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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-06-16)
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I finally watched this thing! I've had plenty of opportunities to do so, but it became this weird self-perpetuating groundless refusal. Despite the fact that I really loved hereditary.
Compared to Hereditary, it's somehow more and less straightforwardly tragic. On the one hand, each character telegraphs a tragic flaw way in advance, and the general shape of the plot is visible from a mile away, so we get to spend the length of the film in anticipation and dread. On the other hand, there is an element of redemption within the tragic; most characters who are punished by the plot had pretty concrete transgressions to their names, and the final state of affairs is not straightforwardly bad.
The film does a great job of not overly condemning or valorizing the culture it depicts. For all the treachery afoot, not one resident seems unhappy. And not in a smile-or-we-kill-you way either, they genuinely have a great time with all of the rituals, and their approach to communal living is, in my humble opinion, Obviously Good.
It's sort of like a 19th century utopian novel in a lot of ways, though the obvious difference is the unflinching violence. But the movie refuses to let you make up your mind about that violence, since it points out how all they've done is substitute slow, impersonal, and systemic forms of violence with a more public and overt type. These guys sacrifice a couple outsiders to please the gods once in a long while. We drone bomb civilians to keep afloat equally magical notions of economic security.
"They pray four times a day, we pray five-- whose ways is strange when it's time to survive?" --MF Doom