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?