Eli or Abby

[OUTSIDER]

Whose shoes, er ... feet would you rather be in ... and why?

[EEA]

Neither. There existence seems sad for me. Eli finds Oskar and finds some happiness.
Abby is stuck in the same cycle of finding someone to kill for her.

[dongregg]

Eli. She is so happy. Having Oskar for a true friend lets her recover the childhood that was stolen from her.

[cmfireflies]

Hmmm, probably Abby. I think it's easier to be a vampire when you're a manipulative sociopath. And she gets to be loved without the heartache of caring for someone else cuz she can fake it.

[BravoHotel]

I'd have to be Abby, she seems to accept her fate more and live with it emotionally etc than Eli, who after 200 years still doesn't like killing and appears burdened by the fact she has to.

[sauvin]

I'd have to be Abby, she seems to accept her fate more and live with it emotionally etc than Eli, who after 200 years still doesn't like killing and appears burdened by the fact she has to.

You don't think Abby is burdened? Why?

[BravoHotel]

You don't think Abby is burdened? Why?

It's not necessarily that I think Abby isn't burdened, more like she doesn't show it emotionally as much as Eli does. Abby seems hardier and more able to deal with her feelings to me than Eli does, such as when Eli is crying having kiled Jocke, like Eli still hasn't accepted what she is yet, but Abby seems to have accepted her fate and just doesn't like it. I'm still not too sure what I mean myself yet, it was really just my gut instinct answer but I can have a think on it more and we can discuss it if you like?

[sauvin]

You don't think Abby is burdened? Why?

It's not necessarily that I think Abby isn't burdened, more like she doesn't show it emotionally as much as Eli does. Abby seems hardier and more able to deal with her feelings to me than Eli does, such as when Eli is crying having kiled Jocke, like Eli still hasn't accepted what she is yet, but Abby seems to have accepted her fate and just doesn't like it. I'm still not too sure what I mean myself yet, it was really just my gut instinct answer but I can have a think on it more and we can discuss it if you like?

Oh, we can "discuss" it 'till the cows come home. We've been doing nothing ELSE on this board for... hrm... many many moons.

Abby seems to me more open with her feelings. I've often said she seems "slinkier" and somewhat more flirty than does Eli, and I've often said that Eli comes across as rather wooden, a lot more tightly controlled, reserved and watchful. Both "accept" their fates, understanding said fates for what they are, but this acceptance comes out in different ways.

You don't have to be in a state of denial to miss what you can no longer have (or be), and be acutely enough pained by it to be brought to tears (Eli, on Jocke's back). Novel Eli may be playing a bit coy when she shrilly denies being... "that", claiming there's a BIG difference between what she is and the vampire Oskar thought she was, but this, too, isn't necessarily "denial", per se, and may be indicative of nothing more than the difference between how she sees herself (in terms of character) and how she sees other vampires she'd known. Abby simply seems frankly more fatalistic, witness her having repeated to Owen as he left her apartment: "I told you we can't be friends".

It's this very resignation that leads me away from the impression of Abby as a calculating monster. If Oskar is Eli's first "normal" relationship in "a very long time", and if Abby periodically drifts into Thomas cycles as (possibly) began again with Owen, then Abby has to live with the foreknowledge of what the next few decades are going to be like, where Eli riding a train out from Blackeberg with Oskar has no idea what to expect. A calculating little vixen would have left Thomas in a ditch a couple decades ago, when he started becoming less efficient and more prone to error, but that's not what Abby did. Instead, she watched her love become a monster, and killed him only when he had no life left worth living (I presume for his own sake).

And so, between the two of them, Eli or Abby, I would definitely say that Abby is the more haunted.

[BravoHotel]

Oh, we can "discuss" it 'till the cows come home. We've been doing nothing ELSE on this board for... hrm... many many moons.

Of course, I suppose I missed the purpose of this site for a minute there. *bashes self on head*

While it has been a while since I've watched LMI my impression of Abby is yes like you said she is very "slinky" in her body language, but that she is more in control of who she displays her actual emotions to e.g her expressions when Owen isn't looking at the arcade or when Owen is, through the telescope and Abby is unaware of being observed. When Abby tells Owen to go away on their second time meeting my view is that Abby actually wanted to be alone where as Eli looked to have an ulterior motive. To me Abby seems to have gotten to a point where she has either numbed herself or actually no longer feels, I suppose saying she is like a Vulcan is a good example although I know little about star trek. Compare this to how she acts in front of Owen when the two are at the arcade or when she wants Thomas to do something for her I see Abby more as the emotionless manipulator, using people to survive. I'm not denying that Eli doesn't manipulate Oskar such as the earlier challenge of "go home then" or the glass door scene, but to me Eli seems to be doing this more assure herself that Oskar is a "good choice" for a helper, then to see if he really cares about her. In terms of Elis' woodeness I've always seen this as an awkwardness because of her etherealness, as well as being socially isolated,so more that she doesn't know how to express her emotions than that she doesn't have them. For "I told you we can't be friends" I see when Abby first told Owen this that it was an "I'm not interested in your silly kid stuff", by then I don't see Abby as having decided to manipulate Owen into being a replacement. The second time she says this I think it is more like she is blaming Owen for his wanting to be with her rather than staying away like she first warned, to make him the guilty party.

A calculating little vixen would have left Thomas in a ditch a couple decades ago, when he started becoming less efficient and more prone to error, but that's not what Abby did.

True although my impression was that Thomas had only just started to become inefficient and error prone over the course of the film, otherwise Abby might have had a fresh replacement before she got to Owens neighbourhood, I'll have to watch Abbys' version of the hospital scene again though befor I say why I think Abby agreed to kill Thomas.

Novel Eli may be playing a bit coy when she shrilly denies being... "that",

I'm only going from what I see of the two of the films since this thread is in the film section, but if I could be Eli in the book Abby or movie Eli I would choose book, because we have a better understanding of Elis' thoughts, emotions, etc, whereas in the film there is to me a little less to go by despite Linas' well beyond even experienced actors skills and Alfredsons' direction.

[sauvin]

I believe there's an old Spanish saying that goes something like "tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are". This is probably something akin to "water seeks its own level", has antecedants dating back to global preliteracy and dovetails rather nicely with my claim for LTROI/LMI being Rorschach tests. We all see the same Eli in the movie, and the same Abby, but how we see them can vary quite a bit. Those differences seem to be directly because of who we are, and where we've been.

All of the scenes in LTROI where the two kids are shown interacting are what I call "critical junctures", scenes in which hurdles and conflicts have to be negotiated just so if their relationship is to continue to develop. I'm thinking LMI works much the same way. The three scenes I find qualitatively very different between the two movies are in the basement clubhouse before the girl sees or smells the blood (Abby frankly looked more than ready for some really heavy and steamy smooching, where Eli acted like she was more than ready for a good game of chess), the kitchen scene (Eli's distant froisseur towards Haakan is in stark contrast to what appears to be deep (and possibly "transgressive") tenderness between Abby and Thomas), and in the arcade/kiosk scene (where Eli holds herself like a wind-up tin soldier, and Abby (within this small span of time) seems to be absolutely nothing more than a giddy middle school girl having a riotous night out with her best friend - or maybe a very young woman on a date with her first overwhelming puppy love?).

"Just so you know", she says to him first time they meet, "we can't be friends". Some people see this as the girl having immediately decided to explore the boy as a potential new minder, and to launch a campaign of masterful psychological and emotional manipulation. I don't think there's anything in either movie to preclude this impression definitively, but if the girls really are only twelve years old in mind, body and soul, I'm thinking this campaign of manipulation involves a body of knowledge and experience (a mastery of human psychology and the dynamics of social interaction) that's probably far beyond their capabilities. My personal impression of both girls is that they're both insanely lonely, and socially inept precisely because they can't afford the luxury of casual socialising that most people enjoy throughout their lives.

I've always taken that initial warning as a sign the girls definitely find the boys interesting. "Here is a boy", you can almost hear them thinking, "who might be normal enough to be a good friend, but weird enough not to go completely birdpoop crazy if he finds out about me..." - but such experience as they might already have has probably also long ago taught them "... but people who get involved with me always come to a very bad end". Plus, you know, maybe this "normal enough, weird enough" boy might be enough of either or both to be truly dangerous to her while she's sleeping.

If Eli and/or Abby is 100% the predator, and the only real goal for this whole danse is just to have an errand boy and guard dog, so what? Just another victim to sate a monster's appetites or meet a monster's needs, even if it takes Oskar or Owen a few decades to die rather than just a minute or two. This is in the nature of horror, after all, and horror is a fact of daily life.

But if we view Eli and/or Abby as "d'aww, she's so cute and so sweet and so innocent (except when she's not)!", then LMI spells out what LTROI doesn't: Thomas is the face of what falling in love turns into forty years down the road.