So, tomorrow, I'll see an old friend of mine, very smart, he's a librarian and reads books you can't imagine. I'll give him the film, ripped from my Blu-ray with improved subtitles and I will wait for his review.
Remember?
So, here we are. My old buddy finally took time to watch LTROI for the first time in his life...
I asked him 2 questions:
1)
Me: According to you, who really is the old man with Eli? When do you think they met?
Fred: The old man? I have no idea. Nothing is said about his backstory. Apparently, in the novel, he's a pervert.
Me: Well, in the film, the old man is quite mysterious. He's indeed a pedophile in the book.
2)
Me: How do you interpret the "peek" shot scene, when we see a glimpse of Eli's genital?
Fred: Yes, there is a quick shot of Eli's genital... which doesn't look like a female genital... but rather a wound... Eli must be a trans! or an androgynous.
I thought to myself that she wasn't very pretty for a 12 year old girl...
Eli, I'm pretty sure it's a reference to the passion of the Christ. Blood, all of that.
Me: Good point, it's a wound. And yes, in the novel, after the old man poured acid on his face, witnesses heard him yell "Eli, Eli". And the policeman in charge of the case thought that maybe the name "Eli" was a reference to the Bible.
Then, I copied-and-pasted the interview with director and scriptwriter I transcripted here in this post, to let him know their intentions when making the film.
Fred: In Russia, the Skoptsy performed autocastration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy
vampirism, since the beginning of the mythology is a way to evoke marginal sexualities.
Maldoror de Lautréamont (1871) was already a vampire who loved (very) young boys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Lautr%C3%A9amont
See [12] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Chan ... or/Chant_I
Me: Maldoror de Lautréamont (1871)?
Never heard of that. Is it interesting?
Fred: Lautréamont? I made three public lectures on him. It always made me feel uncomfortable. Almost illegible. An authentic mentally-sick person.
Me: When you saw the wound in the "peek" shot scene, did it occur to you that maybe Eli was a castrated boy?
fred: A castrated boy? No, I didn't think of that, rather an androgynous or a mutation.
The problem is that it's almost impossible to think of a castrato/eunuch considering all we can see in the film.
Castration is a unrepresentable reality because it's just so horrible.
Yet the rest of the movie is in representable horror: vampires who catch on fire, who can fly, etc.
If you didn't read the book, you don't think about it, but a representable horror, like all of those we see throughout the film. It's very psychoanalytic in a certain way...
Ok, he's not wrong. I didn't even know castration could mean the removal of everything... before I learn about Chinese Eunuchs:
https://imgur.com/a/g019Wlv
I'm done now. I don't know if improving the subtitles was useful, I'd say yes,
because he perceived the whole androgynous thing and that's a very good point!
I'm fine with all of this, even if it definitely lacks something to fully understand who Eli really is... the director wanted his movie to be like this anyway: open to interpretation. If you want to go further, then you must read the book.
: (2:59 --> 6:24)