Interviews
Ari Aster Digs into His Extended Director’s Cut of ‘Midsommar’ [Q+A]
“This is a different film- there are things that bolster other things in this cut that I always did miss.”
In a Q&A session after the premiere of his intended director’s cut of Midsommar in New York this weekend (read my review), Ari Aster admitted to feeling “self-indulgent” by releasing this version so soon after the theatrical cut’s original July 3 release to the masses. However, Aster quickly realized how necessary it was for him to show a fuller story of his initial vision.
“The movie was fucking long, and we had a three hour and 45-minute long assembly cut, but that was an assembly cut that I saw, so this is not the whole movie. But we got it down to a certain point.”
He continued, “I’m happy with (the theatrical release) but there were things that were very painful to cut…I had spent so long in the editing room, repeating over and over again, ‘There’s going to be a Director’s Cut’ that I just realized I had to see it through.”
The most painful edit for Aster seems to be a pivotal argument scene by the lake between Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) that he describes as the “centerpiece” of this version, similar to the Attestupan scene in the original theatrical cut. And when you see this cut of the film, you’ll understand why Aster had a difficult time letting it go.
When an audience member inquired about the lack of a levitating man scene you may have noticed in one of the film’s trailers, (to which he has no control over, as he reiterated) Aster explained that this was actually Christian in the sex temple, tripping, and starting to imagine himself floating across the room towards Maya’s open legs before their encounter, to which Aster describes as a “scandalous image,” and that he loved the way it turned out. However, he changed his mind in the editing room: “I could just hear all the confused people complaining, and I just didn’t want to do it.”
Aster admits to having an affinity for long films, which he realizes alienates wider audiences. Even as far back as his short film days, noting how difficult it was for The Strange Thing About the Johnsons to get picked up for film festivals because of its lengthy runtime, he explained, “(Editing Midsommar) was a real lesson for me, so was Hereditary, which was also a longer film, to understand that, I write these screenplays that are pretty chunky, and this is how I pace certain scenes and this is how I like to live in these things, and it results in a length that doesn’t make sense for a wide, theatrical release, which I was lucky to have twice.”
Indeed, he has read some of the criticism about the pacing within his films, but he preferred to create a fully lived-in experience for the audience’s time spent in Halsingland:
“I really like to just live in worlds and live in movies. If a movie is good, I want to stay in it.
“So the attention here was to always make something that viewers can live in, and I feel closer to this version because it feels a little bit closer to what I originally intended, which was basically to make a film that you have to give yourself to and just lie in.”
In terms of what genres he would use to describe either version of Midsommar, he looks at it from four different lenses: a dark comedy, a “feel-good movie for dissatisfied partners,” a fairytale, and a less-overt horror movie about codependency:
“(In the Director’s Cut) Christian is even more of a disappointment. If it is a horror film, I don’t think it’s an overt one. I love the horror genre. I think Hereditary is a horror movie- no question about it. I see this more as a fairytale, but I see it as a horror movie about codependency.” And he’s glad that you had a wide grin on your face during the film’s final 10 minutes, as he explained, “I absolutely wanted it to feel cathartic…But, I hope the catharsis you feel when you’re watching is unmuddied, but then as you walk away, it becomes more complicated. That’s the hope.”
In response to an inquisition about final girl tropes, his empathy towards his female characters, and how they’re represented in his films, Aster explained that he attempts to incorporate himself into them: “Well, for every character, I figure I can just put myself in their shoes, and put myself into those characters as much as I can, and hopefully they’ll be believable and as (contextually) rich as I am. There’s a lot of me in Dani. I see a lot of myself in her. There’s also a lot of me in Annie (from Hereditary). A lot of parts of myself that I feel very close to, and other parts of myself that I’m not thrilled with. It’s up to you guys to politicize or decide if it works- it is a question that I ask as well.”
He seems to have no problem with getting his leading ladies to immerse themselves in their stellar performances either, especially with Florence Pugh, whose natural abilities Aster praised. “I try to make things very, very clear in the script, so when we get to those (extreme) scenes, the actor knows that something is coming that they have to prepare for. If you’re working with great actors, you don’t really have to push them, provoke them, or manipulate them- they know what their job is. Florence is a really remarkable actress. She’s a natural. I could just sit behind a monitor and enjoy what she was doing.”
When Aster says he loves the horror genre, he sincerely means it. One audience member inquired about his interest in making a creature feature (he would “love to.”) And, of all the random franchises to associate Aster with, another asked if he’d ever remake a Gremlins movie, to which, he says: Maybe? “I can improve upon the New Batch. I wouldn’t dare fuck with (the original) Gremlins,” he joked.
Midsommar arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this October with no word on when we’ll see the Director’s Cut released.
Nothing is the same when two crewmates return to shore in Rose of Nevada, the latest by Enys Men filmmaker Mark Jenkin.
Time and reality blur for stars George Mackay (Wolf, 1917) and Callum Turner (Green Room, “Neuromancer”) in the hallucinatory time travel mystery releasing in New York and Los Angeles theaters on June 19, 2026.
But this isn’t your standard time travel movie.
Rose of Nevada bends time and genre in its exploration of Cornish identity and community, upending the lives of Nick (MacKay) and Liam (Turner). There’s a listless, dreamy quality to the time travel, and for inspired reason: Jenkin approaches it like a haunting.
While time travel was on his mind early in the writing process, Jenkin’s partner and collaborator asked a question that unlocked Rose of Nevada and inspired the filmmaker.
Jenkin explains, “I remember saying to Mary [Woodvine], my partner, who’s in the film, I said to her, ‘God, it really seems like I’ve fallen into this thing of either making films about ghosts or films about time travel,’ and then she said to me, ‘Yeah, but aren’t all ghost stories just time travel films, and aren’t all time travel films just ghost stories?’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, great. So I’m not making two types of films. I’m actually always making one type of film.’ But that was ultimately liberating because I thought there’s a nice gap or a crossover in the perception of genres, there’s a lot of room to play and to be free within that.”
“Once I’d abandoned the idea that I was going to master quantum physics in any academic sense,” the filmmaker continues, “It was incredibly freeing because I thought, ‘Well, I can just set my own rules here,’ and it really doesn’t matter what the rules are as long as you stick to them. You can’t bend them for the sake of the plot or for the sake of a character arc or something. You have to establish those rules upfront and stick to them, which made me really think I’ve got to limit the time travel element. This film can’t be about time travel.“
Bearing the brunt of the time travel disruption is Mackay’s Nick, a man struggling to support his family before the ill-fated voyage upends his entire world. It’s the type of role that was an easy yes for the actor, simply because of the filmmaker behind it.
“I saw Bait at the cinema when it was first out a few years ago and was so struck by it,” Mackay tells BD. “I just hadn’t seen a film like it. I want to work with the best directors. I want to work with the best directors and people who have a singular vision. As an actor, the process of work is almost my biggest draw, as well as what a story’s saying, but I think you learn by doing, and if I can do my bit in as many different ways as possible. The physicality and the discipline of Mark’s filmmaking, how that is so entwined in the DNA of the film, and therefore in the way that I work within it, that was the biggest draw. I’m just a fan of Mark’s. I was just very pleased to be involved.”
That reflects in Rose of Nevada‘s unique casting; Mackay initially was eyed for Liam.
“When I first got the call to meet Mark at the audition stage,” Mackay said, “We didn’t wind up reading scenes, but they said, ‘There’s a project. There are two roles in it that you could be right for, and Mark is leaning towards you for Liam.’ So, I had a look at Liam, Callum’s role, and had my interpretation of the script ready to talk about it and what I thought that character was, who he was, and how I’m thinking about how I might inhabit that or what I saw in him. And when we met, we didn’t talk about the film at all. We spoke about everything else. But following that meeting, I got the message, said, ‘Mark would like you to be part of the film, but he thinks you’re definitely more of a Nick,’ which I think I just may be a complete sheep because I went, ‘Of course I’m Nick.’
Mackay continued, “But it’s funny, I do have in my own life, I just started a family, and so much of my last few years of being has been trying to figure that balance and what that means and how you navigate that. So with family being at its core and all the kind of conundrums that come with staying level with that, that rang true. So I felt like I understood objectively, I have my interpretations of what both men mean to each other and within the story, but then once I was playing Nick, I just became about a very present focus on who he was and what his situation was. What I liked about him is that he’s a very straightforward bloke. In the best possible way, he’s quite a simple man. It’s just he’s in an extraordinary situation.”
Jenkin wrote Rose of Nevada during the pandemic lockdown that had forced a halt in production on Enys Men. He’d return to rewrite once Enys Men had been completed, creating overlap between films. “They are even more in conversation than you’d think because the first draft of Rose of Nevada was before I’d made Enys Men, and then everything I learned through the making of Enys Men, I fed into Rose of Nevada. But also the reaction to Enys Men, all the critics and writers and audience members who are telling me what Enys Men was about. I’m always the last to realize what I’ve done, I think like most filmmakers. You don’t really know what you’ve made a film about until the audience tells you. I was able to feed that into Rose of Nevada and also scale it up a little bit. So, yeah, in some ways it predates Enys Men, and in some ways it follows on from it,” he said.
Jenkin’s latest caps what’s unofficially been dubbed his Cornish trilogy, a moniker that initially surprised the filmmaker, but he’s come to embrace it. A recent revisit of Bait made it even clearer. “I can now understand why people are linking the three films together. I’d forgotten how linked they are, which is amazing, really, considering the first draft of Bait was written in 1999. So, most of my adult life has been one way or another making this trilogy. I am quite looking forward to starting the next chapter.”
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