c'est la bee

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

you have your stereotypical ego-driven powerful wizard. loves books, cats, complete nerd. cool.

then you throw in that hes been through this super messy breakup and isnt over his ex. now hes drinking wine on the floor and crying to his cat while sad music plays in the background. exquitsite.

2. Unholy Affekts

 Perhaps the first truly straightforward evidence of Pelle’s romantic interest in Dani (which, as we will continue to explore, is very much tied in to his intention to incorporate her into his home community) occurs during the scene where Christian announces to his friends that Dani is coming to Sweden, and Dani and Pelle have their first solo interaction.

First, when Christian simply tells his friends that Dani is coming up to the apartment to join in their studying/sketching/weed-smoking group, Pelle glances up with a smile (the only one to look at all happy at the prospect of her presence). Pelle’s face while Christian admits he invited Dani to Sweden, however, is a symphony. He looks up sharply and freezes as Christian prevaricates about Dani “not actually coming,” literally holds his breath as Mark and Josh seek clarification, and then when Christian says “she accepted,” Pelle relaxes, drops his hovering sketchbook into his lap, and exhales as though in relief. Finally, when Christian informs his friends of the cover story he gave Dani–that they told him to invite her and they all know she is coming–Pelle agrees with a grin, “Yep.” A facetious acknowledgement of his real feelings, or perhaps an implication of some kind of influence on Pelle’s part, overt or covert? After all, the Americans are being hosted by Pelle’s family. It would be incredibly rude to invite another person without checking with Pelle first–or perhaps Christian already knew Pelle would be in favor of including Dani.

After Dani enters the apartment, we get even more potentially facetious truth-telling lines from Pelle. As he confirms with Dani, “You’re coming, right?” Dani replies, “I guess so, if that’s not completely ruining you guys’ plans,” and Pelle responds, “Not at all,” still the only one genuinely smiling. Indeed, if you accept that Pelle has planned on Dani coming to Sweden all along, this would in fact be the fulfillment of his plans. The next moment continues the mirror motif, as we see Christian hug Dani from behind in the reflection of the mirror above the couch, allowing us to see what Pelle sees and to see Pelle’s reaction to it–we are meant to pay attention to his perspective here. Dani and Christian’s embrace is out of focus, refracted, spotted with the dirt that’s on the mirror–the way Pelle sees them, in all their hazy wrongness. And sure enough, Pelle’s expression here turns dreamy and even a little creepily vacant as he gazes at the couple, as though he is mentally cutting Christian out of a photograph and putting himself in. If you buy into the Hårgan notion that Pelle has “unclouded intuition,” which might translate into some kind of precognition, you could interpret Pelle’s expression as him quite literally “seeing” what will ultimately happen between the three of them, now that it is affirmed that Dani is coming to Sweden.

Finally, when Mark peels Christian off to “look at a paragraph” (a transparent pretext to scold Christian about allowing Dani to wheedle her way into the trip), Pelle glares at Mark as though to say, Don’t fuck this up for me, you asshole. He even looks as though he may say something but then decides against it, and he sets Mark aside and brightens as Dani approaches.

So much for Pelle’s nonverbal giveaways and facetiously-revealing lines. Over the rest of the scene, we also see how Dani relates to Pelle, particularly what she is like one-on-one with him. Once Dani sits down, the camera gives us constant close-up POV shots between Dani and Pelle, intentionally creating a strong sense of connection. This will continue throughout the movie, with Dani and Pelle featured in close, communicating shots, one to the other and back. Compare this to the way Dani and Christian are often shot from a distance, even during charged moments, evoking their emotional alienation.

In fact, there are several scenes between Dani and Christian which are followed by mirrored scenes with Dani and Pelle, where the framing is in direct contrast. For instance, note the framing and lighting when Christian “holds” Dani in a moment of mourning…

It’s distant, alienated, disconnected (not to mention dark). Compare with the framing when Pelle “holds” Dani during a moment of mourning…

It’s close, tight, and, of course bright.

Here are some more resonant mirror scenes: Notice the contrast in the body language and the eye-lines, even when the shots are comparable.

If you looked at these gifs without any other context, knowing nothing of the story, which man would you guess is Dani’s boyfriend of four years?

Back in our original “couch scene,” the camera draws our attention to Pelle pointedly closing his sketchbook and putting it away, focusing totally on Dani. They are both awkward as they begin their conversation, suggesting they have not spoken to each other in a while. Pelle is so giddy (his “And you???” is pretty darn warm) that he stumbles into bringing up Dani’s tragedy in a way that doesn’t seem purposeful like it will later in the scene. “But AnonLady and Rimanez,” you say, “if Pelle has carried a torch for Dani all this time, how does he not even know that her field of study is psychology and not psychiatry?” And to that we say, “Of course he knows that her field of study is psychology, you fool, you absolute fool!” Seriously though, we presume that Pelle has known Dani for at least an entire school year at this point. It’s clear he hasn’t spent a lot of time with her post-tragedy, but it’s pretty egregious to not know this basic fact about your close friend’s longtime girlfriend. “Oh,” you say, “isn’t this just about obfuscating his intentions to lure her into a false sense of security, thus not tipping her off about future cult indoctrination?” And to that we say, “What would be suspicious about knowing her field of study? Also, Dani is already coming–Christian invited her, and she accepted. But do you let your crushes know the degree to which you’ve stalked learned about them?”

This fairly blatant misdirection on Pelle’s part may be what catches Josh’s attention. He watches Pelle and Dani’s awkwardness from under his brow as though making note–but why would he? Is there something unusual about this interaction? Something that might make Josh look as wary as he does? We could be spinning off into theoretical territory, but remember how we said we have reason to believe that there may have been some kind of interrupted, quasi-romantic spark that ignited between Pelle and Dani, pre-tragedy? Josh’s wariness here could be a callback to it. For instance, when Pelle attempts to draw Josh into the conversation, Josh actually looks to Dani first, before looking to Pelle–almost as though he is more interested in gauging Dani’s reaction to Pelle rather than responding to Pelle himself, which he does with wide-eyed, poignant silence. (Also, a perfect way to get an introvert to go away: Attempt to include him.)

Speaking of a potential interrupted Dani/Pelle pre-canon spark, we contend that Dani’s reactions to Pelle in this part of the scene show a lot of fondness for and familiarity with Pelle, especially after Josh removes himself. In general, most of the only times in this film we see an unreserved smile on Dani’s face, it’s when she is reacting to Pelle. The precedent is set here: When he wishes her an early happy birthday, Dani doesn’t merely smile but also giggles, raises her shoulders and wrinkles her nose, her voice cracking on her thanks. Her affect with him resembles behavior around a crush more than it does behavior with an acquaintance who doesn’t even know her field of study, suggesting that she is settling back into a dynamic that was established prior to her tragedy.

Pelle’s expression during this point in the conversation is as zany as we ever see him, all bug-eyed with excitement as he explains the “crazy nine-day festival.” He is still taking it in: Dani is coming! Also, Dani is here, and she is being all giggly with me! 

When they sit together on the couch and Pelle shows Dani photos of last year’s Midsommar, Pelle barely leans toward Dani as he’s showing her the photos on his phone, but she leans way in. This is perhaps a sneaky move on Pelle’s part–he doesn’t extend the phone toward her much at all, kinda making her do that deep lean toward him. Need we even bring up the warm glow and the barely-leashed smile on his face when he identifies last year’s May Queen for her? Like, please, people. If this look doesn’t spell, “Yes, my love, and guess who’s gonna be this year’s May Queen?” then let’s all just pack it up now. 

And, folks, the setting/scenery reinforces Pelle’s destiny-eyes that forecast not only Dani’s ascension to the status of May Queen but his own to Green Man/May King. This is only the first of several scenes in which Dani and Pelle are both “crowned” in the camera’s framing. First, the fern by the bookshelf gives Pelle a crown when he is seated on the couch when seen from Dani’s POV, foreshadowing the fern-and-laurel crown he will later wear. The (upside-down!) poster in the kitchen gives Dani a crown when she is seated on the couch from Pelle’s POV.

Isn’t it interesting how it is from each other’s POV that they are crowned? Further enforcing the Green Man angle, there is a drawing of a man-tree creature on the wall behind the couch stage left by Pelle, and there is also a photo of a woman sitting on a flower-bedecked throne further up and to the left on the wall behind Pelle. Finally, what color is Pelle wearing in this scene? Seafoam green. Many of these details and more are pointed out in this great post by @heylo35​.

Anyway, when Pelle says oh so softly that he’s “very, very happy” she’s coming, Dani graces him with another open-faced smile. Then… whoops, Pelle’s attempt to let her know that he is also (technically) an orphan misfires a bit, as it makes her flee to hide her tears. But nonetheless, the attempt is one which is very significant in this moment: Pelle is choosing now, minutes after he’s found out Dani is coming to Sweden, to try and connect with her over shared loss. The stops have been removed; Dani is coming home, so time to really start that empathetic intercourse (so to speak). As we know, he will later insist on talking with her about this, over her objections, in the “do you feel held” scene. He knows it will bond them. One could read this is a rather calculated move (and hey, Pelle is a calculating character), but to extrapolate from Vilhelm Blomgren’s words about how he played Pelle “with total love”: From Pelle’s perspective, an act which ensures Dani will come home is a loving act.

HERE WE FUCKING GO.

(Nine is the Hårgan holy number, you know…)

We left our cultboy disconcerted at having broken Dani a little too much as a result of his deliberate traumatizing, now walking into the Youth House to find her packing. As we’ve established, Pelle meant to upset Dani with the Ättestupa, but not so much that–oh, shit, she wants to leave?

This is the most upset we will ever see Pelle. He launches into what sounds like a pre-planned spiel that attempts to explain his not warning her: “I know I shouldn’t have let you stay for that. I mean, I know it looks extreme, but we only–” But then Dani bursts out with a tearful, distraught, “I don’t know why I’m here, Pelle!” And Pelle’s face drains of assurance–he looks scared–and he drops the planned speech and hurries to get physically close to Dani, putting his hands on her arms to comfort and calm her and even to pull her down onto the bed with him.

She shrugs him off and turns even briefly turns her back to him. Not good, cultboy. As he pleads with her to sit down with him, his voice modulates between several different tones–firm, begging, commanding, soft. It’s like he’s spinning through all possible approaches to try and find one that works. His hand rests on the spot where Dani is meant to sit, almost like if he can’t touch her, he’ll touch where he wants her to be.

Now, this scene’s dialogue, as we all know, will essentially amount to a declaration of love from Pelle. The more important thing to uncover is how much this scene reveals about Dani’s feelings and the romantic implications of what happened before, which result in the dynamic in this scene. We mentioned in an earlier post that many Dani/Pelle scenes mirror Dani/Christian scenes in their framing and body positions, as though the Dani/Pelle scenes are overt, wish-fulfillment revisions of the Dani/Christian ones. This moment recalls the scene at the beginning of the film, when Dani begs Christian to sit and talk with her after she finds out about the Sweden trip, but the difference here is Dani does sit at Pelle’s behest.

Several times in this scene, Dani’s reactions to Pelle’s dialogue indicate the same kind of sublimated relationship which we saw earlier in the movie, when Pelle gives her the birthday portrait. First off, Pelle includes Dani as one of his “friends who I knew would appreciate it,” and she doesn’t question this. Their awkwardness in the couch scene–and the fact that Pelle can believably pretend he doesn’t know Dani’s academic field–seem to indicate that they haven’t spent a lot of time with each other post-tragedy, so why doesn’t Dani question being categorized by Pelle as an appreciative friend? She assents, “Okay, but I’m not an anthropologist, and I don’t understand any of this,” to which Pelle responds, “And yet I was most excited for you to come,” a statement which even more blatantly goes unremarked upon by Dani. Let’s spell this out: This rather bald declaration from Pelle that he was most excited for his good friend’s girlfriend to come visit his home–which, by the way, he supposedly didn’t know she was going to do until only a few weeks ago–does not provoke any kind of retort or question from Dani, suggesting that this might not be wholly strange or unexpected to her.

So Pelle has recovered a bit from overzealously breaking Dani: He’s gotten her to sit down with him (very close together on the end of a tiny little bed) and has all but said, “I wanted to show you specifically this place that is special to me because I knew you would get it on a deeper level than my silly anthropologist friends.” But then he miscalculates again and attempts to entice Dani into smelling a “calming” herb sachet, which he seems to use just as much to calm himself as he takes a deep inhalation. We interpret this as a miscalculation on Pelle’s part because it’s such an uncharacteristically tonedeaf thing to do. Like, dude, she is only about 24 hours away from a hellishly bad mushroom trip, she does not want more questionable hippie substances. Also, attempting to placate trauma with aromatic herbs seems oddly insensitive and not-well-thought-through for our master of manipulation, Mr. Pelle. Dani actually knocks his hand away, rejecting the sachet with an offended roll of her eyes. Pelle seems a little at a loss, asking, “Are you sure?” Still so discombobulated at having found her on the verge of leaving.

Okay, she won’t let him touch her, won’t smell the calming herbs, time to just cut straight to the point. “I know what you’re going through, Dani.” She wouldn’t engage with this topic on the couch back in New York, but just as Pelle made her endure the Ättestupa, he’s going to make her talk about her family’s death. And Dani ruptures. But this is the right kind of rupturing. The cultboy is in his element now: emotional honesty. As Dani denies and avoids, he insists and pushes through, placing his hand on her back even as she wails, “No, I don’t want to talk about that.” And–this is key–even in this moment where she verbally pushes him away, she accepts his hand on her back, which lingers and even begins to caress her as the scene goes on. Whereas she shrugged off his hands on her arms and batted away his herb sachet, now she allows a much more intimate touch.

And during this most famous monologue in the film, Pelle’s body language is intensely keyed in on Dani. He is hunched so his face is level with hers, his torso is angled to her, and his eye contact is unrelenting. His voice breaks with emotion over “by a family,” his eyes glossing with empathetic, unshed tears. This is all capped with a straightforward enclosure of her hand in his, after which, finally, there is no more pretending, no more plausible deniability. This is romantic, and Dani can’t hide from it. Her objection, “Pelle, Christian could walk in,” is quite feeble, as is her “push” of his hand off of hers, which doesn’t actually make for a sincere attempt to extricate herself. We saw her unhesitatingly physically remove Pelle’s touch before, but she doesn’t do it now. The line itself is also revealing. If Christian did walk in, couldn’t Dani simply explain, “Pelle took my hand, but I didn’t want him to”? Why would that not suffice? Because Dani is complicit in what is happening. She has essentially now acknowledged the emotional affair that was already underway.

And, notably, “Christian could walk in” is the only moment at which Dani and Pelle are shot from a distance in this scene, through the Youth House door, as though the cinematography is asking us, the viewers, to step into Christian’s hypothetical shoes here. And, be honest, if you were Christian, what would you think of this sight?

On another level, it’s as though the mere mention of Christian has brought with it all the alienation of the shots that feature the fraying couple. But only momentarily. Because now Pelle is laying it all out before her, and for that we are back to a very close close-up. “Do you feel held by him?” Pelle asks while literally holding Dani’s hand. “Does he feel like home to you?” Pelle, master rhetorician, makes his verbal checkmate. These are pinnacle examples of suggestive questions whose answers ring out without needing to be spoken. You don’t feel held by him, but here I am holding you. He does not feel like home to you, but I do.

And, cruelly, we are cut off in that moment, just as we see Dani’s eyes change with dawning realization. Ari Aster does not let the romance take center stage. But guess who we see carrying that herb sachet and smelling it, in a later scene?

So between “Does he feel like home to you?” and cooking meat tarts with the ladies, Dani changed her mind about that herb sachet. How did that happen, we wonder?

Post One: Introduction

Post Two: New York, Pre-Tragedy

Post Three: The Couch Scenes

Post Four: The Journey to Hårga

Post Five: Arrival in Hårga

Post Six: Dani’s Birthday Plot

Post Seven: Making Dani at Home

Post Eight: Ättestupa

Post Nine: “Do You Feel Held By Him?”

Post Ten: Plots

Post Eleven: The May Queen

Post Twelve: Runes

FURTHER ANALYSIS POSTS:

Can we spare some appreciation for how Florence Pugh is styled in Midsommar?

Okay, I just noticed something about the costuming in Midsommar…

An Obsessive Midsommar Scene Analysis, or, I Need Help

Another obsessive Midsommar scene analysis: Arrival in Hårga

“What happens at 72?”: Pelle’s throat-cut “joke”

But Why Didn’t Pelle Get Sacrificed?

I also love that the reason he's responsible for their uprising is because he got bored. He literally got bored of his position as Lord of the Dead and wanted to retire, so when these three morally questionable humans came looking for godhood he was like, "Hmmm. Yes, okay. Here. Take my portfolios. Fight over them. I don't care. I quit."

So after bowling with skulls in a friendly competition to decide who would get what portfolio, they took up his powers and wreaked havoc on the world. Only at that moment did Jergal, AKA Withers, AKA our precious Bone Daddy think, "I'm just now, internally, asking myself, in quite a worried way, whether I might've made an error."

So he joins your merry band and watches your escapades, calmly twiddling his fingers while you clean up his mess. He's happy to lend his aid, even to the point that he'll bring Durge back to life if they reject Bhaal, even though he technically shouldn't. But he's Withers. The rules don't apply to him. If Ao doesn't like it, he can descend from the Heavens and say it to his rotting face.

And the reason he saves Durge isn't necessarily because he likes them or because he's a morally good entity (though one certainly could make that argument), but because he wants to add insult to injury. He steals Bhaal's child with a big smile on his face, dubs them his Chosen, and praises them for rejecting all the power they were promised. But of course, he still doesn't tell them who he is—or rather who he was.

Then, when all is said and done, he throws Tav and their companions a cute little party. No one knows it's probably half a thank you party and half a "Withers is bored again" party. And if anyone misbehaves, he'll get irritated and whisk them away. Because how dare they? He put a lot of work into that.

And at the end of it all, he walks up to a mural of the Dead Three and basically goes, "Lmao. Thou didst fuck around, and thou didst find out." Just savagely roasting them.

And then poof!