Oskar and Eli, the world's not good enough for either of you.

Now, it's entirely possible that you might not know who Oskar and Eli are, and if that's the case then I feel bad for you. Oskar and Eli are the main characters in a movie called LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, based on an amazing and wrenching book you owe it to yourself to read whether you see the movie or not. But this isn't an essay about the book - this is a blog in which I try to get out my emotions and talk about the film and how much it means to me.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is, above all else, to me, a loving story of the kind of friendship most people don't understand - that depthless, haunting friendship that knows no limits and knows no compromise, that transcends love to the point where it becomes painful for those involved.

Oskar and Eli are in my opinion one of the greatest onscreen pairings in the history of cinema. That's not just hyperbole meant to spice up a movie review. I really mean it, in a sincere and heartfelt way. This movie touched me in a truly profound fashion, and I cried in a state of amazingly open and aching empathy as often as I gasped from the intensity of their tragic and fateful meeting.


Oskar is a weak, timid boy of the sort being increasingly taken advantage of and made miserable because who and what they are is being beaten out of them by a system that honestly couldn't care less what happens to "the youth." He is hurt, damanged, lonely and entirely disenfranchised by our politically-correct school system, the kind of kid who has creative urges he's given no outlet to express by his educators and thoughts he's given no manageable way to explore because his very existence is rejected outright by society. He is bullied and mistreated on an almost daily basis and as a result, at the start of the story, his mind turns more and more toward the insular, losing himself in bloody fantasies in which he takes revenge on his tormentors. His tale is tragic, in and of itself, because there are far too many kids like him in the real world who aren't allowed to become the people they're meant to become, who are told so often how little they're worth that they believe it and see no option out but self-inflicted immolation or a violent flame out meant to express to the world their agony but resulting only in destruction and misunderstanding by others.

That Oskar is on the path toward becoming a killer but simply lacks the willpower to be a monster, as strange as that might seem, is obvious. Perhaps oddly, the only thing holding him back from becoming a terrible threat to those around him is his lack of personal conviction and strength. The lack of confidence that makes him a perfect target for bullies is also the force that holds him back from undertaking the horrible crimes he envisions in his mind's eye.

I find this circular self-fulfilling flaw to be a fascinating characterization, and it really made me feel for and identify with Oskar in that his weakness is of his own making and yet is born of a lack of understandign from all of those around him who refuse to give him a chance to achieve anything more than a momentary reaction brought on by their cruelty and violence, none of which he deserves.


Eli, meanwhile, is a fiercely strong but dark spirit. She, too, has been beaten down by society, but in an entirely different way that has forced her out of the view of the public, who clearly would not know what to do with her on a regular day, let alone given the unusual and bizarre circumstances of her existence. She is an independent person who through no fault of her own and bitter circumstance is required to depend on others in ways that do not detract from her personal strength but nevertheless chafe at her because it's clearly not how she wants to deal with the world. She is a acutely aware of herself and who she is, and what she is - and, when she meets Oskar, is also acutely aware of who and what he is.

She is an intriguing character to me because for all her raw power, and the fire inside of her, she is rendered inert by the world around her, which seeks to turn people in ineffectual Oskars and their tormentors. She has rejected that, stepped outside of the realm of what is considered normal human behavior and suffered a brutal isolation from it that is necessitated by her survival. Like Oskar, the human would-be destroyer, she is a force of reckoning in the world, but she is actually capable off doing it - because she's not even truly alive. She's undead - a vampire, and this is one of the few times when a vampire story engaged me as strongly as this one did.

You see, I don't like vampires too much, despite being a massive horror junkie. The overt male-dominant mentality of men in frilly shirts dipping back hapless Victorian ladies to nip at their jugulars does nothing for me - I can't identify with nor engage in the dynamic. I don't enjoy dominant-male power fantasies or rape culture, and I see vampires as representative of that. It's not that I'm so deconstructive of the genre that I can only see the metaphors. Far from it! I love deep metaphors, but the thing is that there are metaphors about things I enjoy reading about and things I don't. Vampires with the baggage (ahem!) of male domination so prevalent in the texts just don't appeal to me as a whole. To put it bluntly, I don't get a kick out of watching swarthy, rugged Carpathians bite women "against" their will when it's really not. That's just not my trick.

One of the few vampire movies I enjoy, however, is THE LOST BOYS, and part of the reason I think the movie is so successful for me is because of just how impossibly homoerotic it is, and how the male-dominant nonsense of most vampire mythology is replaced with guys being on the receiving end of the designs of other guys - it's all about people who are "different" and "outsiders" seducing eachother and forcing the question "Who am I deep down inside?" That kind of metaphot is fascinating to me, and the interaction of the characters takes on a whole dimension that becomes less about domination from the outside than defeating your own demons - or, in the case of the film's finale, embracing them and at the same time keeping your own identity while becoming stronger than you were when the story started.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, likewise, is an amazing journey for me in this way, and so interesting because the vampire is a strong and ancient-seeming female presence and Oskar is hapless fury who must be shaped and guided as opposed to getting his throat torn up by Eli, at least in terms of the main narrative's approach to the characters. The two of them intertwine together, becoming one - and not strictly on Eli's terms. Eli shapes who Oskar is by letting him live out his mind's eye through her, and in turn the brightness of Oskar's vicid life-force and creative passions reinvigorate Eli, making them not so much co-dependent but symbiotic in the best possible way. The deep friendship between them is stronger than most movie so-called "romances," and I found myself crying every time they made meaningful eye contact because it was so pure and real and carried with it none of the preconceived expectations of most movie couples.

Consider this - in most romantic movies, a simple misunderstanding like an overheard phone call can be the stuff of two hours of idiotic mewling by both genders. In LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, life and death are literally on the line and the two characters can communicate with eachother by a silent look so deeply that it conveys to both them and the audience just exactly what the two are feeling, and this is due on NO small part to the extraordinarily strong performances by the pair of non-professional actors who outshine any of the smarmy kid actors America offers up in its weak takes on childhood experiences.

Oskar's insecurities are real and people in the audience have felt them. Eli's pain is real and people have felt it. These are two real characters feeling real emotions and going to real places - and the vampire metaphor is used as a tool to enforce the real elements about the both of them without turning it into ridiculous melodrama.

This movie is probably the best of the year, and I urge you to see it.

READ MORE OF SPYMUNK'S THOUGHTS AT
SPYMUNK'S BURROW.