[Nightmares don’t have to manifest as melodramatic outbursts. You could just as easily find yourself trapped with someone who calmly, as you put it, manages your emotions. A bear in the cage.
I don’t want to see Dani as calculatingly manipulative, but as you say, there are subtleties to their behavior. They’ve been together for 3 ½ years. They are not a loud couple.
Is there ever a scene where she’s honestly emotional in front of him? Just openly emotional? She runs to the bathroom to scream, to be alone, and my mind went to: It’s brutal for her that she can’t be that open with him.(*) Is there ever a sign of affection between the two, ever? As Sheldrake points out, the jester brah scoffs that Dani “doesn’t like sex” (or that Christian needs to be with someone “who likes sex”) before the tragedy happens. And though he’s got sophomorically narrow views of relationships (what’s *his* thesis, I wonder), and there are a zillion unknown reasons for her feelings on sex, it’s obvious Christian has complained about it to his own support network. (Christian scolds him – for betraying his confidence? To defend Dani? Both?) He has needs going unmet as well. The non-sex is more important as a symptom. There’s no intimacy. When she’s checking herself and using measured terms, she’s hiding something of herself. I recall no passion, no affection. Just civility. When he slides his arm around her on the hill while they negotiate the shroomin’, it’s a pageant of support. He’s never more than dutiful.
(*) Though one should never bawl openly on a plane. Especially on an international flight.
If he ever had an exit strategy – and I’m not sure he’s brave enough to end the relationship, on a good day – her family tragedy dashed that. Cue six months of patting her on the back while wondering when a window may open.
I don’t want to derail everything even farther by projecting or piling on inferences, but while you saw her being rational and calm and self-effacing, I saw someone being emotionally dishonest. If you want to dismiss the script description Magic Hate Ball cited about her “moving from one codependent relationship to another” because it doesn’t meet a clinical definition, sure, and who knows if the director who wrote that intention and the actor who read it let their ideas of that inform his film/her performance. But I wonder if, should you get abandoned by enough people because they tell you you’re being too needy, you don’t methodically rework that into rational manipulation while howling away out of view.
I'll see the beginning and the end again at some point, but though I saw it Tuesday I’m not remembering it as you are. (Again: The only pain I recall Dani performing with the community is when she’s wailing over his indiscretion. At the end I think she’s foregrounded, smiling, in contrast with the people behind her. But of course I could be wrong.)
Moreover, I do not recall the friend on the phone being genuinely supportive. After the mural parts, the film did an amazing job of blindsiding me with Dani’s anxiety and feeling of isolation, absolutely engendering sympathy. But the friend on the phone, isn’t she shooing her off? Doesn’t she say something along the line of, “Where’s Chris? What’s Chris doing? Shouldn’t Chris be handling all this?” Dani reaching for meds. A shot of her phone with her list of contacts (a note by one of them – and I thought it was Christian’s – saying something like, “Guy I met in bar, not interested”) and not calling anyone but the guy she’s called three times already. I don’t know that we never see her friends or therapist because it’s “a condensed view.” Possible its among Aster’s hours of outtakes. It’s purposeful, though, to isolate her against the lousy support she gets from Chris and his bros (even Pelle, commune-raised, takes months to offer consolation and then also seems to be hitting on her while he does so) and contrast that with the empathetic female-led commune.
By editing everyone else out, the film isolates Dani from any other friends and counselors – we can’t say they were supportive, because they’re just not there – and by murdering her sister and parents, isolates her absolutely from everyone but Chris and his friends. But as lousy as he is, it’s weird to say that it’s his failing that he couldn’t provide the emotional support of an entire village.
TL;DR: It took two people to make this terrible relationship happen and the winner is the one who ended it. Someone’s probably already posted sixty pages of theory the whole thing was a mushroom-fueled fantasy of the guy who walked through that one shot, anyway.
If nothing else, Midsommar’s a great up-yours to movies where bickering couples find solidarity on vacation through shared conflict. I cannot remember: Is anyone in the commune introduced or mentioned as married or partnered to another individual other than as sexual partners or birth parents? It could be a giant theme park devoted to the dissolution of relationships. The cult gave Chris both tacit permission and an excuse (witchcraft, honey, I swear) to be unfaithful and then Dani opportunity to have him killed. Why were the British couple slaughtered? The others transgressed: The jester pissed on the ancestral grave, the scholar took forbidden photos of the high holy book of fingerpainting. But the happy, affectionate, engaged couple introduced to contrast with Dani and Chris were killed why? They were disrespectful/disruptive at the cliff ceremony, but Ingmar at least publicly shouldered the blame. They rejected the cult and wanted to leave, was that the deal breaker? Or were they killed because they actually loved each other and how dare they?