2 posts tagged “let the right one in”
Vampires, more than humans, realise that love is the one truly soul destroying element in the universe. And being immortal they crash up against the shores of this tragic landscape again, and again. In doing they also face the very thing that sustains them. The thump, thump of a heart and hunger.
The recent ‘Twilight’ touched upon this. The chaste love that must result if there is any chance of happiness. Unfortunately this was less to do with anything stirring, and more an extension of the writer’s batty Mormon beliefs.
It is with Tomas Alfredson’s ‘Let the Right One In’ that we have a fresh transfusion to obliterate the anaemia of what has gone before. Opening on a shot of falling snow bristling with strange magic, we switch to the stark, depressing reality of a Swedish tower block and the story of frail Oskar.
The film revels in this kind of opposition. Not a straighforward riff on the Vampire myth it instead shows how the myth impinges on the real world. In fact, while the film depicts familiar vampiric tropes, these are so well implemented into the fabric of the story to almost be a part of reality itself.
In fact, break it down and vampirism is simply innocence corrupted, specifically love. The eroticising or perversion of it into something dark and violent. And on one hand this is the essence of Eli and Oskar’s journey.
And it’s held together by an extraordinary performance from Lina Leandersson. Not to take anything from Kåre Hedebrandt as Oskar. He articulates the effect Eli has on him beautifully, moving from bullied timidity to a certain bold maturity. It’s Oskar’s likeability that draws us in to the story, but his is more a passive role. It is his interaction with Eli and his gentle expressions of affection (gifting his Rubiks cube or offering candy) that allow him to take his first faltering steps on the road to adolescence.
In contrast Eli is the aggressor. But it’s subtle; Lina’s face giving mere suggestion. On the surface she is porcelain purity with a wrinkled nose of cuteness that Oskar finds so charming. Go beneath, however, and her eyes describe an eternity of sorrow, pain and exhaustion.
While Alfredson refuses to shy away from her brutal and sometimes horrific acts, and in some ways he revels in them, proving in one scene of carnage at a swimming pool what an arresting visual director he is, when Eli turns those eyes on you, it is not so easy to condemn.
She’s being consumed by a terrible twofold dilemma. The corruption of an innocent and how best to express the bond she shares with Oskar; maternal or love? But more importantly, old ages’ greatest fear; being alone. In fact, the movie repeatedly emphasises how terrible it is to grow old; the inadequacy of Oskar’s parents, his teachers, the police and most importantly the decrepitude of Hakan and his strange relationship with Eli.
Is Hakan a man servant, a ward, a lover, a father figure or both a poignant and terrible look into the future for Oskar? These are a few of a myriad questions the film ignites in you, and the delicious thing about the poetic final scene on the train is that it leaves them all potential.
There is trickery at work here. That terrible, but fascinating tug at the heart and mind which cannot be resolved by one explanation anymore than by another. It should come as little surprise really when you consider the title is both a play on the vampire myth of invitation and also a warning to choose first love carefully or be ruined forever.
In fact possibly the most indelible image the film has is of a bloody kiss shared near the end of the film. Both a sign of love, and an ultimate distortion of it. A single resonant moment in a film filled with them. It’s one I was privileged to see at London’s Frightfest and cannot wait to see again. Let the hype continue to build. It’s one the few films that truly deserves it.
It’s awards season and as good a time as any to take a look back over the releases of 2008 and then peek into the future at the coming movies of 2009.
I’ll quickly preface this by saying that unlike most movie audiences, the burden of expectation on critics and movie buffs is equivalent to Atlas with a full bladder and jock itch during mosquito season. Thanks to the trailers, TV spots, script reviews, production art, set photos, test screening reviews, we’ve seen 60% of the movie before its hit the cinema and as you’d expect it almost never matches the one you’ve got playing in your head.
A Knight to Remember….
What a shock then that not only was 2008 an upturn in movies, I’d be surprised if it didn’t warm the hearts of even the most inveterate cynic.
To really credit the comic book film as a genre, it reached its apotheosis this year, but most importantly, in the form of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’, received much deserved critical acclaim. Building on the promise of the first film, ‘Batman Begins’, that breathed new life into the stale superheroics of the once great ‘X-Men’ and ‘Spiderman’ franchises, Nolan and Warner Bros brought an edgier crime noir feel to the next in the series. Immersing us in a crafty marketing campaign and waking us to the idea of a comic villain, in the form of Heath Ledger’s menacing Joker, snagging Award nominations.
If ‘The Dark Knight’ was the dark, scuffed side of this cinematic coin, John Favreau’s ‘Iron Man’ was the light, irresistibly bright reverse. Coming second only to Bats as the biggest US grossing film of 2008 and giving us yet another wonderfully charismatic performance, this time from the now redeemed actor, Robert Downey Jr.- matched only by the one he gave in ‘Tropic Thunder’.
While some of the other movies in the genre didn’t do quite so well filling the studio coffers, ‘The Incredible Hulk’ at the very least, realised the potential of a 9ft tall Emerald powerhouse that uses cars for sparring practice and puts out a Chinook engine fire with some mild applause. Similarly, while not breaking big at the box office, ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ surpassed its predecessor for breadth of imagination and wit.
I could go on to discuss the relative merits of Angelina Jolie’s tattoos in the absurdly enjoyable ‘Wanted’, the disappointment of ‘Indiana Jones and the Empty Skull’ and ‘Hancock’ or the ridiculously violent fun of Rambo’s return, but besides all that, the other great thing about 2008, is that while the Oscars have become, and almost certainly always will be, a soulless, glad-handing vacuum of a personality contest, this time around we have a raft of movies to actually cheer for.
A number have been critiqued on this very site, and whatever your thoughts on ‘Milk’, ‘The Wrestler’, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, ‘Frost/Nixon’ and ‘Benjamin Button’, you couldn’t call them boring. Each one, a burst of diversity, accomplishment and entertainment. Something that we now have to cross our fingers will be repeated as we move ever further into 2009.
Watchmen will be the movie of the year……
Considering I’ve discussed the success of the superhero in such depth above, it seems necessary now to tear it apart with fine textual scalpels.
Not that I have much work to do as coming in March (and that seems a sure thing now, as I’ll explain in a moment) we have Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s ‘Watchmen’. A seminal masterwork of the comic medium, as deconstruction of the superhero, a movie version has been gestating for years and recently hit what can only be described as a legal clusterfuck as the production studio Warner Bros came under fire from Fox over rights issues.
I’d very much like to bore you to tears with an overview of what will probably go down as a neat bit of publicity (and quite frankly, I can’t think of a movie more deserving of it) suffice it to say, a suit was filed, a court date booked and thankfully, after much legal wrangling and expensive lunches later, we have a positive result.
In short, ‘Watchmen’ will be the movie of the year. If everything onscreen matches the quality of the stuff drip-fed from the production over the past couple of years, this will be both an astonishing creative accomplishment, vindication for the studio after they bravely took on a property no-one wanted to touch, but most importantly, a movie that combines the depth of thought of a literary novel with the lavish production values of a Golden Age epic.
Set in an alternate America where superheroes have been outlawed and political tensions with Russia have set the Doomsday Clock at 5mins to Midnight, the uncompromising vigilante Rorschach brings together his former teammates over the savage murder of a former colleague, the resulting investigation revealing well kept secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on our world. Alternatively you could call this a movie about a luminous blue penis, attached to an atomic God, but that’s kind of the point. The movie’s got something for everyone. Check it out over at:
http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/
and
http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/
and for the ultimate Watchmen resource, check out this site:
http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/
Terminate the Transformers? Make it so…..
After gushing for far too long over that movie, I’ll get right into the next couple of picks, sidestepping, with a neat dismissal, another big movie hitting in June. Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ or ‘Transformer 2: Because You Mugs Paid For the Last One’ will hopefully fail big time in the action department, bringing an end to this rape of our respective childhoods. It’s the only way this won’t drag millions into the cinemas to see another round of shallow characterisation, lame jokes, and non-existent story. Just because it vaguely resembles the vehicle/robot couplings we zoomed across our living room floors as kids doesn’t make it Transformers. Avoid.
Instead, get your fix of hyperactive camerawork, glossy visuals and gung ho patriotism from the far less obnoxious, though dumber sounding McG and ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (subtitles are for morons). Not only is this a continuation of one of the most beloved science fiction franchises of all time. Not only does this have Batman himself, Christian Bale, as one of the most recognisable names in cinema. Get this; it also has a load of new, and Transformer-resembling, machines for you to rush out to the shops and buy in toy form on the movie’s release. The footage looks promising too, albeit with a rather unnecessary reprisal of the classic line, ‘Come with me if you want to live’, voiced by what looks like a prepubescent (Anton Yelchin) playing the legendary, Kyle Reese.
Jumping from Kyle Reese to yet another beloved genre character, Mr Yelchin is also playing the vowel mangling security officer Chekov in J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Trek franchise in May. Long overdue would be the best way to describe this, and based on the trailer, that both grounds the story and then sends it rocketing into a new frontier, it looks set to appeal to both old and new fans alike. There’s also that cameo that’s sure to send the partisans into paroxysms of geekgasms.
Sam Worthington, another face from ‘Terminator: Salvation’, stars in the new James Cameron epic out in December. The sci-fi ‘Avatar’ sees him in the lead role as a paraplegic marine forced into a mission of exploration and exploitation on an alien world. Looking set to push the boundaries of cinema far beyond anything we’ve seen before, it’s sure to be a breathtaking mix of pioneering 3-D action and memorable characters. A ‘Blade Runner’ for the new Millennium?
From Wizards to Weepies…..
Powering down for just the sake of word count rather than quality, we have a raft of other releases to pique your interest.
After being pushed back from its usual Autumn slot, the next entry in the Harry Potter series, the Half Blood Prince, is released in July, and based on the almost exponential growth in both maturity, level of performance and effects work; this too will prove to be a smash hit.
Two films that might never have hit the cinemas: ‘The Wolf Man’, the reimagining of the Lon Chaney classic (November) and the perennial childhood favourite, ’Where the Wild Things Are’ (December). The former due to a director walk-out over creative differences. The latter down to bizarre studio pressures. Fan favourites, it looks like both will do their source material proud.
Moving into edgier genre territory we have Vampire myth revision in the shape of already cult Swedish horror, ‘Let the Right One In’ (April) and the surprise return of Quentin Tarantino (surprising only because he seems more interested in collecting projects than actually filming them) with the knowingly misspelled WWII Men on a Mission flick ‘Inglourious Basterds’ (August).
With trepidation I include ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, slashing through cinemas in May. While it has the talented Gavin Hood at the helm, it has had a very troubled production history, including reports of the infamous Fox Studio head, Tom Rothman, getting involved. And while the recent trailer shows some potential, it looks a little too bargain basement. Adamantium claws crossed for this one.
Other than that, it’s a burst of bare knuckle boxing sleuthing, as Robert Downey Jr. returns to this preview in Guy Ritchie’s, no doubt, cockneyfied ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (November); a no doubt heartbreaking take on loss in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s excellent ‘The Lovely Bones’ and finally the Heath Ledger’s last film, ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’ (TBC). Directed by the legendary Terry Gilliam, it also stars Verne Troyer so Big Brother fans are catered for. In fact, if there’s not a movie for everyone this year, I’ll eat Michael Bay’s hat.
Please note that some of these release dates are TBC in the UK and subject to change.
