1 post tagged “tomas alfredson”
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.
