Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Jack Reynor takes a page out of the typical female horror movie character playbook, demonstrating vulnerability through nudity in Midsommar!
Throughout the history of horror cinema, there often comes a moment when a female character will appear nude in the ultimate demonstration of vulnerability in the face of danger. It happens time and again, in many films, to the point where most of us have come to subconsciously associate a naked woman with imminent death. It's also something that Jack Reynor was keenly aware of when preparing to make this past summer's horror hit Midsommar, to the point where he actually convinced writer/director Ari Aster to change his script.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Midsommar!
Late in the film, Reynor's character Christian is seduced into his part of the film's sacrificial ceremony by being selected to impregnate one of the virginal women in the village. His food contains her pubic hair and his drink, designed to sedate him, is tainted with her menstrual blood, preordaining him to play his part in the ceremony. He is led by some of the women to a shack where the girl (Isabelle Grill) is waiting for him naked on a bed of flowers, encircled by many of the other women of the village, all of them completely nude. He disrobes and has sex with the girl, all while the women moan in unison with them.
When Christian finishes, the hallucinatory effects of the drugs he was given begin to wear off and he realizes what he has done. According to the script, he then puts his robe back on and runs out of the shack, where he finds ample evidence of his friends' murders before being knocked out by a villager who blows a powder in his face...
Upon reading the scene, Reynor thought something was off about it, namely that Christian put his robe back on before fleeing the shack to find his girlfriend Dani (Florence Pugh). He suggested to Aster that he be completely naked when fleeing, something that women are often asked to do in similar situations within similar films. He explained his rationale for this decision in an interview with IndieWire on the eve of the film's release last summer...
Reynor admits nothing his character has to go through in Midsommar physically compares to such violence-against-women horror films like The Last House on the Left, but going nude for Aster’s film was flipping the trope in the right direction. “And it’s very expositional,” Reynor added, “and that’s why I wanted to make sure there was as much full frontal as we could go for.”
He elaborated further in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last summer, with Reynor mentioning that he connected with the Christian in the script mostly because of where his character ends up...
"I was fascinated by this archetypal alpha male character being stripped of absolutely everything over the course of the film — including his community of friends who uphold his structure as an archetypal alpha male and ultimately, his own personality. He suffers this very humiliating and exposing fate, and that’s something that, as a cinephile, I’ve really only ever seen that happening to female characters in the horror genre, particularly that level of exposure, especially in a sexual context. So, it was an opportunity to be part of something that flipped that on its head, and I really wanted to engage with the experience of it by advocating for as much full-frontal nudity as possible. I know that it was very important to Ari too that it was one of the features of the film. It was an interesting experience to do it, and it was a difficult experience. It made me feel more vulnerable than I anticipated — and I did think I was gonna feel vulnerable — but I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do that."
As male nudity fans, we couldn't be happier that he lobbied for this nude scene, and we sincerely hope that more actors are brave enough to do the same in the future. Horror movies need more nude men demonstrating vulnerability, if for no other reason than what's fair is fair. Join us again next week when we dissect the most shocking penis reveal in cinema history in 1992's Oscar winning film The Crying Game.
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked in Women in Love
—Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It in Velvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen is Naked From Every Imaginable Angle in Eastern Promises
—There's No Shame is Michael Fassbender's Dick Game
—Kevin Bacon Steals the Show Going Full Frontal in Wild Things
