Eli's coming, hide your heart boy!

“Die fehlende Liebe, das ist ein solcher Schmerz.”

In one of the best scenes in Werner Herzog’s excellent Nosferatu The Vampyre, Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) slowly sneaks into the bedchamber of Isabelle Adjani’s Lucy Harker as she sits in front of a mirror combing through her hair. As the door creaks open ever so slowly, the camera’s point of view is the same as Lucy’s, looking into the mirror. Lucy feels a presence in the room, hears footsteps, sees an approaching shadow, yet she is too terrified to turn around, transfixed as she is by this otherworldly reflection (appropriately enough, this scene is a mirror homage of the one in the original Nosferatu). Suddenly, the Count appears next to Lucy, introduces himself, and Lucy confronts him for what he’d done to her husband Jonathan (by the end of the movie, he will have turned into one of the undead – I love that word). He won’t die, says the Count, before adding “It is more cruel not to be able to die.” Lucy is unimpressed, and declares the bond between her and Jonathan immortal. Dracula’s grief is all too real: “The absence of love is the most abject pain.”*

Let The Right One In is of the same ilk as Werner Herzog’s film, as well as F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 adaptation of Dracula, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. It understands perfectly that the vampire mythology is one of intrinsic pathos and loneliness. Some have hailed it as transcending the vampire genre, they’re wrong: it doesn’t. On the contrary, it penetrates the very heart of what it would feel like being a vampire, consumed with madness and malice; sorrow and solitude.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, the film is written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his own novel of the same name. Set in a snowy suburb of Stockholm, the film opens with the shot of a winter night – the left part of the frame is completely immersed in the shadows, and the right is slightly more illuminated, not so much by the light, as by a slow yet steady fall of snow. This is the world of Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) – even when it isn’t totally dark, it’s still pretty grim. A 12-year-old boy on the edge of pubescence and self discovery, Oskar dreams of finally standing up the bullies at school who make his life a living misery (there is a subtle subtextual theme of school violence, which is bound to be amplified in the Hollywood version already in the works) by practicing with his switchblade against trees or standing in front of the mirror (Roger Ebert notes the prevalence of reflection, literal and metaphorical, within the movie). He has no friends at school; his parents are divorced: mum is inattentive, and dad just wants him to leave as soon as possible so he can jump his hirsute lover. One night, Oskar spots an older man called Hakan (Per Ragnar, brilliant) moving in next door, and is soon confronted on the jungle gym by a strange “girl” called Eli (Lina Leandersson), whom the man cares for (the nature of their relationship is not immediately clear, but more on that later). She looks and acts like a child, yet there is a strange detachment in her eyes, and a putrid stench that envelopes her. Oskar doesn’t take too long to realise that Eli is a vampire – they decide to “go steady,” but not before Oskar finds out that Eli is in fact a castrated boy.

On the surface of it, this is a tale of a 12-year-old vampire making friends with a mortal boy. Even though moments of horror never take a back seat, nonetheless, it would be hard to describe the film as a vampire movie in the customary sense. Gone are the angst-ridden teens of Buffy, the hedonistic rock stars of the Anne Rice novels, the horny teens of Twilight, or the bloodsucking monsters of, well, all other vampire movies. Moments of traditional vampire lore are mentioned, others revised, and new ones introduced (in a hilarious scene where I was even more proud to call myself a cat lover). We find out exactly why a vampire cannot enter a home without invitation in one of the most effective uses of special effects of the past few years (the special effects are sparse, but when they are used, they are seamless, and sort of glorious) .

But the heart of the film is the relationship between Eli and Oskar. They are both victims of child abuse, in a manner of speaking, and they are both so incredibly lonely. The young Hedebrant does an extraordinary job of conveying Oskar’s frustration in the face of being unwanted, and Leandersson’s tragic take on being a vampire would give Kinski a run for his money. One of the most effective scenes involves Oskar’s sharing some candy with Eli, only for the vampire to get terribly sick and puke it all out. Blood is not just what she craves – it is the only thing that she can crave. Whereas most other vampire films and TV shows (which, frankly, bore me to tears) can’t even come close to selling the tragedy of the situation, in this one little moment Alfredson shows perfectly the hellish existence that plagues Eli.

I must discuss the ending in order to put everything in context so please stop reading if you have yet to see the film. Now, the film ends with Oskar running away with Eli, as he taps little kisses to him from inside his coffin in Morse code, the two of them riding on a train to nowhere. Oskar will take care of Eli just like Hakan used to – eventually he will have to hunt for him, and eventually he will grow up. Was Hakan another childhood lover of Eli’s, consumed so much by his love when he grew up that he was unable to let go? It certainly feels that way when you consider an earlier scene in the film where Eli berates Hakan for coming home empty handed. Will Eli find another boy, or girl, to love? And how will Oskar cope? This was the best film of 2008.

*The League of Gentlemen also made use of this line in their Christmas special.

Here is the scene from Herzog’s Nosferatu: