Artist Who Created The Murals In ‘Midsommar’ Details The Inspiration Behind Them
Image via IMDb
Ari Aster’s horror film Midsommar takes stage in Sweden during the midsummer festival, and right off the bat, viewers are treated to various illustrations plastered around the Swedish village.
The illustrations in the background narrate the storyline of the movie by foreshadowing the sinister events set to take place in the following scenes.
The artist behind these illustrations, Ragnar Persson, detailed his experience creating the drawings for the film with Dazed. Persson shared how the murals are “like the script for the movie in image form.”
He also told the publication that he drew inspiration from Hälsinge murals, dubbed after a region in Sweden. The murals were predominately used to communicate information through generations about the festival, as well as the celebration of “regeneration and fertility.”
Most of these murals hinted at the bucolic presence in the 1800s among Swedish farming villages, as well as Christianity, the dominant faith in the region. Persson’s drawings, however, were created with tweaks to highlight imageries of ritualistic sex, human offerings, and sacrifices.
“Ari said there was meant to be a lot of blood and sex,” Persson said during the interview.
A recurring theme in the drawings was fire, and that was to highlight the importance of the element being seen as “sacred so it can never go out, [and that] it’s always burning.” It reflected the community, and how society should be constantly taken care of, or else it will go out.
Persson also said that there are a lot of “secret messages but maybe it’s better for people to find them by themselves.”
The collector’s edition of Midsommar will come with a 62-page book illustrated by Persson, himself. Fans of the film can decipher the drawings through the book, which is now available to order via production company A24’s website.
[via Dazed, cover image via IMDb]
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