Twilight also inevitably suffered from the "adaptation syndrome", also known as the "Harry Potter illness", which causes its victims to pursue a career in writing strictly embarassing dialouge and rushed, random action sequences that have about a 50% probability of being related to the overall plot of the film. Considering the writing, the acting actually was not that bad, and certainly could have been much worse. Several scenes needed to be cut, and a focus rediscovered. The 'climax' of the film was a moment in the dance hall of mirrors where the viewer had maybe three seconds of anticipation, where he wondered what was going to happen. After that the movie literally could not have been any more predictable.
I've never read the Twilight books, but just from knowing the general story, you can almost tell that it has to be good (not to mention it's Potter-like popularity). It's probably a lot like The Golden Compass - you see all the cool twists and turns that recieve two or three seconds worth of attention in the film, but which comprise some of the most unique and intriguing sequences of the book.
Then, on the other side of the vampire-fiction spectrum, take something like HBO's popular show True Blood, which tries it's damndest to compensate for a lack of depth and meaning by showing over the top scenes of pornographic violence and sex. Other than the opening credit roll and Sookie Stackhouse herself, there's nothing outstanding about the show, as long as you're not counting the fact that they are very good at making you feel like there is some deeper undercurrent to the story. There is some suggestion of vampires serving as a metaphor for homosexuals - the opening credits show a roadsign saying "God Hates Fangs" (the premise of the show is that vampires have recently 'come out of the coffin', and gone public with their immortal existence in a mixed-intention attempt to fit in to human society), and stereotyped, unctuous religious preachers with unfailing Texas accents wailing and whining to the masses regarding the ungodliness of their toothed friends. There may be an idea of social criticism hidden in creator Alan Ball's (American Beauty scriptwriter) mind, but it's having trouble really coming out. The focus is largely on the often romantic, almost always immature drama between the main characters. Their is nothing special about the romance between a shapeshifter and some other denizen when the same thing happens every episode. It's entertaining to a point, but it falls into a bloody soap opera fairly quickly.
Into this world of wildly popular, questionably valuable vampire film and fiction, comes Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), a Swedish romantic-vampire film that breaks all conventions of the genre and surprises you in ways which its American counterparts have forgotten how to do. Don't worry - an American, Disnified, English-language adaptation is on the way, so none of that weird foreign stuff will get in the way of your ordinary viewing experience. In the meanwhile, though, you may actually have to settle for a seriously good film - what is, in my view, one of the best movies released in 2008 (and I've seen way more than I care to admit). The basic plot of the movie involves a 12 year old boy, an outcast in his school who is frequently bullied by his classmates, who meets a 12 year old 'girl' that moves into the flat next to him. Unlike the vampires in Twilight or True Blood, Eli has very little control over her bloodlust. There is no convenient bottled blood, like Bill Compton dines on to prevent him from snapping Sookie's neck. Eli is always hungry, and does not seem content with only sucking some of the blood from her victims - she must 'exanguinate' and kill them too.
We soon discover that she regrets deeply what she must do to survive - and also that she has been 12 "for a very long time" (vampires, of course, are immortal). Eli becomes the boy's, Oskar's, only real friend. The movie is not good because it is heartwarming, or sweet, or touching - which it can be - but rather because it is so starkly realistic, honest, and beautifully filmed, written, and acted. It does not rely on flashy crossovers to move from scene to scene, but shows the harsh Swedish landscape (a somewhat rural, snow-covered suburb of Stockholm) in long, panning takes, often following characters from behind as they move through the scene (I was reminded very much, at points, of Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant's film The Elephant). Ultimately, this superb directing by Tomas Alfredson contributes to the bleak reality of an quietly emotionally wrecked adolescent.
Aside from being friendless, Oskar's parents have split, and by and large, Oskar is always alone. Although this has helped shape him into the kind, but secretly vengeful boy he is, it also makes him a very sad character, and thus his relationship with Eli is all the more potent. The film is ultimately not only about the power of human relationships, but also about different forms of acceptance. Screenwriter, and writer of the novel that inspired the film, John Ajvide Lindqvist does an excellent job of subtley conveying these emotions, without relying on pointlessly graphic visuals or painfully average dialogue to do so. We know that Eli is twelve years old by the way she acts, so her relationship with Oskar is not strange. But we also are given - gently - the feeling that she has an almost otherworldy wisdom, regarding even the simplest things, that truly brings her character to life. It is this innocent wisdom, coupled with the background of not-overdone sporadic acts of horrific violence, that makes the story a truly unique one.
Let the Right One In is everything that a vampire film could be, and more. It is incredibly different, and that is why American audiences aren't as acquainted with it as they are with other recent foreign films, like, say, El Labertino del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) or Cuidad de Deus (City of God). Maybe that is a good thing, though - not having popularity on its side might just give the forthcoming American adaptation a shot at being something more distracting bloody puff.
Song of the Day: 'Guarenteed' by Eddie Vedder is truly one of the most remarkable songs he has ever composed. I never had an appreciation for the Pearl Jam frontman until he released the Grammy and Golden Globe nominated Into the Wild soundtrack, from which I instantly took a liking to his solo work. Until recently I had always favored 'Hard Sun' and 'Rise' off of that album, but after watching this live performance here below I had to change my mind. Aside from a hauntingly inspiring tune, the poetic lyrics somehow come as to close to capturing the spirit of Chris McCandless as any other medium has done thus far. The film and novel both did a fairly good job, but this soundtrack should be viewed as a separate entity, aside from being a major contributing force to the strength of Sean Penn's film.
Knowing the story of Chris McCandless well (he graduated college and embarked on a Emersonian journey into the wildnernesses of America in search of "raw, transcendent experience" unavailable in city, corporate, career-oriented society) the lyrics make a kind of spiritual sense even on first listening. Circles they grow and they swallow people whole/Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know." We are swallowed whole by the circles of society, the endless repetition of it all, the mind-numbing tasks and schedules and irrelevancies that we fill our days with. We never pause to stop and look within ourselves, to our true yearnings and callings and desires, to the person that we really are, that we really were before 'responsibility' struck. We easily forget the purer, more genuine joy of childhood as we fall off the precipice of a cliff at the edge of a field of rye. We no longer listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most influential American poet of the 19th century, and widely considered a vital figure in the American transcendetalist movement:
Live no longer to the expectation of these decieved and decieving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforth I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, - but these relations I must fill after a new unprecendented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.
McCandless listened to himself before all institutional pressures and experienced a kind of freedom and adventure which most human beings only dream about, and endlessly pursue through other socially accepted avenues. The lyrics of Vedder's song match McCandless' contempt for these artificial replacements for reality: Everyone I come across, in cages they bought expresses his anti-materialistic leaning. In regards to his peers, his critics:
They think of me and my wandering, but I'm never what they thought/I've got my indignation, but I'm pure in all my thoughts/I'm alive...
People accustomed to lives of luxury, living a world they dare to call real, when it is anything but, manufacturing false definitions of responsibility - these people will have a very hard time ever understanding Chris when they think of him and all of his wandering. "To be great is to be misunderstood," Emerson wrote. McCandless has his individuality, but he also has a Thoreau-like purity, an almost holy aura that Penn did an excellent job of conveying in the film. To live a life of nonconformity and self-reliance in 2009 America ("in actual and in intellectual life"), as advocated by Thoreau and Emerson, as lived by McCandless, seems nearly impossible within society - but Chris struggled in tune to the heartbeat of Emerson's words:
What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness (average). It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Vedder dedicates the song in the video below to someone in the audience named Carinne - and since the show takes place at Virginia Beach, and the McCandless family lives in Alexandria, VA, I'm fairly certain he's referring to Carinne McCandless, Chris' sister - and more explicity with the line - If ever there was someone to keep me at home...It would be you...
...and Chris' final words, scrawled on a bus in the mountains of Denali National Park in Alaska: HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.
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