Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/17/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, October 17, 2022

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist, Peter Carlberg, Ika Nord, Mikael Rahm, Karl-Robert Lindgren. Screenplay: John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel. Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema. Production design: Eva Norén. Film editing: Tomas Alfredson, Dino Jonsäter. Music: Johan Söderqvist.

For those blog-readers getting ready to outfit little Jake or Jenny with plastic fangs and felt cape, let me remind you that the vampire legend, with its penetration and exchange of fluids, is always and invariably about sex, or the fear of it. Even when the vampire is 12 years old. Or maybe especially when the vampire is a 12-year-old girl who moves in next door to a 12-year-old boy on the cusp of adolescence. Of course, as a vampire, Eli (Lina Leandersson) is going to be 12 years old forever, and she tells Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) that she’s not a girl, raising a note of ambiguity: Does she mean that she’s not a girl but a vampire, or that she’s transgender or even neuter? (There’s a flash of nudity which suggests that she has undergone some sort of genital trauma.) No matter, for the film is really about the relationship that develops between a boy who is being tormented by bullies and a vampire/girl with the power to put an end to his tormentors. Let the Right One In is such a richly textured film that it transcends its horror-film elements, its bloodlettings and its suspense-engendering narrative. A good deal of the screenplay is devoted to giving the secondary characters lives (and deaths) of their own, including Oskar’s estranged parents and the man who lives with, and serves, Eli. Even incidental details, such as Eli’s odd possessions, and the ending, Oskar on a train, Eli apparently in a box beside him, are tantalizing. No surprise that the film was remade in the United States as Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) and became the basis for a TV series in 2022.