he had previously been pitched the idea of doing a movie about a Swedish pagan community luring in American tourists and killing them and it didn't appeal to him. It wasn't until he was going through a difficult relationship breakup that he said he found the movie that became Midsommar because he wrote it as a break-up movie. He stated in one interview he saw himself in Dani, and that there is a certain kind of wish fulfillment in the arc Dani takes in the movie. My take on it being a suicide in mode if not explicitly in act is that there is no Dani left at that point. Not that Dani has grown, evolved, and shed the old her. Dani is dead. The May Queen is a summer flower that will wilt and be replaced by next year's flower. And the community member left behind where Dani had fertilized the emergence of the May Queen will have no more of an identity than her dead family or deceased boyfriend.

Yeah, you and I see things very differently here. People within these societies don't simply dead end into one role. They assume different roles as appropriate to the moment. What is frightening is that you really don't have an endless individual quest to choose your own adventure here. You live out your life within the more limited parameters of the community. Is that a death? For those who are taught to see life as that individual choose your own adventure quest, then, probably. Just because others play out the same roles you do does not make the individual's experience of that role less significant. Some might argue that filling that role within the context of community needs and cycles actually gives it more meaning.

But all of this is perspective. All of this is a point of view. I can certainly see why some might call this suicide, or a death. It is a death of a kind, but at that point we could wash out so many things as a death. Death is a fact that everyone experiences, but maybe being a part of the ongoing life of a community in a way that feels connected and purposeful is actually better than pumping your garage full of carbon monoxide.

I personally do think we need alternative ways to find community, belonging in modern society because modernity is failing so many people. But I absolutely do not want to hold up Midsommar as the model that should replace it. There are healthy ways to find community, to deal with post-modern cynicism, to find authenticity past the veneer promised in a corporate driven society. What Midsommar depicts isn't better, and it's not the way.

I am certainly not holding up Midsommar as a model. Midsommar is a caricature that stands in opposition to another caricature of modernity. Simple binaries can get a person thinking, however, especially if they are laid out in a slick and somewhat compelling film. I think Midsommar was an unusually effective folk horror, and it worked pretty well in challenging assumptions about the supremacy of modernity, whereas most folk horror films often simply reaffirm belief in the fragile and necessary supremacy of modernity.

[Kishkumen]

Honestly, Gad? I think the more you looked to paganism and other -isms, the less Mormon Midsommar would seem. I agree it is closer to early Mormonism than many folks sitting in the pews today would be comfortable acknowledging. But the temple rituals are derived from freemasonry which did not originate their symbology. Sex as ritual is much more blatant in, say wiccan practice though actual sex isn't required to perform the very obvious symbolic rites. Mormonism is a touchstone for Mormons. But the movie isn't really reflective of Mormonism as it is reflective of something much more diverse and ancient.

Frankly, it's kinda modern Mormon to make it about Mormonism. Points for the just so story, for sure.

ETA: To build on the above, it's easy to overlay what one knows at the points that seem familiar and then fill in the rest. The discussion about polygamy in your post being an example where the ritualized sex serves as an alignment point that one may work around like a mopoligist trying to make the Book of Mormon fit Mesoamerica. We all do that when we engage in a narrative such as film, bringing ourselves into the interpretation of it because what else could we do? But the power dynamics of Mormon polygamy is far away from how the community in Midsommar is portrayed to the point relying on the comparison may be doing damage to understanding the film. The movie deliberately shows the community as committed to a reciprocity of concern that I think the warm bread without the cold shoulder reputation of Mormonism better portrays. The older women of the community who had born children participated in the ritual because the act of sex in the community was for the community's survival. Sex was just another manifestation of how individuals are subsumed. The older women sing and comfort the girl chosen by the elders to receive the "new blood" into the community, and she proclaimed she could already feel the baby in her seconds after the act was completed.

The movie isn't about Mormonism, even at a tangent. The Mormonism parallel works because those familiar primarily with Mormonism, and are inclined to see in it something akin to the negative aspects of the community in the movie, are seeing exactly that in it. I'd argue the same for trying to see good in the community, too. It's a horror flick for a reason.

I don't think there is anything wrong with using Midsommar to think about Mormonism. To borrow the old anthropological saw, Midsommar is a good thing with which to think about Mormonism. Mormonism freaks out Protestants because it represents to them everything that they feel they triumphed over in the bad old past: Catholicism and paganism. And, in a sense, Protestants have it right. Everything they are scared of is much closer to them under the thin veneer of modern Mormonism. Go to the fundamentalist communities and you see the worst possibilities of abandoning that veneer staring at you in the face.

Aside from the fact that it is false, there is something oddly true about the image of the orgy on the sacrificial bed in the fundamentalist holy of holies. The cooperation of sister wives and the bringing of sisters into one family as wives of the same husband . . . there is so much here that probably is on its way into being formalized in small fundamentalist groups that we rightly view with horror for being outre and sick. Mormonism is scary precisely because it is not your grandpa's polite Congregationalist Protestant sect.

[Gadianton]

Honestly, Gad? I think the more you looked to paganism and other -isms, the less Mormon Midsommar would seem.

Maybe, but then what authentically pagan communities in the world today integrate outsiders like the Hagra?

But the movie isn't really reflective of Mormonism as it is reflective of something much more diverse and ancient.

Mormonism is also supposed to be reflective of something much more diverse and ancient, if I understood Hugh Nibley. The problem with making the Hagra too ancient is the ease of which community members and outsiders integrate. A truly ancient community would be incommensurable with modern understanding. They wouldn't be fluent in English, and ancient guy wouldn't be in a typical modern and dramatic relationship with a modern girl.

it's kinda modern Mormon to make it about Mormonism

I admit I'm a product of Mormonism, and my biases play into my analysis, but it's not like I try to make everything about Mormonism. For instance, Hostel, which you brought up, clearly isn't about Mormonism. I saw Hostel in the theater but man, that's not my kind of movie. If I recall, that movie killed tourism to the Eastern European town of Bratislava, which is really sad.

The discussion about polygamy in your post being an example where the ritualized sex serves as an alignment point

This is actually what I said about polygamy:

The highest truth that you aren't supposed to talk about openly is that Mormons have sex for eternity and create endless worlds. Whether the relationships are polygamous or monogamous doesn't really matter.

The older women of the community who had born children participated in the ritual because the act of sex in the community was for the community's survival. Sex was just another manifestation of how individuals are subsumed

Right, and Mormonism's cosmic survival narrative is about humans procreating and expanding into eternity. Sex is a sacrament connected with a temple ritual for both, even if doctrinal details differ. And while it's not as explicit in Mormonism, the fact that Mormon apostles have sent out letters to bishops instructing them on how to regulate the sex lives of their parishioners definitely show how the sex act is also community property in Mormonism. And there's the doctrinal emphasis on unrestricted child bearing. A GA who came through our mission who was a doctor gave us this life advice: "You go home and get married, you don't wait to have children, and you have children until your wife can't have them anymore."

There are two main points here. 1) community identity rooted in reproductive rites that are enshrined in ancient lore and temples 2) Totalizing the sex act as community property

Mormonism and Hagra have (1) in common, even though the doctrinal details may vary substantially. No other Christian church or major American religion connects in this way to my knowledge. (2) You make a great point and Mormonism may miss the ideal here, but the impulse of "sex is for procreation" is already loud and clear, and if the Law of Consecration were to usher in, that gap would close.

[honorentheos]

Honestly, Gad? I think the more you looked to paganism and other -isms, the less Mormon Midsommar would seem.

Maybe, but then what authentically pagan communities in the world today integrate outsiders like the Hagra?

Interesting question as framed. Authentically pagan...hard to say. There are retreats in Sedona I think of being nearer to paganism than Mormonism but it's hard to call new age anything particularly authentic. So I don't have an example. I've been pretty close friends with wiccans to the point I had a few things shared that seem much more similar to pagan ritual than Mormonism. One of the folks who works directly for me is pagan in that she and her group perform rites of observance at major celestial and seasonal events. Are they integrating outsiders? Are they authentic? I don't know. They are seeking something and finding it better there than elsewhere at any rate.

But the movie isn't really reflective of Mormonism as it is reflective of something much more diverse and ancient.

Mormonism is also supposed to be reflective of something much more diverse and ancient, if I understood Hugh Nibley. The problem with making the Hagra too ancient is the ease of which community members and outsiders integrate. A truly ancient community would be incommensurable with modern understanding. They wouldn't be fluent in English, and ancient guy wouldn't be in a typical modern and dramatic relationship with a modern girl.

it's kinda modern Mormon to make it about Mormonism

I admit I'm a product of Mormonism, and my biases play into my analysis, but it's not like I try to make everything about Mormonism. For instance, Hostel, which you brought up, clearly isn't about Mormonism. I saw Hostel in the theater but man, that's not my kind of movie. If I recall, that movie killed tourism to the Eastern European town of Bratislava, which is really sad.

The discussion about polygamy in your post being an example where the ritualized sex serves as an alignment point

This is actually what I said about polygamy:

The highest truth that you aren't supposed to talk about openly is that Mormons have sex for eternity and create endless worlds. Whether the relationships are polygamous or monogamous doesn't really matter.

The older women of the community who had born children participated in the ritual because the act of sex in the community was for the community's survival. Sex was just another manifestation of how individuals are subsumed

Right, and Mormonism's cosmic survival narrative is about humans procreating and expanding into eternity. Sex is a sacrament connected with a temple ritual for both, even if doctrinal details differ. And while it's not as explicit in Mormonism, the fact that Mormon apostles have sent out letters to bishops instructing them on how to regulate the sex lives of their parishioners definitely show how the sex act is also community property in Mormonism. And there's the doctrinal emphasis on unrestricted child bearing. A GA who came through our mission who was a doctor gave us this life advice: "You go home and get married, you don't wait to have children, and you have children until your wife can't have them anymore."

There are two main points here. 1) community identity rooted in reproductive rites that are enshrined in ancient lore and temples 2) Totalizing the sex act as community property

Mormonism and Hagra have (1) in common, even though the doctrinal details may vary substantially. No other Christian church or major American religion connects in this way to my knowledge. (2) You make a great point and Mormonism may miss the ideal here, but the impulse of "sex is for procreation" is already loud and clear, and if the Law of Consecration were to usher in, that gap would close.

Fair enough. I'm inclined to accept folks see different things in movies which gets to the issue of identifying what movies are the best. And I suppose when we end up engaging in close reading of a film as we are now we have to admit the film had an impact if nothing else. So point to Midsommar.