I make it through very few films. I’m terrible at mentally shutting down long enough to pay attention. I wish I was better about it. Finding space to mentally detach is a goal of mine. Baby steps. However I do love a few select filmmakers and will make exceptions for their art.

They’re always the minds that come up with concepts so far off the center I just sit back in awe. I’m a sucker for those minds. The visions and words born in that beautiful grey matter. They’re the kind of minds I either want to intimately know or at least inquire as to what kind of drugs they’re on and like, yo.. can you hook it up? Because I want to go there. To your mind. I want in. “Up rose the poets from the speed queens and the weed fiends. Speakings dissected deciphered by the undernourished purists”

Tonight I finally caught the directors cut of Midsommer. I’m a fan of stylized cinematography and genre bending fluidity- two things this movie has in spades. However I had a heavy reaction to the first 30 minutes in a way in which I didn’t expect. I reacted to the point of eyeliner running a river down my chin. Likely not what the filmmaker was aiming for.

Ultimately this is an art house version of a fuckboy revenge snuffer. Dani laughing in a ballgown of flowers. The scene almost gratuitously crossed between a Wes Anderson flick and a 1970s postcard from Banff viewed under heavy psychedelics and a bit too much Stephen King influence. She’s watching blankly in the damn flower gown, surrounded by a cult as her boyfriend is burned alive while wearing the carcass of a disemboweled bear.

Yeah. Like I mentioned, it’s fucking weird.

However it’s also a movie about grief and trauma and internalizing the reactions of those close to us. The realization that those you think would care the most, don’t actually care. I believe humans are inherently good. Occasionally I have also been proven wrong with this idealistic concept. Many humans are amazing yet many humans are…above all, completely self serving.

Both the actress and director tapped into the guttural emotional reaction of trauma in a way in which I can’t forget. The screams. The snow coming down. The collapsing on the cold tile. Balled up looking at the wall for hours. It’s a beautifully filmed glimpse into human dissolution and broken relationships.

Shes constantly apologizing. Believing shes wrong to expose vulnerability, like she felt the need to apologize for human emotions while she was in the depths of life changing turmoil. I can relate. Shes backtracking on her feelings to maintain her safety and stability -“I’m just over reacting, I’m so sorry” “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”

Dani walking through her life but stepped out. Like watching a film of her life from an outsiders perspective. Playing the part while sitting back, panicked in her own inner monologue. Disassociation is scary. I’d never experienced it before or again like I did during chemo. Sitting in my office looking at my own arm with the odd realization that if i thought about it hard enough, maybe I could make that arm move. Crazzzzy talk, I know. My brain hovering outside of my own body. Sitting in fear that someone would try to hold an actual work related conversation while I was disassociated. Worried I wouldn’t know which puppet strings I needed to manipulate in order to adjust the human body I was in charge of.

Watching as Dani runs through a field high on mushrooms telling herself it’s ok. She’s ok. It’s ok. Its fine. you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine… it’s ok. Just keep running. Relax. Let it go. The conscious rationalism battling the guttural emotional reaction. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Commanding yourself to relax. Mind over matter, mind over matter. Yoga said so. Namaste. Deep breaths girl, just breathe.

I’ve done it. I’ve been there. Most of cancer treatment. Just trying to flex mind over matter.

Just without the mushrooms part. In retrospect, who knows? It might have been helpful to tap in.

In the end my takeaway is that women are tricked into thinking that feelings and emotions make them weak or crazy. We are born and raised in a society that tells us to apologize for owning our human reactions. We fight ourselves for having them. Men have always told us it’s wrong. Men have always buried emotions. Not all, just most. I like to think it’s not out of malice, but a result of societal norms. We, as women, have always believed them when they’ve told us the right and wrong way to feel. That we’re inherently wrong for feeling the emotional depths. Damn women and their silly emotions.

Yeah. No.

I’m self mandating here and now to never allow my inner monologue to say shit like that again. When my intuition is telling me something I will honor it. I’ll sit with and listen to her.

That bitch is always right.