The whole thing a fantasy?

[drakkar]

Could it stem from the UK dvd comments from just after ELis cab passes by Oskar's window?:

JAL: "Who Killed The Man In The Ice?" maybe it's said in the translation, I don't know.
TA: And this also gives the audience a clue that maybe all this is fantasy if it has come from the article.
TA: And when he comes into the apartment beside maybe it's an empty apartment.
TA: I wanted to give the audience that possibility that this might be just a fantasy.
TA: But it is not.
JAL: No. Right. Good that you say it. It's usually me saying that. (Both laugh)

[StefL]

Also, don't forget that in the afterword to the book (I think it was there at least, or in some interview) JAL says that the book is autobiographical. Everything that's in the book actually happened - only not quite as it is described in the book

[TΛPETRVE]

In my not-at-all-humble opinion, "fantasies" are one of the worst failures a script can come up with. It reeks of taking the cheapest way out possible, due to the inability to bring up a satisfying conclusion.

[drakkar]

Agreed, especially in this case. A hundred trumpet blowing cherubs welcoming Eli and Oskar to Karlstad would be more appropriate.

etc

[DMt.]

I think you could probably get a hundred cherubs out of just those five!

[Lacenaire]

Of course there is not the slightest doubt that "the whole thing is a fantasy". I am completely sure that all those strenuously objecting to the idea know perfectly well that it must be true: no one like Eli has ever existed or will exist and that means she and everything related to her is a fantasy. What makes sense to deny is something else, namely, that the film consists somehow of two parts or two levels, of which one is supposed to be seen as "realistic" and the other as "fantastic", in other words, that the fantasy that is the film contains another fantasy inside it. One way that this could be done (and has sometimes been done in other films, even very effectively) is by using the idea of a dream, for example, some parts of the film being "Oskar's reality" and some other "Oskar's dream". I completely agree that there is no coherent way to divide the film in this way. This fact however does not make the whole any less of a fantasy.

The reasons why some people wish to divide the film in this way seems to me to be mainly with their reluctance to admit fantasy, or rather certain kinds of fantasy, into what they consider to be "serious" or "true to life" subject matter. Some, including myself, find it difficult to take anything with creatures lie vampires quite seriously, unless they are somehow moved into a "dream level". I admit to having the same problem myself and, in particular, this means that, in spite of all these serious discussions I have been drawn into about Eli's morality etc, I can't view this film with the same sort of seriousness as, for example, Zvyagintsev's "Return" (for me the best film by far I have seen since LTROI). I don't think, however, that making Eli a figment of Oskar's imagination would change things in any way in this respect.

Other people, may perhaps find it easier to accept vampires but not the "happy ending" on the train. Perhaps they feel that "life is not like that" and Oskar should have died in the pool, and his rescue by Eli is too predictable or even sentimental. There may also be some viewer's who are uncomfortable with the idea of "evil Eli" getting her way at the end. But in any case, I think all these "fantasy" in a "fantasy" views derive from certain psychological needs of certain viewers and not from what one actually sees. The director does go a little in the direction of giving those who wish to see the film in this way a little freedom to do so, but really only a little and it is impossible to built any coherent view of the whole on this idea.

It may seem that all of this is obvious and beside the point since nobody really denies that the film is a fantasy in the sense that I am using, but I think I am trying to say something a little more serious than that, at least about the way I view this kind of fantasy. Personally I am not interested in fantastic creatures, magic and other impossible things for their own sake. Normally I would not watch a vampire film to be scared - vampires don't scare me at all since I don't believe in them. To be worth watching and taking "seriously" a fantasy has to address serious real life issues in an indirect form, through allegory or some other such means. All the great fantasy is about serious real life matters, even if impossible things happen to impossible beings. For me the very best example is "The Master and Margarita" but LTROI is also of this kind. It is a serious fantasy.

Would it help at all to see it all as someone's dream? I don't mean a dream inside the film - I mean the entire film as a dream. I think this view indeed could be made coherent, just as one can coherently view our actual real world as a kind of dream. Well, I personally do not feel any psychological need to do so; it would not make the impact of the film on me and better or worse if I decided to think that it represents JAL's dream about his childhood or whatever.

[DMt.]

Perhaps it's just that some people prefer to hammer a story into the mould of their interpretation, rather than take the trouble to see what the thing itself is saying?

[Wolfchild]

This whole "Eli is just Oskar's imagination" theme is plausible up to a point, but it begins to strain credulity when I think about Virginia. Oskar never meets her, he never lays eyes on her, and in fact he has no reason to even suspect that she exists. Yet her whole plot thread is the motivation for Lacke seeking out Eli. So to believe in this story as being Oskar's fantasy, I also have to believe that he dreamed up this whole person whom he never imagines himself meeting just to motivate this other imaginary person just so the he could imagine his imaginary vampire friend killing him?



And once again

[Lacenaire]

Well, for what it's worth: I have had dreams (very rarely but at least once) in which there appeared people quite unknown to me and I myself was absent, or rather I was present only as a kind of spectator but unable to do anything because I was "not there". So I can conceive the whole thing, including virginia, as being imagined by Oskar, but if I have to choose a "dream interpretation" of the story, well, then there is an obvious one: JAL is dreaming about the way things "should have happened" in his childhood, rather than the way they really happened (I have had such dreams too).

[Lacenaire]

Perhaps it's just that some people prefer to hammer a story into the mould of their interpretation, rather than take the trouble to see what the thing itself is saying?

But what exactly is it "saying"? That there once was a vampire child named Eli...?

I know quite many people (actually, the majority of people I know) who would never watch a vampire movie (my parents are the first to come to my mind). However, some of them might be more willing to take seriously a film in which someone is dreaming about a vampire. I find such a reaction quite natural - except that in this particular case the "acrobatics" involving time, space and logic needed to construct such an interpretation seem to me to destroy most of the film's appeal.