It's been a while since I added a film review on here, but I've been staying in a lot lately (for a variety of reasons - mostly not good: poverty, illness) and so finally working through a great stack of DVD purchases I made earlier in the year. Last year's Swedish vampire drama, Let The Right One In, was certainly one of the most stylish and haunting things I've watched in quite a long time. It - more or less - won me over, despite my strong scepticism about the genre. The recent upsurge of vampire-mania leaves me baffled: Anne Rice I didn't get; Buffy was at least mildly amusing, but it never hooked me; Twilight? Twaddle! I am appalled to discover that on IMDB, Let The Right One In is currently ranked in their Top 250. This can only be because it is a relatively recent release and it is a vampire film. It is a pretty good film, yes; a film that transcends the vampire genre; but it is not a great film, and nowhere near being one of the best films of all time in any genre. IMDB voters are - as so often - just being silly. It might, however, just possibly be - as many of the press reviews appear to have been saying - the best vampire film ever. It would be hard to comment on how it transcends the usual vampire fare without describing quite a bit of what happens in the story, so if you haven't seen it yet and don't like SPOILERS, stop here. The story appears to have a contemporary setting, in a small town in northern Sweden, in the depths of winter. This is a smart twist for a vampire film straight away: the night lasts 16 or more hours a day, so the period of the vampire's inactivity is going to be much shorter. The next, and even smarter innovation is that it is grounded in a familiar everyday story: the vampire thread adds texture, drama, but the prime focus is on the loneliness of young Oskar, an awkward 12-year-old who is bullied by his classmates and neglected by his divorced parents. Oskar gains in self-confidence and self-assertiveness after he finds a new friend outside of school - potentially also a first girlfriend, and ultimately a protector. So, it's a simple coming-of-age story, a socially isolated child learning to fight back against bullies. It just so happens that the catalyst for this transformation, his beautiful new next-door neighbour Elli who he meets on the climbing frame outside their apartment block every night.... is a blood-feeding monster with supernatural powers. Well, you can't have everything. The film is beautifully photographed - with most of the action happening at night, lit by harsh streetlights reflected from the snow. And there's an unhurried, elegiac rhythm to it as well: this is a film that's not afraid to take its time (almost certainly the first key aspect of it to be ditched from the forthcoming American remake). Occasionally, perhaps, it is just a little too ponderous; but overall, this tempo seemed appropriate to the bleak environment and the empty lives portrayed. I did have a few other misgivings. I didn't find Oskar's character very satisfyingly fleshed out: he's a cherubic but saturnine enigma who hardly says two words in the entire film, other than to Elli. The scenes with his parents, in particular, seem rather too spare, tacked on in a perfunctory kind of way. And the coda baffles: we see Oskar on a train - going where, signifying what? It is an irritating non-event, particularly after the stunning finale which precedes it. (I don't want to put in too many SPOILERS here, but that final scene is destined to be known as something of a classic, and I think I will say a little more about it in a comment below.) There are also a couple of scenes in which it is suggested that Elli - ostensibly a 12-year-old like Oskar, although she might "have been that age for a very long time" - can transform herself into a 30-year-old woman; this doesn't really seem to add anything to the story but perplexity. Vampire fans, apparently, particularly approve of the faithful inclusion of most of the elements of traditional vampire lore: resting during the day, extreme sensitivity to light, and - as referred to in the title - being unable to enter a home without permission (although I'm not sure what the origin of that one is; I don't think I'd ever heard of it until Buffy; it wasn't in Dracula). I particularly liked one great shock moment: the exterior scene at the hospital. Not shock as in a moment of horror, but a really well-staged surprise - all the more impressive in that you are absolutely expecting what happens to happen, but it still takes you by surprise. It's a simple, well-made film, with many layers to it. It's a particularly - perhaps uniquely - affecting study of the vampire myth: we pity Elli because she is a vulnerable little child, but there's no diminishing the horror of what she is, and it is this shocking contrast at the centre of the film that makes it so morally ambiguous, so troubling, so compelling. I just wish I could have cared a little bit more about Oskar. |
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Let The Right One In
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9 comments:
if you're like my sister, you adored it simply because it was full of extremely androgynous scandanavian teenagers. she referred to the main characters as the "little boy-girl" and the "little girl-boy."
Well, I suppose the gender-bending could be another feature of interest for some. Although I don't know that it's a particularly Scandinavian thing. Young children (pre-teen) inevitably have less conspicuous gender differentiation.
I was more struck by the... er, species-bending. Elli kept telling him "I'm not a girl", and so denying not her femaleness but her humanity.
I did feel a bit uncomfortable with the slight erotic dimension to it as well. Even though it is in a very understated way, and their one time sleeping together does appear to be entirely Platonic, Elli is in a sense seducing him.
There's a lot of weirdness in this film that lingers with you.
*BIG SPOILER*
At the end of the film, young Oskar has been cornered by the bullies (including the brother of the ringleader, a much older teen who's evidently the town hooligan) in the school swimming pool. They've threatened him with some pretty dire things. And they begin by holding his head under the water.
The camera stays with Oskar throughout, underwater, in tight close-up on his face as he struggles to hold his breath.... while Elli's terrible revenge on his tormentors is suggested - for the most part - simply by muffled sound effects.
It's a bit of a jokey gimmick - yet it somehow works quite brilliantly.
There are a couple of gory shocks too; and at the end, we see the hideous aftermath - though at a discreet distance. (I suspect the relative coyness of Tomas Alfredson's direction will be another feature of the film to be sacrificed in its Americanization.) It is a superb climax, and likely, I think, to be much copied.
[Evidently Elli doesn't need permission to enter a public space.]
*MORE SPOILERS - BUT NOT QUITE SO MAJOR*
I complained about the inclusion of a couple of scenes suggesting that Elli can shapeshift into a grown-up because they were so brief and vague as to be difficult to integrate into the plot. It made us wonder why she would choose one form over the other, why she might be changing at this particular moment.
However, I think one potent implication of this revelation is that it shows us Elli does choose to be a child, and this may serve to reinforce our doubts and fears about how calculating and manipulative she may be.
The old man she lives with, and who protects her and tries to find 'food' for her, is described as her 'father'; but we rather suspect that in fact he's just a friend/companion (or former lover/husband). Is Elli just assuming a child's form in order to find herself such protectors? Does she target other children, lonely and vulnerable children like Oskar, because she knows they are more easily won over? And that, once won, she can rely on their lifelong gratitude and affection?
Maybe, later on, she might use sex to bond her human protectors to her as well. But perhaps her appearance of childish vulnerability is more effective in achieving this.
I think that's the really disturbing subtext of this film - but I haven't noticed anyone else picking up on this in the online reviews yet.
Ah yes -- so it was in Froogville where I found this post.
Over the weekend, we watched 1987's The Lost Boys, with Kiefer Sutherland as the (young but not topmost) leader of a pack of teenage vampires. (I'd forgotten how funny that movie was, in a sort of silly way but still funny.)
It used the "vampire must be invited in" gimmick. I told The Missus I'd read somewhere recently, someone wondering where that had come from and who had started it. She told me Stephen King used it in his 1975 novel, Salem's Lot, and that was her first encounter with it. (She used to read a lot of horror.)
An interesting read is an article I just found in Google's cache, called "Vampire Mythos." It doesn't explain the origin of the invite-them-in thing, alas. But it's pretty good anyhow.
Thanks for that link, JES.
I remember watching the TV version of Salem's Lot when I was a kid, but I don't recall the 'permission to enter' idea in it. (When I was a kid! Gosh, Mr King has been doing his thing for an awfully long time now, hasn't he?)
*BOOK SPOILER*
When Ellie says that she is not a girl, she means it quite literally. One of the plot-twists in the novel from which the movie is adapted is that Ellie is actually a castrated boy who only looks like a girl. The director of the movie chose not to include this interesting nugget of backstory but it is still subtly referenced.
Actually, I really recommend the novel to anyone who enjoyed the movie. The movie cut out huge swathes of backstory and subplots which only serve to enhance the story in the novel.
Well, that is curious, Luke. Not a small change! It completely alters the character of the story: the whole point of the film version is that the central relationship is a boy-girl love story, sexless, but just on the cusp of sexual awakening.
Fans of the book probably resent this, but I wonder if in fact it might be seen as a particularly skillful piece of adaptation. From what you've said, I think I'd much prefer the film story to the original book. I liked the fact that there was no back-story at all in the film. Authors seldom have the confidence to tell such a pared-down story, to rely so much on vague allusions and suggestions, to leave so much to the imagination of their readers. I often find that novels are drowning in irrelevant side-plots and unnecessary back-story, and it just bores and irritates me.
Maybe I just watch too many films and read too few books these days. I've developed a very cinematic sensibility about narrative structure.
Hm, very curious. I though I remembered this, but just doublechecked on IMDB: the original novelist, John Avjide Lindqvist wrote the screenplay himself.
I find that very interesting, and surprising. It's not many writers who are willing to so completely re-work their original conception.
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