Every once in a while someone asks about various lines from the original Swedish dialogue. Below is the Swedish subtitle track from Låt den rätte komma in, which can be helpful in answering such questions.

This piece was originally posted by Matt Krause on his blog on February 7, 2010. It has since disappeared from its original location. However, I had liked it enough to start a forum thread about it. Matt has kindly allowed me to repost his article here.

I was on one of those message boards they have on IMDb, where people can post topics and start online discussions about the movies they love. On a board devoted to the Swedish film Let the Right One In, which I and many others have dubbed “Twilight for grown-ups,” one of the adult men opened a thread where he admitted a strong attraction to actress Lina Leandersson, who plays the child vampire Eli and was herself 12 years old at the time of shooting. “I’ve never felt this before,” the man said. “Is something wrong with me?”

At once, other posters on the board called this man out, labeling him a pervert and a pedophile. I refrained from posting anything myself, but I do admit sharing the sentiments of the others on the board … at first. It was only when I reflected a bit on the film (which is one of my favorites) and the startling performance by Lina Leandersson that I began to at least appreciate what I believe the man meant to write but failed to articulate.

First of all, I cannot speak for an anonymous poster on a message board, but I can speak for myself. And before I turn my attention to the young Ms. Leandersson, let me explain what I find attractive when it comes to women in movies.

I am not really one to fall into the mainstream male’s obsession with sex goddesses. There are many actresses out there who are indeed beautiful, but I personally find few of them attractive in the sense that I lie awake pining for them. I am not aroused by actresses because of the way they look; I am instead aroused by the characters they play.

For instance, I’m not really turned on by Meg Ryan, although I do think she is beautiful, but I am extremely turned on by Sally Albright, the character she plays in When Harry Met Sally. I do not know Meg Ryan well enough to know if I would like her, but she is a talented attress and gives such a charming and honest performance in this film that I do feel that I know Sally Albright. As such, when I first saw When Harry Met Sally back in college, I actually pined for Sally Albright, wishing–nay, praying–that a girl like her would come into my life some day.

Who else has turned me on in movies?

I like Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ms. Allen is cute as a button anyway, but Marion is the kind of woman I’ve always found attractive–tough, resourceful, minimal bullshit, but not so strong-willed that she forgets how to be a woman (ironically, she is a lot like my wife). I always thought Indy was a schmuck for letting her get away, and one of the reasons I was one of the ten or so people who liked the most recent Indiana Jones movie was because Marion returned and Indy finally did right by her.

Who else?

Diane Freeling (JoBeth Williams) in Poltergeist. When her children are in peril near the end and her maternal instinct turns her into this primal creature sprinting down the hall to save her, I get chills all over my body.

Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. James Bond always has his pick of the most beautiful women in the world, but there’s something about Tracy that makes him want to settle down, and Ms. Rigg does a wonderful job of letting the rest of us see just what that “something” is.

Catherine Chandler (Linda Hamilton) in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. A smart, principled woman with reserves of tenderness that allow her to see past Vincent’s beastly appearance to the soul of a poet that lies beneath. I longed for a woman who saw me that way (and found her the day I met my wife). Sadly, Ms. Hamilton eschews her more feminine side as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, making me forget Catherine all to quickly.

Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) in Casablanca. There is no question Ingrid Bergman is beautiful, and I have enjoyed her in many, many films. Ilsa Lund is the only character she has played that I would like to have known personally, and I still get a bit weepy at the end of this film, sensing deeply just how great a sacrifice it is for Rick to let her go.

All of this goes to illustrate what I think is often overlooked in most sex symbols. When it comes to celebrities, we don’t fall in love with the people themselves; we fall in love with their personas. One of the reason I’ve never gotten all moist for Angelina Jolie as a sex symbol is because she hasn’t played a character that excited me sexually since Playing By Heart. Oh, I think she is gorgeous and extremely talented, and I admire her philanthropic spirit, but while I’ve liked many of her movies, she seldom plays a character I would want to date (although some of her characters might be my good friends). I like people and all of their intricacies. When I go to a movie, I am not paying just to see a certain actor or actress; rather, I am wagering the price of a ticket that I might get to experience that wonderful moment when a talented performer meets a well-written character and manages to make movie magic (something Meryl Streep seems to do almost effortlessly).

So … back to this issue of 12-year-old Lina Leandersson and the message board poster who found her so attractive.

Let’s get this much out of the way: Lina Leandersson is a lovely little girl. She turns 15 this year and is showing signs of blossoming into a beautiful young woman. But at this point, she is still an adolescent, and at the time she made Let the Right One In she was very much a child, a little girl.

I do not think our mysterious poster is harboring the thoughts of a pederast where Lina Leandersson is concerned. Rather, I think that Eli, the character she plays, touched something in his heart as it did mine, and like me he has found the character to be haunting and unforgettable. There is something very appealing about Eli and yet something very tragic, and that is what makes her so unique and Lina Leandersson’s performance so special.

For those of you who have not seen Let the Right One In, it is a love story of sorts between two lonely creatures: A 12-year-old boy named Oskar (Kare Hedebrandt) who is so brutally bullied at school that he retreats into homicidal revenge fantasies; and Eli, who appears to be a 12-year-old girl but is really a 200-year-old creature of the night (there is more to her than her vampirism, but that is one of the movies best-kept secrets). What starts out as a series of casual conversations in the playground outside their block flats grows into a cautious friendship, arousing within Oskar and Eli a hunger for human connection.

It must be stated that Eli is not a sexualized creature for reasons that go well beyond her vamprism. However, because of her unique situation, she has been forced to call upon her sexuality numerous times in order to survive. Although an immortal, Eli still has the same vulnerabilities as other vampires, such as not being able to come out in the daylight (she won’t sparkle like Edward Cullen; she’ll burst into flames). At the same time, she is still trapped in the body of a child. Finding a place to sleep and an adult to protect her is no easy task.

As such, when we first meet Eli, she is traveling with Hakan (Per Ragnar), a broken, withered old man with the kind of unhealthy appetites that might turn our stomach. Hakan clearly desires Eli (in the book, he believes he is in love with her), and Eli keeps him at bay with the promise of sexual favors provided he do her bidding. This bidding not only entails proofing their apartment from the sun and guarding Eli during the day, but also the unsavory task of stalking and murdering victims for Eli, draining their blood so she does not have to go on the hunt herself (the main reason for this is so that Eli will not go out and create other vampires, but when she is forced to do her own hunting, she violently twists her victim’s head off after feeding before she can infect the entire body).

As unsettling as this may sound, the film is actually quite beautiful, handling its more violent elements with grace and aesthetic distance while keeping its focus on this friendship between Oskar and Eli. Although she does awful things, Eli is not a monster but a fractured little soul who has forgtten how it feels to love and be loved. And although Oskar’s homocidal ideations are frightening at first, his eyes flicker with such loneliness that we realize he has not been lost just yet.

Let the Right One In resonated with me, and not just because I like horror movies. I found myself identifying with Oskar from the outset, sympathizing with him during his torment, longing to protect him from the evils of his life, and nodding with understanding when he stood alone in the playground, stabbing a tree with a knife and pretending it was one of his tormentors.

It was because of this connection that I totally welcomed Eli into the story. I saw Eli as Oskar saw her, and I sensed his great relief when he came to realize that there was another in the world who wanted to understand him. We have all craved this kind of intimacy in our lives at one time or another, but at the tender age of 12, that unsteady precipice before puberty, our desire for a connection is almost painful. I have friends I have known since grade school who all seemed so assured when we were Oskar’s age, and yet all of them have admitted that those years were marked by terror and loneliness.

What person wouldn’t be attracted to Eli? She is like that perfect invisible friend. When I was 12, I would have gone to the ends of the earth for someone like Eli to come into my life. In fact, while watching Let the Right One In, I was reminded of the scary stories my brothers told me when I was child, tales of a girl named Patty who had allegedly died in our house before we moved in and whose spirit now dwelt in our attic. Rather than being terrified, I imagined that Patty’s spirit would come down into my room at night to play with me.

That is what I thought when this film introduced me to Eli. Of course I was attracted to her, not as an unstable adult to a child, but as the fragile 12-year-old who sometimes still lives inside, a vulnerable little tike who would have loved to have a friend like Eli. As I said, I saw her through Oskar, and I sort of saw myself through both of them … an interesting idea as I think about it, because my most favorite passage of the book is about Oskar having a similar experience:

Eli turned her face to Oskar’s, said:

“I …”

Closed her mouth. Then pressed a kiss on Oskar’s lips.

For a few seconds, Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was … himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love.

For a few seconds.

There are fans of the book that find this to be one of the most beautiful passages they have ever read. It is many times more beautiful than anything I have read in Twilight. In a few short sentences, author John Ajvide Linqvist illustrates what it is that attracts us to another, that in fact makes us love then.

We see our best selves through their eyes.

I saw myself as Oskar while watching this film, saw myself through Eli’s eyes, and felt that intense connection to her well after the film had ended. That, I think, is what the message board poster was trying to say. Not that he lusted after a 12-year-old girl and wanted to do awful things to her. But that he remembered what it was like to be 12 years old, to be alone, to feel advancing changes of puberty on the horizon, and to look at someone your own age, feel those first pangs of attraction, and wonder how it would feel if the two of you were friends.

That doesn’t mean he is a pederast. That means that where he was concerned, the movie worked its magic. And isn’t magic what we’re all looking for anyway?

A post on the forum (thanks cmfireflies 🙂 ) and a similar one at IMDB caused me to remember something that I had seen Tomas Alfredson say in an interview. Each of those posts basically asked how we could have sympathy for Eli. How could we identify with, and in fact root for, a monster that must kill in order to survive? We all know that Eli’s survival means that more people will die. How can we look past that? I started writing a reply to cmfireflies’ post, and it kept going and going. It finally became too long to be a forum post, so instead I made it into this page.

What I had recalled Tomas Alfredson saying on the topic of Eli was:

The film suggests that love is possible and everybody has a choice and the one character that does not have a choice is the vampire [Eli] because she has to kill to survive.

I didn’t realize it at the time I read that interview, but Eli is the only character in the film who is fully sympathetic. Except for Jocke, Eli is the only the only character whose character is not criticized by the film. And Jocke was basically just a Star Trek extra in a red shirt. Of all the thoughtless, cruel, and horrible things that we see done in this film, Eli is the only one who has no choice but to do them. Her survival depends upon her doing what she does. Everyone else chooses to be thoughtless, cruel, or horrific. Even Oskar at one point chooses to be cruel to Eli. Among the major characters of the film, and even most of the supporting characters, Eli is the one who seems the most worthy of our sympathy.

Let’s just run through the characters:

Which finally brings us to Eli. She is frozen forever at the age of twelve. She can’t even remember when her birthday is. Her survival depends upon hunting people and drinking their blood and then afterwards killing them. The film shows that even though she has been doing this for a long time, it still upsets her. She is the only character in the film who has her cirmcumstance thrust upon her. She is the only character who cannot choose another path (except for the path of suicide).

Let’s contrast Eli with the only other vampire that the film shows us: Virginia. When Virginia gets hungry she first goes looking for the blood of her dead friend, and then goes after the blood of one who is still alive. Eli on the other hand kept herself from nomming Oskar on the jungle gym even though at that point she was obviously very hungry. Oskar was barely an acquaintance – just someone who had shown her some unexpected kindness and generosity. Virginia later was revolted by her intention to nom her friend, and she chose to end her own life rather than find herself in that position again. However Eli did get herself into the same position again (in the basement) and was again able to keep herself from nomming Oskar, who now was her friend. Is it reasonable to expect Eli to make the same choice as Virginia? Can she be blamed for not making this choice – for choosing instead to live?

Eli has shown us that there are some things more important to her than her requirement for blood. She has retained more of her humanity through out her (apparently) long life as a vampire than Virginia retained in her first day as a vampire. How then should we not sympathize with little Eli? Despite the horror that is necessary for her survival, she is the only character in the film who is always shown to have the most humanity in her choices (within the bounds of her survival’s necessities). Of the characters we saw the film, which would you most like to entrust yourself to?

Once again, how then should we not sympathize with Eli?

* This is one scene where the Magnolia subtitles really altered the film for me. When I first watched the film, it was with the Magnolia subtitles. Lacke has the knife to Eli’s throat but he does not try to do anything with it. Instead he mutters something (but there are no subtitles to translate it) and he begins to uncover the window. I thought to myself, “Ah ha! He has seen what happened to Virginia and he knows that the light will kill Eli. He wants Eli to die in the same fashion that Virginia did. Lacke’s got a bit of smarts.” However when I finally got exposed to the theatrical subtitles (which do provide a translation for Lacke’s muttering) I realized that he wasn’t really having a good idea there. What he was really doing was chickening out. He was telling himself that he couldn’t bring himself to kill Eli because he couldn’t see what he was doing. The reality was that he couldn’t bring himself to kill Eli – period.

As I was watching Let The Right One In one day, I noticed a few things in the sound design of the film that I liked very much. I went back through and listened to the film – instead of watching it – and I found that as much thought seemed to go into the sound design as went into the dialogue or the cinematography.

Tomas Alfredson, the director, wants us to feel very close to Oskar. The film is a story told through Oskar’s eyes, and Tomas wants us to see what Oskar sees, feel what Oskar feels, and also to hear what Oskar hears. He and Per Sundström, the supervising sound editor, have crafted a soundscape for this film that grabs the viewer’s attention when it needs to, but otherwise provides a solid backdrop of verisimilitude to the images on the screen.

I put together some clips of the relevant portions of the film in order to illustrate the things that I want to talk about. I suggest that headphones be used to listen to the clips, as some of the audio features that I am describing are a bit subtle. Each clip also provides a small view of the accompanying video in order to give context what you are hearing. Also please note that if your web browser has JavaScript disabled, you will may have to click on the “Back” button after you play each clip to come back to the article.

Early on in the film, Oskar is in school, and he irks the bullies by speaking out in class. At about 00:08 into the following clip, just after Oskar speaks for the first time, you can hear someone click their tongue in disapproval, and then a sigh of exasperation. As the sigh is tapering off, you can see Conny, who is sitting directly in front of Oskar, tilting his head up a little bit, as though he is rolling his eyes. Then he turns around to give Oskar the look that we will later find out is a promise of torment. Tomas has us hear these things because Oskar too has heard them. At this point Oskar becomes less self-assured, and he just seeks a way to escape the attention he has brought upon himself. Then, as the clip finishes, the audio of the policeman speaking fades from the foreground and we can hear Martin, tapping his finger on his desk as he glares at Oskar. The film does this because Oskar’s attention has left what the policeman is saying and is focused on the unwanted attention that he is now receiving from Martin.

In the scene where Oskar is stabbing the tree, taking his imagined revenge upon Conny, it is the audio that gives Oskar and us our first hint that his new neighbor is stranger than he could imagine. In the following clip, at first the only sounds you can hear are those of Oskar himself: his voice, his feet in the snow, the knife on the tree. There is no wind, no traffic noise, nothing else. Then at about 00:13 into the clip you can hear a door open. Oskar is too wrapped up in his fantasy to notice it immediately, and we the audience are perhaps too wrapped up in the images we see to notice what we heard. Soon however, Oskar either senses someone behind him – or perhaps the sound of the door has finally seeped into his consciousness. When he turns, we can now see Eli perched atop the jungle gym. Apparently it was she who came out the door that we heard, and in the 10 seconds until Oskar turns around, she has crossed the snow and gotten on top of the jungle gym without making a single sound.

Then, at the end of Oskar’s first encounter with Eli, Eli turns and walks out of the frame. This time we hear her feet in the snow. Eli apparently walks back to the door, which we hear again, opens it, and goes inside. This door sounds identical to the door that we heard in the previous clip, which confirms for us that it was Eli’s door that we heard. Also, we can tell by the sound of the door that Oskar waits until Eli has gone inside before he has the courage to utter his come back, “Are you so sure that I want to be your friend?” (“Tror du jag vill bli vän med dig, då?“)

It was in the scene where Oskar gets whipped by the bullies that I first noticed how many interesting things were going on in the audio. As Martin takes the switch the from a sobbing Andreas, you can hear Martins feet in the snow. You can hear Martin breathing. You can hear Andreas sobbing. Oskar is standing there with his eyes closed, and these are the things he hears. Then you can hear the switch whistling through the air and as it hits, all of the sounds stop. They are replaced by a high pitched tone, like tinnitus. Tomas and Per have made our ears ring with the blow, just as Oskar’s ears must have been ringing.

After the bullies run off, the scene cuts to Oskar eating dinner with his mother. However, while we are still seeing Oskar standing alone in the snow, we hear him telling his mother that he got the cut on his face when he tripped on a rock. (This is called an “L cut” in the film industry, where the audio of a subsequent scene starts before the actual cut to that scene). We know that this a lie that Oskar is telling his mother, and by having us hear him say it while he is still in the school yard, the film implies that he is beginning to plan his lie then, before he even gets home.

In the scene where Oskar finally stands up to Conny and he hits him in the ear with the pole, I found that the audio changed my perception of what Oskar was feeling. After the blow, Conny falls to the ice screaming. Oskar stands over Conny and and it is not a straightforward task to interpret the expression on his face. It could be exaltation, or a sort of feral joy of the kill. It could be an adrenalin rush. It could be a bloodlust to match Eli’s – that he is wanting to strike again. As we are shown the shot of Oskar’s face, the screams start to fade into the background and Johan Söderqvist’s wonderful piece Oscar Strikes Back swells to the front of the audio. Then, at a pause in the music, in front of everything else, we hear Oskar give a little exhalation. It is a sort of sigh of release. This gave me the clue that what Oskar is really feeling here is freedom – freedom from the shame and fear and anger that the bullying had been breeding in him. The burden of fear that has characterized his existence has with that one blow been lifted from him. That one little sound in the audio opened the way for me to understand Oskar in this scene. This feeling of release floods through him, detaching him from his surroundings, and the sound design reflects this.

I was impressed with the sounds that accompanied Eli’s egg. The egg itself was 100% computer generated. Even so, the sounds as Oskar touches it with his finger and it falls to pieces work very well. First Oskar touches the top of it with finger – not just touches it but actually presses on it with his finger. There is a clicking sound that starts the process of the egg coming apart. Instead of this click coming when Oskar’s finger first touches the top of the egg, you see Oskar’s finger bend as it apparently applies pressure. Then comes the click. Then as the computer-generated pieces fall, the sounds of tinkling metal come in, quickly crescendo, and then tail off at a rate that is perfectly timed with what we are shown on the screen. Also, I thought the pitch of the sounds matched perfectly with what you would expect to hear from pieces of metal of that size. It was not only the sounds of the pieces bouncing off of each that sounded good, but the sounds of them landing on the box and the table matched perfectly with your eyes would tell you to expect.

The scene where Eli enters Oskar’s apartment uninvited is probably one of those most renowned scenes in the film. Lina’s performance is riveting, and the experience of watching something completely new and original being added to the vampire mythos is very engrossing – so much so that its is easy to overlook how much the sounds add to this scene. The thing that first drew my attention to the sound in this scene was the little popping, splashing sound that accompanies the first little spurt of blood from Eli’s ear. It sounds exactly right, and it is perfectly timed. Visually, nothing much happens for the first half of the clip, but you can hear Eli’s labored breathing and those sounds. Also you can hear a pounding sound that resembles a heartbeat. The sounds build the suspense, and they are so unearthly that you can’t wait to see what will happen. Then when Eli starts to bleed, the momentum of the scene picks and it is easy to get swept past the little popping sound because it does fit so well with the visuals.

You can easily imagine Oskar standing there with his “So what’s the big deal?” attitude. Then as he notices the intense look on Eli’s face, he starts hearing these things: the heavy breathing, the strange sounds. Then perhaps he starts hearing his own heart pounding in his ears as he realizes this situation is on the verge spinning out of control, going far beyond anything that he had ever imagined experiencing. In his growing alarm, his eyes jump wildly around picking up the details, the blood from her scalp, then from her ear, then from her eyes. As the camera flits around and shows us the details that Oskar’s eyes see, it is the sounds that tie the details together to give us a full picture of what is happening to Eli.

Feel free to turn your volume way up for this clip. I cut it right before Oskar shouts, “Nej!”, so that it contains no loud sounds. After you have listened to it, turn your sound off completely and watch the clip again with no sound. This illustrates dramatically just how much the audio carries the action of this scene – despite the compelling imagery.

In the pool scene, Tomas takes the technique of guiding our imaginations with the sound design a step further. Here, we hear sounds that Tomas has not already associated images with. Further, these sounds are kind of distorted. Oskar is underwater, and to put us underwater with him the sounds we hear are muffled and kind of “muddied up”. As the clip starts Oskar is being held under by Jimmy, who plans to also cut his face or poke out his eye when (or if) he comes back up. We are waiting for something – anything – to happen to save Oskar. Then we here the muffled crash, and the muffled shouting starts. Or is it screaming? Howling? From what we can hear under the surface we really can’t tell, but we know that something is going on around the pool. The dramatic but unidentifiable sounds build the suspense as we wait to see something happen. Finally we see someone’s feet pass through the water in front of the camera. It is accompanied by the first clear sounds – those of the feet being passed through the water, and then down the side of the pool. In contrast to the earlier sounds, the splashing of the feet can be heard with crystal clarity. This causes our ears to tell us that we are indeed under the water with Oskar. While our attention has been centered on the feet, once they leave the water we realize that the muffled howling is still going on. Something is still happening. Then the head splashes into the water, and it comes as a complete surprise. We could hear nothing of how it came to part company with the rest of Jimmy, but we can hear the splash it makes perfectly. Then there comes a muffled crunching sound and a subdued but clear splash as the severed arm drifts through the frame from top to bottom. We never really know exactly what happened above the surface (although I have my own theory), but then, neither does Oskar. His eyes stay closed the whole time.

Among people who have watched this film, even those who do not wind up being rabid fans of it will comment on how amazing and memorable the pool scene is. Due to the astute audio design, almost all of the action in this scene takes place in your ears and in your imagination and not on the screen.

The scenes where Eli attacks are when the sound design really comes to the fore. Although Oskar is only present in one of these scenes, the film’s use of sounds in the scenes that precede it lay the foundation for putting the audience in Oskar’s place when he does finally witness Eli in action. Tomas’ approach to the attack scenes its to not show the audience too much, letting us create our own images in our imagination. To guide our imagination along gruesome lines, Tomas and Per used an array of sounds that sound feral, animalistic, and borderline unnatural all at the same time. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Filter, Per mentions that Eli’s feeding sounds are a mixture of sounds (all processed and altered) from a frog, a deer, a camel, and a dog (or at least that’s what I can glean from the Google translation of the article). I’m not sure I can pick out which sound comes from which animal, but Per also mentions that some of the sounds were made by Elif Ceylan, slurping up a melon. This sound I can definitely recognize.

I have put together a montage of clips of Eli’s attacks. The sounds in this montage are a bit louder than in the previous clips, so if you have turned your volume way up, you may want to turn it back down for this. First we are shown the attack on Jocke, and we can see – at a distance – exactly what sort of things accompany these sounds. Then for the attack on Virginia, Eli pounces on her and they both disappear from site behind the top of the steps. After the shot changes and we are shown Lacke coming up the steps, there is a pan that only slowly brings Eli and Virginia into the frame, but because of the sounds, we already know what we are going to see. Then when Eli noms Lacke, we see her land on his back, but then we are shown nothing else of the attack. However, Tomas has already taught us what sort of images accompany the by-now-familiar sounds of Eli nomming. Between those sounds and the identifiable sounds of Lacke flailing against the bathtub, we can draw a pretty clear picture in our imaginations of exactly what is going on out of sight in the bathroom. We can hear what Oskar is hearing, and we can see what Oskar is seeing even though the film doesn’t show it to us.

Another place where Tomas used an L cut was near the end of the scenes out on the ice. While it doesn’t pertain at all to telling the story from Oskar’s point of view, it was still an interesting use of audio in the film. A chain saw is used to cut Jocke’s corpse from the ice. However, in the shot of the chainsaw actually cutting the ice (from a viewpoint within the ice), I think that an average viewer may not immediately recognize what they are seeing. I think that for this reason Tomas used an L cut to bridge from the previous shot to the shot of the chainsaw.

In the previous shot, we see Mr. Avila with the two young girls who have found something. He looks over, recognizes what he sees, and begins to hustle the girls in the opposite direction. As he is doing so, we hear the delicate closing strains of Oscar Strikes Back, and then out of nowhere the sound of a chainsaw starting up comes in. It seems so out of place that immediately gets your attention, and also you can immediately recognize what is making that sound. Nothing else sounds like that. It causes the audience to wonder what anybody could possibly be doing with a chainsaw at such a time and place. Then the shot switches to the chainsaw cutting the ice. Having already heard and recognized the sound, the audience is now anticipating seeing a chainsaw. Although the image may not be readily recognizable as a chainsaw cutting ice, Tomas has already tipped us off about what we will be seeing. In doing so, he managed to avoid having to explain any further the subsequent shot of the crane carrying the block of ice with Jocke’s body in it. With the L cut and that seven second long shot of the chainsaw in the ice, Tomas has told the entire story of the discovery of Jocke’s body. I thought this was a very clever and efficient method of storytelling using sound.

Finally, I wanted to make a comment about the basement scene. I think that viewers who don’t speak Swedish have likely missed out on a brilliant choice made by Tomas. In this scene, the song that plays on the tape player is called Försonade, which it was written and performed by Agnetha Fältskog (before she became a founding member of the pop group ABBA). I became curious about it and I sought out an English translation of the lyrics. I was struck by how perfectly the lyrics fit with what is going on in the basement scene – as well as with its aftermath. I put together a clip of the scene where the song is played and I added English subtitles for the lyrics. Once again, if you have turned your volume up to hear the subtleties of the previous clips, I suggest that you may want to turn it down for this clip.

I have been struck by how characters of Oskar and Eli changed, or more specifically didn’t change over the course of the film.

At the beginning we see each of them expressing a desire to change their life. Oskar wants to free himself from bullying by murdering his tormentors. He rehearses his knife attack on shadow victims and trees. Despite this fervent desire for most of the movie he is unable to muster the courage to resist the bullies. When the bullies whip him with a switch, we had just seen him walk past the window where the teacher sits inside. All he has to do is shout for help or even just cry out in pain and the teacher will hear him.

Then along comes Eli who encourages Oskar to resist, to defend himself. When we next see Oskar being confronted by the bullies, the planets have aligned in his favor. He has in his hands a weapon – the pole – and the bullies are threatening him with what amounts to a death by hypothermia. In this scene the pole is a surrogate for the knife, since it actually was the tool of a murderer. (In case you missed it, it was the same pole that Håkan used to push Jocke’s body under the ice). Also the bullies are hesitant to act as a pack against Oskar when the adults might see it. So Oskar is armed, presented with a mortal threat, and is faced with a single attacker. Whack! Conny gets it upside da head. As Eli later comments, “Hooray!” Oskar has now had his redemption. Oskar has now come of age.

However the film doesn’t give us such a trite answer. Later we see Lacke standing over a sleeping Eli with a knife to her throat. Oskar is holding an unsheathed knife and Lacke’s back is to him. Indeed, Lacke doesn’t even know that Oskar is there. Possibly Oskar did not see that Lacke held a knife, but he is still unable to bring himself do anything about it. He can only call out when Lacke starts to uncover the window, and when Lacke turns and tosses down his knife, Oskar can only start to back up. Once Eli awakens and is taking care of her own defense, Oskar averts his gaze and pointedly throws down the knife. His redemption has been an illusion. He has not come of age. Afterward he loses interest in his scrapbook of murders. By the time he gets to the pool scene he is not only passive towards the bullies, he is now compliant. He is still the same Oskar that we met at the beginning of the film, only now he has lost his fantasy of murderous redemption.

As we meet Eli in the beginning of the film, we find that she has an adult helper who goes out to kill for her. However he bungles the first task we see him attempt, so that Eli has to go out and hunt for herself. She preys upon Jocke and then sobs after she kills him. Apparently she has wanted to distance herself from the killing that makes her survival possible. As Oskar has wanted to release himself from his miserable life by becoming a killer, so Eli has wanted to release herself from her miserable life by forsaking killing.

However the film shows us that she cannot escape who she is. The next time we see her prey upon someone it is her helper, Håkan. He has failed her for the last time. She goes out of her way to find him at the hospital, and the unavoidable conclusion is that she went there specifically to end his life. When she kills Håkan, perhaps out of mercy, perhaps to protect herself from discovery, she does not seem to display any emotion at all. She recognizes the necessity of the killing, whatever her feelings in the matter.

And the time after that when we see her prey upon someone – Virginia – she seems unable to stop herself after to Oskar unknowingly triggers her blood lust. When Lacke kicks her off of Virginia’s back, instead of sobbing Eli seems dazed and unaware of exactly what has happened. Eli has not managed at all to distance herself from killing. Killing is both a necessity of her life and a necessity of her nature. When she is finally threatened by Lacke, she must not only kill but kill in front of Oskar. Now they both know that they have failed in the change they sought, the change that was each’s hope for an improved existence.

Now we get to the pool scene, where each seems to revel in their unchanged state. Oskar is more the target of bullies than ever. Eli has no Renfield to use to distance herself from her prey. In fact here at the poolside Eli is more of a killer than ever, even a wanton killer. She kills not because it is necessary to her survival. Arguably she doesn’t even need to kill any of the bullies in order to secure Oskar’s survival. She does not even feed on any of her victims. Instead she kills all three of the participating bullies, even going so far as to dismember one. So despite the desire for change that we saw in each character at the beginning of the film, here at the end we see that neither has changed. However, unlike at the beginning of the film neither is miserable. They are happy at the end of the film, and somehow Alfredson has seen to it that we the audience are happy as well.

Is this then the message (or at least a message) of the film? Their misery stems not from their circumstances but from their isolation, their loneliness? Now that they each have a companion, whatever that companion’s misery, happiness for each is still possible?

The final scene at the pool has been the topic of much discussion. Many people have put forth scenarios of what happened above the water, but none of them really ever seemed to fit what we are shown on the screen. I felt that a good explanation should fit with the positions where all the characters were before it all started, what we can see in the water, and where all the bodies ended up afterward. Also, the timing of the events that we do see from under the water should also be taken into account. It wasn’t until I started wondering what Eli was thinking from moment to moment during this scene (as part of a little fiction project) that things finally started to make to sense to me.

At about the time that Eli shows up, Oskar is in the pool and the bullies are arrayed along the pool’s edge, roughly like this:

Now when Eli crashes in, it is reasonable to presume that she would first go after Jimmy, since he is the one ostensibly holding Oskar’s head under the water. So the first thing that happens is that perhaps Jimmy gets his neck broken. Whatever Eli did to him it was apparently fast and instantly lethal, since the arm that he had in the water didn’t even seem to move.

This wouldn’t take Eli very long at all. It literally should take Eli only one or two seconds at most to accomplish this once she is within arm’s reach of Jimmy. Then with just a step or two she can do the same to Conny. Presumably she recognized Conny by the big bandage on the side of his head. Conny also would take only a second or two to have his neck and/or back broken. From the aftermath that film shows us, it looks like either or both could have befallen Conny.

For longest time I couldn’t figure out why we should be seeeing Martin’s foot passing in front of the camera from right to left. When things were starting, Martin was already on Jimmy’s left. Why would Eli take Martin over to the right, only to bring him back to the left dragging his foot through the water? How did he get over to Jimmy’s right? My spouse finally pointed out something that in retrospect seems obvious: Martin bolted for the door. When things started happening, Martin must have headed for the exit. Unfortunately for him, to get to the door he had to go by both Jimmy and Conny (or whatever was left of them) and also he would have had to get past Eli. And as we know, he didn’t get past Eli. I believe that once Eli had spent those few seconds dealing with Conny she would have had plenty of time to grab Martin as he went by. She may have recognized Martin from her previous visit to the pool, but any case she would have known to grab him since he had been standing there beside Jimmy.

So Eli grabs Martin and takes him for a little ride. Presumably during the ride Eli is doing something to convince Martin to be still, because his feet stop kicking before they leave the water.

Now, at this point I believe that Eli is surprised that Oskar has not come up from under the water. I suppose she believes that Jimmy is still holding him down. So now she comes back to Jimmy and off comes his head. She has even less use for Jimmy’s head than Jimmy does at this point, so she tosses it into the pool (and fortuitously it lands within the frame 😉 ).

Eli waits a second but Oskar does not come up. Now off comes the arm. Eli waits another second or two and still Oskar does not come up. Now she reaches down and pulls him to the surface.

Smiles all around.

(Well, maybe not for Andreas.)

Discuss this article in the forum.

I learned how to replace the subtitle track on my US Let The Right One In DVD by following this tutorial. However that tutorial is about performing this task on any DVD, and to get it right for my DVD it required a little bit of trial and error. I thought people might appreciate a tutorial specifically for the US Let The Right One In DVD. Hopefully with this tutorial available people will go ahead and buy whichever version of the DVD they can find without waiting to find the one with the theatrical subtitles.

The first step is to get yourself a US Let The Right One In DVD. The second step is to download the following programs and the srt subtitle file (all freeware):

• Let.the.Right.One.In.srt
• PCGDemux
• SubtitleCreator
• Muxman Demo version 0.16.6
• VobBlanker 2.1.3.0

The next step is to create a few folders on your hard disk. These folders will be used to store things at various stages in the process. The following are the folders you will need and the approximate amount of disk space they will eventually require:

If you want to save some space you can skip making the Original folder, which will reduce the free space requirement to 13.77GB. This will also make some processing steps take longer because reading things from the DVD is slower than reading them from your hard disk. The tutorial assumes that you will not create this folder. However if you do choose to create the Original folder, your next step would be to copy the contents of the VIDEO_TS folder at the top level of the DVD file structure to your Original folder. When following the tutorial, whenever it talks about finding a file on the DVD, you will instead find it in your Original folder.

Unzip and run PCGDemux. When you have launched PCGDemux the first thing to do is to click on the “Browse” button in the input IFO field and navigate to the drive containing the DVD.

You want to select the VTS_02_0.IFO in the VIDEO_TS folder at the top level of the DVD file structure.

In the “Output Folder” section click on “Browse’ and select the Demuxed folder that you just created. In the “Mode” section select “by PGC”. In the “PGC Selection” section under “Domain” select “Titles”. If you have selected the right IFO file the window should display “PGC # 01 -> 01:54:29.26”. In the “Options” section make sure that only the following boxes are checked:

• Demux video stream
• Demux all audio streams
• Demux all subpic streams
• Create CellTimes.txt

Now click on “Process!” and let it crank for a bit while you go grab yourself a beverage or surf the web. When you come back, you should find the following in your Demuxed folder:

If you are feeling cautious then rename the file “Subpictures_20.sup” to something like “Subpictures_20.sup.old”. Otherwise you can just delete it.

Next install and run SubtitleCreator. Go to the File menu and select “Open text subtitles” and choose the Let.the.Right.One.In.srt file. Go to the File menu and select “Open palette (IFO, …)” and choose the same IFO file from the DVD as you did earlier (the VTS_02_0.IFO in the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD):

Now the window of SubtitleCreator should look like this:

If you don’t happen to be as enamored of Ashley Judd as the program’s author, just remember that the program is free. One other thing to note is that SubtitleCreator doesn’t understand ASCII characters with diacriticals. If you look at subtitle number 5 in the SubtitleCreator window, the last word should be “Ångby” but instead it is a bit garbled. The subtitle will appear on the screen garbled this way as well. As far as I know, the only words in the subtitle track with diacriticals are “Ångby”, “Vällingby”, and “Gösta”. These words will be garbled on screen. Once again, just remember that the program is free. If this really bothers you, you can open the Let.the.Right.One.In.srt file in Notepad or some other text editor and change the diacritical characters to their plain ASCII equivalents before you load the srt file into SubtitleCreator.

Now go to the “Synchronize” menu and select “Convert frame rate”. In the “Convert frame rate” window enter 24 on the “from” side and 24.00337 on the “to” side then click “Apply”. Next go back to the “Synchronize” menu and select “Set time delay (+/-)”. in the “Set Delay (+/-)” window enter “+00:00:01,686” and click on “Apply”. Go to the File menu and select “Save SUP as…”. Navigate to your Demuxed folder and save the SUP file there as “Subpictures_20.sup”. If all goes well you should see the following message:

The next step is to run Muxman. The Muxman window looks like this:

In the “Video” section click on the “…” button and choose “VideoFile.m2v” from your “Demuxed’ folder. In the “Audio” section, first make sure that “Stream:” is set to 1. Click on the Audio section “…” button and choose “AudioFile_80.ac3” from your Demuxed folder. In “Language:” select “Swedish sv”. Click the up arrow in the “Stream:” field so that 2 is selected. Go and choose “AudioFile_81.ac3” from your Demuxed folder and select “Swedish sv” as the language. Repeat these steps for Audio streams 3 & 4 according to the following table. When you have finished all four, scroll back through them and compare the settings to this table:

In the “SubPictures” section do very much the same thing. First make sure that “Stream:” is set to 1, then click on the “…” button and choose “Subpictures_20.sup” from your Demuxed folder. In “Language:” select “English en”. Click on both the “LB” and “Wide” buttons so both are selected. Then repeat these steps for Subpicture streams 2 & 3 using the settings from the following table:

At the bottom in the “Destination folder:” section click on the “…” button and choose your Remuxed folder. Finally, go to the “File” menu and select “Import Chapter”. Choose the “Celltimes.txt” file that should have been created in your Demuxed folder. These were a lot of settings to make, so if you are feeling conservative, go to the “File” menu and select “Save Project” to save these settings off to a file just in case for some reason you need to repeat remuxing. Then click on “Start”.

Once Muxman has completed its work, open the VobBlanker program. In the “Input Video Manager” section click on the “Browse” button and choose the file “VTS_TS.IFO” in the VIDEO_TS folder of the DVD. At this point the VobBlanker window should look something like this:

In the “Output Folder” section click on the “Browse” button and choose your Reauthored folder. In the “TitleSet” section click on the row of the TitleSet “VTS_02_*.VOB”. Down below in the “PGCs in Selected TitleSet” section a row beginning with “01 OneSeq’ should appear. Click on that row to select it. Now click on the “Replace” button and choose the “VTS_01_0.IFO” in your Remuxed folder. Here also it might be a good idea to go to the “File” menu and select “Save Project as” and save these settings to a file in case you need to repeat this step. Now click “PROCESS!!”. VobBlanker will chew on all of this for quite a while – depending upon the speed of your computer. When it is done, the “Process Log” window should look like this:

If everything went well, you should now be able to go to your Reauthored folder and play the movie with a DVD playing program like vlc or GOM Player. To check that the subtitles are correct, go to the time in the film around 00:13:08 and Eli should say that she lives right there in the jungle gym. If the subtitles look good then you are almost done. The contents of your Reauthored folder look like this:

The final step is to burn the contents of the Reauthored folder onto a blank DVD. I do not know of any freeware program for doing this, so you will have to buy Nero, or Toast, or some similar program. When you burn the DVD, you need to create two folders: AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The AUDIO_TS folder should be empty, and the VIDEO_TS folder should end up with the contents of your Reauthored folder. If I am not explaining this well, just go and look at the file structure of your original DVD.

That’s it. Now you have a DVD with the theatrical subtitles. In fact, you can now even customize the subtitles to your liking. If as I do you prefer Magnolia’s translation of Eli’s note to the theatrical translation, all you have to do is make that change in the srt file with Notepad and then repeat this process. Easy.

Introduction

I had always liked the way that JAL’s screenplay played with the idea of portals becoming barriers and barriers becoming portals. In the very first scene we see Oskar reflected in his window, an image of the lonely boy superimposed upon the world beyond the window. The window holds them separate. In this shot we see that the window, which should be a portal to the world, instead acts as a barrier. Soon after we see Oskar putting his hand against the window, reaching out for the world that he can see but not touch.

Juxtaposed to this, the screenplay also turns a barrier into a portal. The wall of Oskar’s room, intended by its builders to be a barrier to keep the world out, instead becomes a portal. It becomes the only channel that this lonely boy has out of his isolation. He reaches through the wall to contact his new sort-of-friend who has moved in next door.

I thought this theme of reversing the roles between the wall and the window was interesting, so I sat down to watch the film yet again (as if I needed an excuse) to look specifically at how this theme was played out. What I found instead was a much more interesting theme. The wall and the window could not play their roles alone – it was the hands that gave them their new meanings. I noticed hands are frequently given prominent positions on the screen. I came to believe that this visual theme was used to symbolize human contact. As we know from the film, human contact is not always a good thing.

Now that I could see how the window stopped Oskar’s hand from touching the world, I watched further to see how else this could be a story told by hands.

Oskar & Eli

Second Meeting

It is in the scene of Oskar and Eli’s second meeting on the jungle gym where the film really introduces the visual theme of the hands telling a parallel story. Eli is hungry. She wants to nom Oskar, but also she is interested in him and doesn’t want to hurt him. When she first shows up behind Oskar, she is undecided about what she will do. When she becomes interested in the puzzle, Oskar holds it out and offers it to her. At this Eli pulls back. She does not want to have human contact with Oskar, but this is what he is offering her.

However she relents and takes the Rubik’s Cube from Oskar’s hand and the film makes a point of showing us this token of human contact passing between them.

In fact as the cube is handed back and forth between them in this scene the film makes a point of showing this contact back and forth, from hand to hand…

Finally to close out the scene Oskar leaves. Oskar is now out of danger. He has perhaps made it through this encounter with Eli simply because he offered her that human contact. After he leaves, the film gives us a clue to this.

In the next shot, instead of showing us Eli’s pained, hungry face, the film instead first shows us her hands. Her hands are gripping tightly the Rubik’s Cube, the token of her human contact with Oskar. The film is showing us that although it has cost her, Eli has held on to her humanity by not feeding upon Oskar.

After his second meeting with Eli, the film shows us that Oskar is not just interested in Eli, but he is desperately interested in Eli. Once again we get an image of Oskar with his hand on a barrier, but this time it is not the barrier between him and the world outside his window. Now it is the barrier between him and Eli. The film goes so far as to obscure Oskar’s face with his hand, and to intentionally pull focus from his face to his hand. The film does not want us to miss the story now being told by Oskar’s hand: That Oskar’s main interest is no longer contact with the world outside of his window. Oskar is now interested in contact with his new acquaintance.

When Oskar heads out the next morning, before he exits his building the film once more uses the image of his hand on glass to remind us of the barrier of loneliness that isolates him from the world. This time however the barrier does not stop him. He opens the door and goes out to find that the Rubik’s Cube has been left on the jungle gym. The cube has been solved, signaling to Oskar and to us that Eli has not just immediately cast it aside, but she has spent time pondering it and in fact has appreciated it. Eli has accepted this offer of contact from Oskar. The film shows us Oskar’s hand holding the completed cube not just that once, but again as Oskar is in school. By showing us the image of Oskar’s hand on the door and then having him open the door and pass through it, the film is using this parallel story told by hands to let us know that Oskar has broken out of his isolation. His loneliness is at least now not absolute.

Third Meeting

By the time of their third meeting, Oskar and Eli are ready to find out about one another a little bit. When Oskar discovers that Eli does not get birthday presents, he offers her his sympathy, once again in the form of the Rubik’s Cube. The film makes a point of showing his hand extended with the cube, but Eli’s hand does not enter the frame.

Eli refuses the cube. This is not the contact that she wants. She doesn’t want Oskar’s sympathy or pity. Instead the conversation turns explicitly to the cube itself and Oskar marvels at her ability to solve it. When Oskar mixes up the cube and once again extends his hand to Eli, this time the film shows us their hands exchanging the cube.

Now Eli takes the cube without hesitation. This is the contact she wants. This is about her interests (in puzzles) and her abilities. This is not about Oskar’s pity for her situation. This is about Oskar’s interest in her. It is on this basis that she accepts contact with Oskar.

Fourth Meeting

At Oskar and Eli’s fourth meeting, the film has absolutely no qualms about presenting the visual theme of hands.

As the scene opens, literally Oskar’s hand is conversing with Eli’s hand as he explains the Morse code to her. The first thing the film shows us is not a shot of their faces, but instead a shot of their hands.

Next the film shows us Oskar’s hand passing the Morse code key to Eli’s hand. Now all of the pieces are in place to turn the wall of Oskar’s room into a portal, a channel to contact with Eli. Now their hands have become not just a symbol of contact but also of communication.

Then comes first moment of real, physical contact. Eli is exhorting Oskar to fight back against the bullies and she offers to help him. As she does this, she touches Oskar’s hand and again we see another image of just their hands.

This time it is Oskar’s turn to pull back. This is not the contact that he wants. He also does not want pity, and even less than that does he want to feel like he needs a girl to stick up for him. Oskar pulls his hand away and gets up and walks out of the frame. After Oskar has left the frame, we are left with a picture Eli sitting by herself on the jungle gym, and centered in the frame is her empty hand.

However, Oskar was not rejecting Eli altogether, he was just rejecting her offer of help. Just as Eli had in their earlier meeting, Oskar was rejecting the contact born of pity. He is still interested in her. Oskar makes this clear by urging her to follow him.

Now that Oskar has spent some time with Eli and has given her the Morse code key, the barrier has been transformed into a portal for contact. We see an image of Oskar’s hand on the wall, once again the hand obscuring his face and the wall – even though it out of focus – takes up almost two thirds of the frame. And now instead of being stopped by the barrier of the wall we see the hand reaching through the wall and touching Eli, via the Morse code. Oskar is Morsing a mundane, albeit sweet message to Eli: “SOV GOTT”, which is Swedish for “SWEET DREAMS”. However it does not really matter what the message is. The barrier that consumes over the half the screen has become a portal.

The Candy Scene

By the time of the candy scene Oskar and Eli’s relationship has progressed quite a bit. Now Eli is willing to do things to please Oskar that she would not otherwise be inclined to do. She accepts Oskar’s offer of candy, and then rejects it in the most literal fashion. Oskar hugs Eli, and the camera shows us a view of Oskar’s face and Eli’s back, and then it pans down to shows us Oskar’s hands encircling Eli. Here the tale told by Oskar’s hands has become much more straightforward. Oskar is displaying real caring for Eli and a certain amount of increased intimacy. He has seen that she is willing to do things to please him even though there is a real cost for her.

The Bed Scene

In the latter half of the bed scene, we see Eli’s hand re-enact the conversation that she has just had with Oskar. After Oskar has fallen asleep, the film shows us a shot of Eli touching Oskar’s shoulder with her fingertips. The film made a point of focusing on her hand while leaving her face out of focus.

This hesitant touching seems to be mirroring Eli’s earlier hesitancy about accepting a change in the status of her relationship with Oskar to that of boyfriend and, umm… girlfriend. Then, as she examines the idea, she becomes more amenable to it.

Eli’s hand portrays this by slowing sliding down Oskar’s arm to his hand. The shot now widens to keep Eli’s face in the frame at one side and Oskar’s hand in the frame at the other. Eli’s face is now in focus, and we can still see traces of Håkan’s blood on it. In this one shot we see Eli’s hand making the journey that Eli herself is making: from lonely vampire to human contact.

Finally Eli’s hand reaches Oskar’s and she intertwines her fingers with his. They are together.

At the end of the scene the camera leaves us with an image of Eli caressing Oskar’s hand with her thumb as their fingers are intertwined. The symbolism is so obvious that is barely recognizable as symbolism.

Oskar At The Pool

In the scene at the pool, we are presented with a shot of Eli outside the Bad standing at the window. She is watching Martin talking to Oskar when he is in the pool. Once again there is an image of a hand on a barrier. It could almost seem that although she is together with Oskar, the film is trying to tell us that she feels separated from him when he is off in his regular life.

However, when Eli pulls her hand away, we can see fuzzily through the window that her hand had been covering Oskar. This is rather symbolic and is a nice little bit of foreshadowing. While Martin is trying to interact with Oskar, Eli’s hand is on Oskar. The barrier that is being symbolized here is the barrier (of death) that Eli later puts between Oskar and the bullies.

The Basement Scene

In the basement scene Oskar’s hand now takes center stage. However, it does not get the extended close-up treatment that hands have elsewhere in the film, except where it is necessary to show us the blood dripping from it. I did not get the sense that the basement scene was continuing the visual theme of hands symbolizing contact and barriers. Although Oskar cutting his hand is symbolic to Oskar, it does not seem to be visually symbolic of any sort of contact or lack of contact. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It is in fact part of a different theme; the theme of the knife, but that is an entirely different topic.

Eli’s Glass Door

In the director’s commentary, Tomas Alfredson has this to say during this scene:

“Your body language also expresses your attraction to someone, you start mimicking their movements. So that’s also an underlying thought in this scene.”

I think he actually went a little bit further with the visual theme of hands and barriers. As Oskar and Eli talk through the door, Eli puts up her hand on the glass.

When Oskar matches the movement with his own, Eli then moves her hand, and Oskar’s hand follows. Then Eli puts her other hand on the glass and Oskar mimics this movement as well. It is as though Eli is testing whether Oskar really wants to be in contact with her, while at the same time pleading with Oskar to want that contact. She puts her hand up to the glass barrier, inquiring whether Oskar wants to get through the barrier just as she does. The film so strongly wants to emphasize this that it actually obscures Eli’s face with her hand. However the subtle the visual theme of hands and barriers has been before, the film does not intend to allow us to ignore it here.

While Oskar and Eli are discussing her being a vampire, their hands are having an entirely different conversation. Eli’s hand is saying, “Do you really want to be with me?” and Oskar’s hand is saying, “Yes, I really want to be with you.”

This is the conversation that convinces Eli to open the door and let Oskar in. If you just listen to the dialog of this scene, you could be puzzled as to why Eli opened the door. It is the non-verbal dialog of the hands that makes us understand Eli’s decision to let the right one in. The poignancy of the two conversations, and the fact that they are both presented to us simultaneously, makes this an extremely compelling scene. By the laying the groundwork for this communication of the hands earlier, the film is able to use it to deliver an emotional hammer blow in this scene.

The visual theme of Oskar and Eli’s hands reached its culmination in the scene of the egg. It was here that I really felt rewarded for examining this theme. I watched as Eli’s hand pointed to the top of the egg, and then Oskar’s hand enter and touch the egg, causing it to unravel into a shower of pieces. After an uncountable number of viewings of this film I finally realized what the egg symbolized: the egg was Eli. By making contact – real human contact – with Eli, he has unraveled the mystery of her. By making contact with Eli he has pierced the mystery of what she is. Just as by touching the egg Oskar has caused its outer puzzle to fall away revealing the golden yolk inside, Oskar has touched Eli causing her outer shell of protective isolation to fall away.

Oskar now knows that she is a vampire, and through this realization he begins to understand the implications of her existence. The very next thing that Oskar notices is the collection of rings on the table, next to the pieces that formerly hid the center of the egg puzzle. There next to his hand Oskar finds the concrete evidence of the price of Eli’s survival. Oskar’s hand has finally brought him to a clear understanding of Eli.

As the scene progresses, it becomes clear that Oskar is uncomfortable with some of the things he has learned about Eli. Eli offers to help him by giving him money and in fact hands him some cash. The film does not show us Oskar’s hand taking the cash from Eli’s hand. Instead it shows Oskar’s hand placing the cash on the stove top. Oskar is rejecting this gift of money. He is having problems accepting the implications of Eli’s existence. He does not want to play a role in that aspect of Eli’s life.

As he confronts Eli, he advances and she retreats until she has crossed through the doorway. When he asks her where she got the money, her answer is an obvious falsehood. At that point she stops and the film shows us that she has hands on the door jam on either side of the door. Now there is a barrier coming between Oskar and Eli and once again the film is showing us an image of hands on a barrier.

Eli steps aside and lets Oskar pass and as he leaves the frame we are left with an image of Eli’s face, and behind her we see her hand still on the door jam. The film is pointing out with Eli’s hand that this barrier has popped up between them. Oskar’s discomfort with her being a vampire and perhaps also the lack of trust she shows by lying to him about the money has put yet another barrier between them.

You Have To Invite Me In

The final act in the story being told by Oskar’s and Eli’s hands is played out at Oskar’s apartment door. Having let Oskar in, Eli now needs to have his acceptance, so she knocks on his door in search of it. Oskar is still feeling uncomfortable with her being a vampire. Perhaps he is also irritated that she was not honest with him when he asked where she had gotten the money. When she tells him that he must invite her in order for to be able to enter, suddenly Oskar has a little feeling of power. He begins a thoughtlessly cruel game of the type that twelve years old play with each other all of the time, taunting Eli to come in without his explicit invitation.

This is Oskar himself putting up a barrier between himself and Eli. The film shows us a literal picture of him doing so when pantomimes pressing his hand against an invisible barrier in his apartment doorway. Eli breaks down this barrier with an act of trust. She enters the apartment anyway, trusting that Oskar will not force her to pay the full price for entering unbidden. Eli shatters this last barrier of Oskar’s. And so between the two of them this tale told by their hands has finally played itself out.

Virginia

Virginia is not destined to fair well in this film. Her purpose in the plot is to serve as a trigger to action for Lacke and also to provide a contrast versus Eli about how she deals with being a vampire. This being the case, her prospects were grim from the outset.

The fate that awaits Virginia is nicely foreshadowed in the scene where Virginia enters the Chinese restaurant and joins her friends. As she approaches the door, she pauses at the window and taps on the glass to her friends. In light of all of the symbolism that surrounds images of hands in this film, it is interesting that the film presents us here with an image of Virginia with her hand on the window. It is a small hint that something unpleasant is to come for Virginia.

After Virginia is attacked by Eli, the film moves to show us the effects of her transformation into a vampire. And the vehicle that it uses first to show us these effects is her hand – the same hand that knocked on the window. We see a close-up of her hand as the sun creeps though a gap in her blinds and shines upon the back of her finger. We see the finger char and smolder from just this small exposure to sunlight. This image both sets up and foreshadows Virginia’s ultimate fate.

Then later when Virginia is in the hospital, we see a shot of Lacke’s hand fingering Virginia’s wrist restraint. Here we see in the frame Virginia’s hand (the one that had been placed on the window) separated from Lacke’s hand by the restraint. There is indeed now a barrier between Virginia and Lacke, and in the fact the barrier separates Virginia from the rest of humanity. She is now a vampire. Immediately after this shot we learn that Virginia realizes at least part of what has befallen her, when she says to Lacke,

That kid… She must have infected me somehow.
I don’t want to live.

The restraint on Virginia’s wrist is symbolizing that she has now been barred from her old human life. She realizes that her humanity is being taken from her. This shot also shows that Lacke is pondering this new barrier as well.

Now when the orderly unlocks Virginia’s she has an opportunity to make a choice. Now she uses the hand that knocked the on the window, the hand that was burned by the sun, to reach out for a final human contact. The film shows her reaching out and grasping a hold of her humanity. Unlike Eli, she has decided that she cannot live without it. Although the film has shown us that Eli very much desires human contact, for Virginia it is a necessity. She has chosen to keep a tight grip on her human life even though it will consume her.

As Virginia meets her horrible fate we see her hand waving about, engulfed in flames. Having her hand be free was a natural result of the plot up to this point, so it is unlikely that this shot was specifically intended to put an exclamation point at the end of the story told by Virginia’s hand. However it provides such a nice end cap the symbolism of her hand that I just could not ignore it.

Lacke

Lacke too takes part in symbolic use of hands, although with him the symbolism seems to be much less complex and evocative. It has already been mentioned how is hand toying with Virginia’s wrist restraint symbolized his contemplating the barrier that Virginia’s vampirism placed between him and her. Symbolically he was touching Eli, who had put the barrier of death between he and Jocke, and then between he and Virginia.

When the crowd of, umm… locals was looking around site where Gösta saw Eli kill Jocke, they discover fresh blood underneath the snow. The film presents us with a shot of Lacke’s hand covered with blood. This is his last contact with his friend Jocke. It is also his first contact with Eli. Further, it is not the last time we will see Lacke’s hand covered with blood. This shot foreshadows Lacke’s fate in the film.

Later when the… locals are in Gösta ‘s apartment, Lacke is urging Gösta to go to the police with what he has seen. Lacke wants someone to look into the apparent death of his friend. Lacke uses his hands to describe how close he and Jocke were. Here perhaps the film is also telling us how close Lacke is to sharing in Jocke’s fate.

When Lacke finally meets up with Eli, he also meets up with his ultimate fate. The hand that had symbolically touched Eli in Jocke’s blood has now touched the actual Eli. We once again see his same hand, once again bloody, only this time it is covered with his own blood. Now his fate is as close to his friend Jocke’s as his hands were to each other in the scene in Gösta’s apartment.

Håkan

Although we don’t literally see Håkan’s hand on a window, the film still finds a way to weave him into a theme of hands and barriers.

As Håkan and Eli move into their apartment, we see a shot of Håkan from outside their apartment window. Instead of having Håkan’s hand on the window, instead the film shows us an image of someone else’s hand in the window – a hand in a rather foreboding pose. In this shot we see Håkan constructing a barrier. It is behind this barrier where he seeks to protect Eli and preserve his life with her.

However, Eli will not remain behind Håkan’s barrier. She seeks contact with Oskar and goes out into the courtyard to be with him. After Oskar and Eli’s fourth meeting, where Oskar gives Eli the Morse code key, they run off together. We are shown that Håkan has been watching them from behind his barrier. While Eli has escaped his barrier, he has not.

As Håkan is preparing for his last ill-fated foray to procure blood for Eli, the film shows us Eli entering the scene. As she does so, the film gives us an image of her hand on yet another window. The film seems to be telling us that the barrier that Håkan was erecting earlier is now a barrier between he and Eli.

Although Eli has entered the scene, she does not actually enter the kitchen where Håkan is. Instead she stops just at the threshold. She has not passed the barrier between she and Håkan.

However Håkan asks her to promise not to see Oskar that night. Eli then enters the kitchen and touches his face, but as she does so her face betrays no emotion at all.

Although this touch has great meaning for Håkan, it seems to have little or no meaning for Eli. Håkan has asked her to come back within the barrier he intends to keep between the two of them and the rest of the world. Eli gives her assent with a brief nod, but it is clear this barrier will hold her only as long as she allows it to.

As the final act in the theme of barriers regarding Håkan, Eli visits him at the hospital. The film reminds us one final time of the barrier between he and Eli with a shot of Eli with her hand on the window. Indeed, that is the purpose of her visit: to put the barrier of death between them.

The Bullies

We are first introduced to the bullies through one of their hands, or more specifically through Martin’s tapping finger.

In the scene where the policeman visits the classroom the film shows us Martin’s hand at the edge of frame. One finger is tapping ominously. The film makes sure that we notice it by having Oskar notice it. This is the first hint that the film gives us that all may not be right with Oskar’s world.

The tale of Oskar and the bullies is a tale told just by their hands, but by their hands upon him. Conny torments Oskar by pushing his nose to mimic a pig’s nose and then by flicking it with his finger. As he does so, the film shows us Conny’s hand in preference to showing us Conny’s face. It would be easy enough to block this scene out to show Conny’s face on one side, Oskar’s face on the other and Conny’s hand in the middle. Instead the film tells us that Conny the character is not important. By obscuring his face with his hand, the film is letting us know that it doesn’t matter who the bully is. This is Oskar’s world putting unkind hands on him.

When the bullies accost Oskar after school, once again the film would rather show us a hand rather than a face. Martin and Andreas sneak up behind Oskar and Martin grabs him from behind. The film gives us a shot of Oskar with Martin’s hand on his throat. Martin’s face however is hidden behind Oskar, although it would have been easy enough to let us see it. What we see once again is a disembodied hand mistreating Oskar.

Although the first scene with Oskar at the pool was already regarding the theme of Oskar & Eli’s hands, it was in this scene where that theme crossed paths with the theme of the bully’s hand. The scene in fact opens with a shot of Martin’s hands in a contemplative pose (if there can be such a thing). The shot then widens to show a similar look on his face. He then goes and engages – or at least attempts to engage – Oskar in a friendly conversation. The film shows us the bully’s hands first to remind us that he is a bully. However much he attempts to feign friendship with Oskar, these were the hands that were on Oskar’s throat.

And finally come the unkindest hands of all. By whacking Conny, Oskar has gotten rid of Conny as a threat, but it seems that Oskar’s world has unending supply of bullies each more cruel than the last. This pair of hands does not intend to just torment Oskar. This pair intends to maim or drown him. The film describes Jimmy’s interactions with Oskar almost entirely with shots of his hands.

As the action approaches its climax we are presented with an image of Jimmy’s hand on Oskar’s head with his fist grasping Oskar’s hair, preparing to push him under the surface. This one image symbolizes what Oskar’s world had been. Through the bullies’ tormenting and the adult’s lack of interest, Oskar’s world had its hand on his head and it was pushing him under. Oskar was drowning in a sea of cruelty and indifference.

Soon however, as carnage above the surface of the pool ends, we see that Jimmy’s arm has been severed. Its grasp on Oskar’s head has been released and drifts downward out of the bottom of the frame. By letting Oskar in, Eli has severed his world’s hostile grip on him just has she has severed Jimmy’s arm. While some viewers have criticized this shot for being a gratuitous bit of gore and also for not making sense in the kinematics of the attack that was taking place out of view, the symbolism of this shot is crucial as the dénouement to the visual theme of the bullies’ hands.

Finally we see that not only has Eli stopped the world from holding Oskar under the surface, she is actually uplifting him. The film shows her hand reaching downward from above to raise Oskar to the surface of the pool. She is not only saving him from his previous world, but she is removing him from it entirely.

When Let The Right One In saw it’s DVD release in America, people began to notice that the English subtitles were different from those in the theatrical release of the film. This change in subtitles was covered extensively in an article at the Icons of Fright website. An Icons of Fright reader had an email exchange with Magnolia Pictures (the distribution company that handled the American DVD release) and he received the following response:

Yes the bloggers are having a field day on this one. Normally they like to pick on the English Dub tracks, but in this case it’s the subtitles. Obviously online tend to get rowdy and bandwagon mentality without knowing all the details. The current subtitle track is not altering the context of the film at all, in fact it’s a more literal translation than any prior version of subtitles. It’s not a defective or faulty subtitle file. Just more literal and larger in size for the small screen. Both English and Spanish subtitle files were produced for this dvd release. Frankly it’s not all that uncommon to have the subs vary from prior releases, typically go unnoticed as subs are purely a translation of film dialogue. This wouldn’t have been a blip had it not been for one particular horror blog doing a side by side and claiming that they are wrong. They are not. We are not doing a recall or anything of that nature, again, these are not defective. Title came out two weeks ago and general public don’t notice and don’t care – bloggers are well known for jumping on something, making an issue of it and moving on. We have decided that based on the feedback that we will be making a running change, so that going forward (once inventories deplete), we will be making that subtitle version available. Options in set up will be; English Subtitles / English (theatrical) Subtitles / Spanish Subtitles

Having viewed the movie with both the Magnolia subtitles and with the original theatrical release subtitles, I’m not sure that I agree with Magnolia’s contention that it does not “alter the context[sic] of the film”. However, I’ll let you judge for yourself.

I can atest that Magnolia have been true to their word: I myself have found their re-released DVD with the theatrical English subtitles. The only way to tell the the re-release from the original is to look at the lower left corner of the back of the DVD case. In the section about subtitles the re-released DVD will say “(Theatrical)”:

The following are the two subtitle tracks side by side. I have added some annotations highlighting the differences that I think are the most significant, or more importantly that alter the viewer’s understanding of the film: