Moving Out
(a review of Let The Right One In)
2008 was a good year for vampires in popular culture. We saw Twilight, a pop movie based on the pop book series; we saw True Blood, an embarrassingly addictive HBO vampire soap-opera; we even saw the Columbia University rock band Vampire Weekend explode onto the music scene. Or perhaps you didn’t see these things. And if you didn’t, well, you didn’t miss much except a little fun.
But if you didn’t see Let The Right One In, you missed a lot. Director Tomas Alfredson crafted a powerful film that broadens the scope of its genre. To call Let The Right One In the year’s best vampire movie is like calling The Dark Knight the year’s best superhero movie—you’re speaking the truth, but you’re missing the point, which is of course that both movies should have been up for Best Picture.
Both films demand to be considered from two perspectives at once, two perspectives in conflict. In The Dark Knight we know, objectively, that Batman is a criminal, breaking the law in the name of justice. But subjectively, we know that he’s doing what must be done, pickup up the slack where the law has failed to protect the people of Gotham. We leave the theater wondering which perspective is more important.
Let The Right One In makes the conflict more complicated. It introduces a third perspective, which we’ll call the co-subjective, as a mediating force, and turns all three loose on one another. We’ll spend the rest of this review making sense of these three perspectives—the objective, subjective, and co-subjective—and considering what, exactly, Anderson’s film suggests we do with them.
I — First Philosophy.
Before we worry about co-subjectivity, we’d better be perfectly clear on what the words “objective” and “subjective” mean. They get thrown around loosely in everyday speech, but they’ve got precise uses in contemporary Philosophy, which we’ll be employing here.
Thomas Nagel suggests that objectivity is “a method of understanding.” It is a perspective or, to use his word, a “stance”. We take up the objective stance when we view the world “from nowhere,” i.e. when we view the world not from that place between the eyes and a few inches into the head that feels like the center of consciousness; but from a place that considers the consciousness and everything else in the universe as objects, on equal footing. Pure objectivity is impossible for us, of course, but we can work to make our stance more objective.
Consider two different stances on the color red. A subjective stance says that red is “the color that looks red to me.” This understanding of red is available only to someone with a similar consciousness. But as we move toward objectivity, we might say, “red is the color produced by light within 620-750 nanometers in wavelength.” An objective understanding requires concepts, but it doesn’t require that your conscious experience be like anyone else’s.
The subjective stance is the view from within your consciousness, concerned only with making sense of the universe to you. The objective stance is the view from nowhere, concerned with making sense of the universe to anyone.
In life it’s very hard to be purely subjective, and impossible to be purely objective. Alfredson’s fictional characters, not bound by our limited psychologies, can do better, which is why they can illuminate the different stances so well, and say so much about them.
II — Love Stories.
Let The Right One In was promoted as a dark love story, but it’s really two love stories. Both dark. Both, in fact, have a player in common, which accounts for some of their darkness. The second story, the one that got promoted, is absolutely essential to understanding the movie; but so is the first, so let’s start from the very beginning.
First love story:
Twelve year-old Eli (Lena Andersson) and fifty-something Håkan (Per Ragnar) are introduced to us as father and daughter, in the back of a taxi cab. No dialogue, no biographies—just a close-up of Håkan’s deeply lined face as turns to look at Eli, who hums softly to herself. The camera is behind them, in the space between the cab’s back seat and rear windshield, so we don’t see Eli’s face. All we get is the back of her head, her voice, and Håkan’s gaze, which says simply, “I love you, and I’ve loved you a long time.” We don’t know where they’re headed, specifically, but there’s a weariness to her melody, timbre, and his stare that give us an idea. After a long time away, he’s taking her home.
Yes. From outside an apartment building we see Håkan in the window, clumsily covering the glass with a large sheet of cardboard, blocking the light and our view of him. Again we’re not sure of the specifics—why cover the window?—but we know what he’s up to in general. He’s doing chores. Homemaking chores.
Alfredson has started to weave a pattern: Håkan as a homemaker. So when we cut to Håkan in the woods, hoisting a knocked-out stranger into the air with a rope, pully, and tree, we have the absurd feeling that he’s still homemaking. He moves, clumsily again, to a clunky leather case that seems born of a lunchbox and a portable typewriter, pulls from it a large kitchen knife. The sound of the blade on the stranger’s throat belongs to the class of those you hope you’ll never, ever hear again, and we watch—or just listen, if you’ve covered your eyes in disgust—as blood begins to collect in a jar on the snow-covered ground.
Håkan is interrupted by two strangers chasing their runaway dog and runs away himself, leaving the body and the blood behind. He runs, not surprisingly, back home.
Eli is furious. “Must I do everything myself?” she demands, while Håkan sits silently, clearly and deeply ashamed. He looks at her wide-eyed, as if before a god. The room smells stale and of failure. This is our first clue that they’re not father and daughter, that the balance of power in their relationship is the opposite of what we’d predicted in the taxi cab. Håkan, Aldreson shows us here, is in Eli’s service. He’s not homemaking with her, but for her.
Meanwhile, Eli is busy exploring the neighborhood. In particular, she’s taken by Oskar (Kåre Hedbrant), the strange boy next door. Their relationship is the focus of the film’s second love story, which we’ll consider in detail shortly, but for now Oskar is of interest only inasmuch as he relates to Eli and Håkan. She makes no effort to hide her interest in the boy, even though it visibly upsets Håkan. When he next prepares to hunt for her, he ventures the courage to ask just one thing in return:
“Could you not see that boy tonight? Please?”
Her refusal comes just with a touch, her hand briefly on his face. In the unspoken dialogue she says, “You love me. And I can do anything I want to, and you’ll love me still.” He says, resigned and still wide-eyed, “You’re right.”
Indeed, her self-interest seems to be all he has in mind. While packing his leather hunting case, he includes a jar of acid which is, he explains to Eli, to disfigure his face in case he’s caught, so that no one can trace him back to her. She half-seriously suggests that maybe he shouldn’t go. His response is deadly serious: “What else am I good for?”
Inept and clumsy as ever, he sets out again for blood and is foiled, this time before he’s even slit a throat. He has managed to get a schoolboy strung up in a locker room, but the boy’s friends have noticed something is amiss, and they’re set to break down the door. The locker-room, unfortunately for Håkan, has just one exit. Which means he has just one choice.
The acid begins to stream down his face and Alfredson mercifully cuts away. The next time we see Håkan, he’s at the window of his seventh-floor hospital room. Eli is there, but not to wish him well. He slides open the glass pane and leans out into the night air, his neck exposed. It’s an offering, we realize. He is an offering, as usual, in her service. She drinks until he cannot stand, and his body hits the ground below with a sickening thud.
For Eli, she is fed and all is well. For Håkan, well, nothing.
But this exactly the way their relationship has always been. Nothing has changed! Alfredson has given us no indication whatsoever that Eli has ever considered the world from a stance outside her own. Likewise, he has given us no indication—except for one small moment of dialogue—that Håkan considered the world from a stance outside Eli’s. For Eli, everything; for Håkan, nothing.
If Eli represents the pure subjective stance, it would be a mistake to say Håkan represents objectivity. It’s true that he ignores his own perspective, but he absolutely does not take up the view from nowhere. He takes up the view from Eli. What we see here is Alfredson’s introduction of co-subjectivity, by way of a failed attempt at it. Co-subjectivity, like plain subjectivity, is a stance from one particular place. Unlike plain subjectivity, though, the co-subjective stance is taken up by more than one person. We give up our own perspectives and take up another, shared perspective, where it’s impossible to consider any one party’s interest. Two (or more) consciousnesses become one.
That’s the relationship Håkan would like to have with Eli, but it’s not the one he does have. To exist co-subjectively requires the willing and active participation of everyone involved, and that’s just not a game Eli is willing to play with him.
To an extent, we can sympathize with her. She lives, after all, in a world full of humans, and she is not human. She is other. She’s got to keep herself safe, fed, and hidden, and as such it’s not surprising that her worldview consists in just two questions. Do I have a source of food? Do I have a safe place to sleep during the day? Håkan, whose love for her let him imagine a co-subjectivity, was a means to everything she requires.
Co-subjectivity is hard for Eli because she is a fundamentally different kind of subject than Håkan. Forty years younger and a different species. This is a rather extraordinary set of reasons, the kind we can only find in fiction.
Objectivity is hard for Eli for a far more ordinary reason, one that happens in real life all the time. She is twelve, and most twelve year-olds just don’t come naturally to objectivity. Objectivity is learned. How?
Second love story:
Here’s another extraordinary case: Oskar is a twelve year-old with no clear sense of subjectivity.
Like Eli, he protects himself. Or at least, he imagines protecting himself. He has none of Eli’s strength, lethality, or self-confidence, so where Eli barks orders at a fifty year-old man, Oskar barks orders to his reflection in the window and trees in the park—the only things he trusts to obey him. He carries a knife, which we cannot imagine him using anywhere but in his fantasies. And except for in these moments of fantasy, Oskar seems to have no sense of what he wants or, more generally, how things feel to him. He perceives hazily, always focused on something just beyond his immediate surroundings. In class, he doodles on his desk and stares either down or up, rarely forward. When the class bully pushes him around—as happens frequently—Oskar’s eyes have no focus, as if he views the scene from elsewhere. In general, in his interactions with others Oskar is absentminded. Not in the sense that he’s forgetful or inattentive; his mind is literally absent, focused on the scene from somewhere else.
It’s tempting to declare that Oskar represents objectivity, the view from nowhere, but Alfredson has been careful not to let us do that. True objectivity, remember, demands that everything including the consciousness of the subject be considered. Oskar just does not know how to include himself in his worldview, except for in his fantasies.
Eli will help him. The two meet on the playground near their homes, where Oskar is thrusting his knife into a hapless tree. “Squeal!” he yells, deeply immersed in a fantasy, “Squeal like a pig!” He turns awkwardly around as he senses someone watching him. Eli is perched on a jungle jim behind him, intrigued. Who is this lonely, vicious little boy, and why does he remind her so much of herself? Their brief conversation, sharply written throughout, ends in four lines I’ll reprint here:
Eli: I can’t be your friend.
Oskar (surprised): What do you mean?
Eli: Does there have to be a reason? (She walks away.)
Oskar (calling after her): Are you so sure I want to be your friend?
These lines are so wonderful because not one of them means what it literally says, and taken together they state exactly who these characters are and what they have to give one another. Here’s a text-to-subtext translation:
Eli: I want to be your friend but I can’t.
Oskar (surprised): Someone wants to be friends with me?
Eli: Whoa! I’m uncomfortable. I’m unsafe. I’m leaving. Now.
Oskar (calling after her): I want! I want to be your friend.
In this moment, Alfredson presents two minds, each missing something it can find in the other. Eli can teach Oskar to see the world, not just his fantasies, as a place to take what he wants. Oskar suggests in return that perhaps she can have a friend, and not just a servant. Friends, though, demand something Eli’s not used to—we want not just from our friends, but for them. Eli, thus far, has survived by thinking only of herself. To be a friend, she’ll have to adjust her stance on the world.
If all this seems like it’s happening a little fast, well, that’s part of the point. When one’s worldview gets challenged, it gets challenged powerfully and suddenly. The slow steps, the hard steps, come afterward, in figuring out how to respond. And even though we know precisely where they’re headed, it’s wonderful to watch the slow steps Eli and Oskar take together.
When Oskar is accosted once more by the bully, Oskar swings a stick so hard against the boy’s face that he draws blood. Stunned, the boy squeals and kneels to the ground, like a knight who has betrayed his king and been discovered. Oskar has asserted himself, perhaps for the first time in his life! He closes his eyes just briefly, and his mouth spreads into a half-open smile that expresses two parts awe, one part joy. This moment is his. It is Eli’s gift to him.
“Bravo!” she exclaims after he has finished excitedly recounting the story. His gift in return is, like hers, a brand new feeling: This is what it’s like to be proud of someone you love.
Their further gifts are, unfortunately for everyone else in the movie, similarly violent. Oskar finally uses that knife we thought he never would, to protect Eli after someone breaks in to kill her while she sleeps. Here Alfredson has him asserting not just himself, but his lover.
When the bully regains his strength, he seeks revenge with his stronger, older brother. They’re set either to drown Oskar or gouge an eye out—his choice—but unluckily for them, Eli has learned to worry about protecting someone else. She kills them quickly and without remorse.
Perhaps because of all the blood on their hands, Eli and Oskar cannot stay in the Stockholm suburb where Let The Right One In is set. The final shot is of Oskar at a train window in daylight. He watches, alone, as the bright snow-covered trees rush by outside, reflecting sunlight. Where is Eli? We hear a knock, a pattern, coming from the large luggage trunk beside him. Oskar smiles and responds with the same pattern. Morse code: “K I S S”.
So ends the film’s second love story. Oskar has learned to narrow his worldview, to take a stance that favors him and his love. Eli has learned to broaden hers, to share a stance with someone else. Alfredson’s co-subjectivity presents itself suddenly, develops slowly, and, finally, carries the weight of the inevitable. This was always going to happen.
III - Objectivity.
All this, and we’ve said little about where objectivity comes from. That’s because, apart from Oskar’s detached, quasi-objective stance early on, there’s very little objectivity in this film. And that’s part of the point. Objectivity, says Alfredson, comes last if it comes at all.
There’s another feeling we get at the end of the movie, right after smiling to ourselves about the co-subjectivity that was always going to happen. The feeling comes on just as quickly as Eli and Oskar’s attraction did. And we stop smiling immediately.
This has happened before.
In the film’s final image, Eli is under Oskar’s protection, perhaps in the same way she was once under Håkan’s. Eli is twelve, but as she tells Oskar early on, she has “been twelve for a long time.” She stopped aging when she became a vampire.
Oh, god. Stopped aging to what extent? Her body can’t get any older, we know, but can her mind? We realize, as we watch Oskar shepherd her off to their new life, that in forty years he’ll have lines on his face like Håkan, while she’ll look the same as she did at the start of the film. What first seemed a linear love story now looks like part of a long cycle.
This is awful. The co-subjectivity we’d been sharing with Oskar and Eli—which is indeed what we share with with the characters of all good films—that co-subjectivity is ruined. We don’t know them at all. And our own plain subjectivity is runined, too, because we no longer know what we feel. Are we angry at Eli for being so terrifically manipulative? Angry at both of them for running off to start what’s sure to be a murderous life? Happy that these two flawed children grew and found love? Or perhaps we’re just angry at Alfredson for forcing us to make a choice without giving us the tools to make it.
But really, he has. The film’s most rewarding moment comes after it ends, when we realize that objectivity, like subjectivity and co-subjectivity, is a way of understanding. It comes to us when the ways before it fail, when we’re forced to ask questions that neither subjectivity or co-subjectivity can make sense of. If we really want to know whether Alfredson has shown us a cycle or a story, we’ll step outside of ourselves and go looking. Like forensic scientists, we’ll inspect each moment of the film with the utmost care—every detail might be essential evidence—and we’ll take a stance that acknowledges our subjective viewpoint but does not privilege it. What we want is a verdict, based on on hard, unbiased facts. What we want, in short, is precisely what Alfredson has been careful not to give us, what he wants us to want. What we want, of course, is the view from nowhere.
