Review: Let the Right One In, movie and novel

Several weeks ago, HB and I went to see “the Swedish vampire movie,” LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. It was appropriately moody, creepy, and if anything the frigid Swedish setting underscored how a small community already predisposed to avoid the cold further huddles inward from fear–thereby ignoring the ravenous stranger among them. Much of the film takes place in a working class set of undistinguished apartment buildings, and it was a little puzzling to me why we kept seeing establishing shots of the dead-eyed windows in soulless building after building (okay, the master shot, got it, I know where we are already). Then I realized the filmmakers were probably trying to say something about the density of people versus the ability of a vampire to live and hunt among them without detection for a long while. So much for Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the panopticon.

In a nutshell: victimized by bullies, Oskar befriends a strange girl (Eli) who moves into his apartment building at the same time as a series of savage ritual killings circles in on his hometown. Oskar’s friendship with the girl and discovery of the killer spurs him to shed his victim role for another, not necessarily liberatory one.

I liked the film because it made me think about how the cycle of sexual abuse resembles vampirism–every perpetrator was once a victim. It’s a particularly hideous form of contagion. That metaphor wouldn’t have occurred to me had I not seen it through the lens of the film. And seeing blanched Scandanavians against a white wintry landscape was an interesting visual way to experience blood and bloodlessness.

But I hated the novel because it added depravity without insight. To say more would be to spoil both film and novel, but I will say that I’m an old fogey now, and gratuitous depravity or violence isn’t tolerable or shocking as it may have been to me when I was younger. I think this is because as I get older, I become more aware that anything that can be imagined is unfortunately probably happening in real life to a real person, to a much worse degree somewhere in the world.

So there you go. I disliked the novel because

1. I have become a horrible, literalist scold
2. everything should serve story; the extraneous, shocking, and horrific must justify their existence in the story even more
3. if you try to shock me, you’d better get serious epiphany mileage out of it or I’ll resent what you’ve done as an author

It’s interesting to observe how the film shares the same DNA as the novel, but in some rare cases, as with this one, improves upon it. LTROI the film succeeds because there are natural obstacles to having your child actors perform certain acts, and I think in this case the restraint forced upon the filmmakers was a huge improvement on the novel. We got much more by implication in the film than by the novel’s so-called superior depiction of inner states.

The other problem is that I don’t find the novel particularly well-written. It reads like early Stephen King. (He’s become a better writer in recent years, IMHO.) It’s sprawling, goes for easy shock effects, dances at the edge of the worst kinds of darkness in human endeavors with seemingly little redemptive thematic return, has a few too many characters, and offends by sometimes being dull.

So there you have it. Sometimes the discipline and efficient story demands of a movie can be a huge improvement on a shaggy, shambling novel. And yes, I’m aware the screenwriter for the film was the novelist.

I Am Askeered of Twitter

I used to be askeered of people. I was a shy kid, and I still have “issues” about being known and revealing myself and being public. Maybe, growing up in a small upstate NY town, I interpreted being stared at in the grocery store (there were only about 7 Asian American families in our town of 25,000 people) as bad, negative, and scary. Maybe I’m simply an introvert if an introvert is someone who finds most people a huge expenditure of energy, instead of the extrovert who feeds off it and becomes more energized.

Now, as I like to say, I’m a charter member of Oversharers Anonymous. Evidence: I have this-here freaking BLOG, and the nerve to think people would be interested in my semi-informed opinion on public policy and the state of our union at MOMocrats, for pete’s sake. It’s typical WriterGirl Neurosis: like Emily Dickinson I’m here sewing up my verbiage into octos and quartos for distribution at some imagined future time, but perfectly happy to burrow into my hermitage and really only deal with tiny groups of people in classic introvert style. What is a writer but someone with fame-whore tendencies, something to say, who can’t be bothered to leave the house, and yet is incapable of silence?

Now, I’m askeered of Twitter. I’m shy but enjoy being bold with my words.

Why is Nim Chimpsky’s Story So Heartbreaking?

As ridiculous as it sounds, I was moved by this review of Nim Chimpsky’s biography: he was taken from his chimpanzee mother not long after birth and became the first chimpanzee to be reared by humans in order to prove/disprove linguist Noam Chomsky’s theories on human language acquisition. When the study was over, he was sent to various research facilities until he finally ended up at a sanctuary for formerly caged animals.

Here’s a passage that reminded me, of all things, of the character of Elijah (the chimp who lives with Cameron Diaz and John Cusack’s characters) in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH:

There was a children’s book all about Nim while he was in New York, basically a photo book, and Nim kept his one copy of this book safe, even though chimps tend to wreck everything. He would bring it down and show the other chimps, then bring it back to his bunk and keep it under his sleeping area so that no one could destroy it. He would just look at pictures of his New York City family, and himself, over and over again.

He had a family, once. And then–no more.

I can’t decide which is more painful, the memory of his family, or the fact that he had pictures to remind himself of that time? How human is that?

This n That

Well, when you’re used to talking to yourself with possibly several few twenty people listening in asynchronously, as I do on this blog (people actually read this crap I spew? hey, you totally rock for doing so), then a cold-turkey 6-day period of no blogging is positively painful.

News to Me: Wonder Woman Now Written By a Woman

doesn’t this story just give you tons of hope? renew your faith in scrappy, working class heroines who are late-blooming writers? make you feel like “following your bliss” isn’t a batshit insane thing to do?

Early Morning Unreliable Narrator Report: Red!

i was at the sink washing up some dishes when i turn around and see the Unreliable Narrator doing an interpretive dance behind me. yes, he still wants to be an acrobat in cirque du soleil, and his show will no longer be called “Gruyere” (as in the cheese), but “Cirque de la Lune” (circus of the moon).

The Poetry Finder

so perfect when you’re in that twilight/dawn territory, casting about for images, a fleeting sense of truth disappearing under your fingertips: put your question to the modern-day oracle, The Poetry Tool.

i did this thanksgiving day, and this is what i found:

7 Weird/Random Things Meme

i’ve been rescued from posting any more dull blahgity blah blah (so dull, i fell asleep in the middle of posting and had to continue when i woke up!) by bashirs_mom at Basenji Boy with this random meme tag.

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

so here goes: