When I am With You

[intrige]

Edit: Pesky spell-checker keeps changing your name to "intrigue"!

That's ok haha, I am kinda used to people just writing Intrigue. But most just write Trige

I will have to read though it again then

[dongregg]

Dear a_c_l,

Your questions and observations are so good that my response will almost be a story in itself.

Part of why I wrote the story is my need to find a cogent thread that would allow Eli and Oskar's relationship to develop so quickly and so deeply. It went from "We can't be friends" and "Go home!" in the first two meetings to "Do I smell better?" in the third meeting. By the third meeting, Eli was already all in. Others feel the need to account for the relationship, too, which I think is part of the reason that a few forum members have played with the idea that Eli is a manipulative, coldly calculating monster.

But I take Eli at face value (at least, her face as I see it). First, why is she in the courtyard talking to the boy in the first place if they can't be friends? That she doesn't know why doesn't mean that there isn't a reason. Dear Eli, get ready to be blindsided by something you've never experienced before--love at first sight.

An alternate title to my little story could have been "The Awakening." And I think being friends with Oskar changes Eli more than it changes Oskar, or at least more quickly. It awakens dormant feelings in her. For example, it allows Eli for the first time to think of Jocke as a kind man, not just as a warm Reuben sub. (Shown in the film as Eli grieving after she kills him.) It also allows her to even consider thinking of a reassuring answer to Håkan's "What else am I good for?" and to stroke his cheek. I don't think it would have occurred to her to care at all about Håkan's feelings before Oskar. And yes, her almost imperceptible nod registered on me.

By the way, I think that Håkan's jealously doesn't need to imply the dark undertones of the book to be credible. If you believe that "We never grow up; we just learn how to behave in public," then it is enough that Eli wants to play with Oskar and doesn't want to have anything to do with poor Håkan. One cannot imagine for a moment that Håkan only wants to use Eli—that would make a mockery of the extreme measures he takes to throw off the police when he is trapped. Anyway, I like film Håkan. He's a murderer and a pedophile, but he takes care of our Eli.

I assume that Eli and Oskar are developmentally at the same place—12. Oskar's feelings would normally change as he ages and interacts with family, teachers, and peers; but Eli's feelings are stuck at 12. Without Oskar, they could never develop because of the isolation and arrested physical growth imposed by her vampirism. Of course, we can see Oskar as immature for his age because of being an only child, having no friends, and so forth, but not stuck.

Eli doesn't need to know that she is going through these changes. She doesn't know that she is already crazy in love with Oskar. She just knows she has a playmate (the first time since God knows how long). Before Oskar, Håkan reads his books and she plays with her puzzles. They're even on different sleep cycles. Eli is bored beyond telling.

Yes, I think Eli was aware that she enjoyed Oskar's embrace behind the kiosk as it was happening, but I think it both puzzled and threatened her. What she has found in Oskar was priceless to her—a playmate. She has the joy of having someone to play with, the delight of romping around with him. Why change that?

I'm not sure that Oskar had a clue, either. He has picked up a few social cues and is acting on what he imagines his role in a boy-girl relationship is supposed to be. His feelings for Eli are there, but what is a boy supposed to do with them? Buy candy? Go steady? Eli doesn't have these social cues and doesn't understand why something as wonderful as having a playmate needs to change in any way. Oh boy, is she in for some surprises as her own feelings become more about their relationship and less about just goofing around together.

I said Eli is all in by the third encounter. This is a vampire story—shouldn't the agon be how to not get a stake driven through your heart? No—the agon is how can I keep Oskar near me. I am totally gross and weird, and all my anxiety is about that, not about doing something rash and having to move, or getting found out and killed.

You asked about two things that beg for an understanding—why she didn't accept the gift of the Rubik's cube and why did she choose to enter uninvited when Oskar wouldn't say she could come in.

I think your Rubik's cube question may be unanswerable, but here's my take on the context it happened in. When Oskar asks her how she did it, she just says, dismissively, that she twisted it and then immediately moves close to Oskar and asks if she smells better. It's Oskar who has her attention, not the cube. Once his questions get her in over her head, she's glad to turn back to the Rubik's cube and show Oskar how she solved it. Why did she turn down the gift? I don't know, but I know it happened between "I don't care about the Rubik's cube right now" and, "Hey, let me show you how I did it." I thought it might be because, having solved, it no longer held an interest for her, but that can't be. It's probably as complex as the other puzzles she plays with over and over.

What do you think it means?

As for the scene where Eli bleeds, I think she couldn't even consider stomping her little foot and going off in a huff. Yes, a casual playmate might, and then make up the next day, but Oskar has utterly rejected her. Eli is a murderer and a thief. She doesn't have anything else to offer him, and she can't bear to be without him. She can only go forward and take her chances. She needs mercy (sympathy and acceptance), not justice. It's why I said if Eli were a girl, she could have just burst into tears. Probably would have worked just as well as the hemorrhaging. Well, it has always worked on me. There's room for, "I will die for you to show how much I care," but I don't think she could have gotten there yet. I think she is desperate and boxed in. Her heart has written a check that only Oskar can cash.

Okay, what else? What were Eli's emotions when she killed Håkan? I think she was numb. Too much had happened too fast. She has lost Håkan and may have lost Oskar. She knows Håkan meant to die, so she is competently tying up a loose end, as he did for her so often. She may have found during the two nights without him and Oskar that her loneliness had come back with a vengeance and that she missed having Håkan around. I mainly think, though, that she is in such deep despair that she doesn't feel anything. I see that a lot when people are grieving a loss. Too many competing emotions lead to an overload, and so they just feel numb at first.

The way I think the story unfolded, she definitely flew to Oskar out of loneliness, but I don't think she thought of it that way. Again, I think her brain was on empty and she just automatically flew to the side of her dear Oskar. Bear in mind, she's clearly still in "we're just a couple of playmates" mode until Oskar shocks her with wanting to go steady. That implies she hasn't figured much out yet, but it doesn't imply that she isn't hopelessly in love with him. The light bulbs on the Christmas tree aren't turning on real quick for either of them, and not at the same rate, either.

By the way, I used authorial sleight of hand there (as did TA). How did Eli know that Oskar would be at home? Of course, she didn't really have to know. It could have just been a long shot. But cinema magic doesn't require an explanation. It's magic and we love it when it works.

Saved this for last:

[Eli throws herself to the floor and begins lapping up the blood.]

"Do you think she was trying to save Oskar by doing this?"

Yes I do. The sequence is bracketed by two looks—when Eli looks at Oskar before she throws herself to the floor to lap up the blood, and after she hears the voices of others coming up to the landing where Lacke and Virginia are.

First bracket: She looks at Oskar's hand and is transfixed for a moment by the blood. She looks at Oskar. Her stomach begins to rumble ominously. The blood has begun to drip onto the floor. She looks at it. She looks right at Oskar's face, looks down at the floor again, sort of swallows, and then throws herself down. It is a decision to drink from the floor rather than to kill Oskar.

Second bracket: She looks up from where Lacke has kicked her. Her eyes have a dazed look and she is blinking, like just waking up. She turns her head and looks at Lacke. She turns her head back the other way to look where the voices are coming from. She looks forward again. Her eyes widen as though she has just become aware of the overall situation. She bolts.

My read: From the time she saw Oskar's blood until she came to her senses and bolted, she was in a feral state of mind, a kind of trance like a big cat goes into when it springs into action. Tunnel vision. Watch films of lions and cheetahs hunting-- once they fix on a prey, they will bypass all other potential prey.

I think Team Eli pretty much gets this. There are a number of scenes in the film where members have felt that Oskar was in danger from Eli. I agree that there are such places, and this is the chief one.

Does this mean there are two Elis, human Eli and evil vampire? Or does it just show the behavior of a top predator? If Eli changes her hunting behavior, she's always in danger of the prey turning on her, as wildebeests and buffalos regularly do when attacked by lions. Unlike romanticized vampires, the best techniques would include stealth, speed, and a sure strike, not a bunch of seductive nonsense, or hypnosis, or other gimmicks.

But what do you think?

One more note: I thought about a lot of these things (not all) as I was writing, but in the story, I struggled throughout to keep a balance between brevity and full exposition. Obviously, I didn't even try here!

Thank you again for creating the thread and for the close and knowledgeable reading.

Donald

[dongregg]

An interesting view of Eli's possible thoughts from the film version of this story

As dawn approaches, Eli thinks about something Håkan said when they moved last time—To flee is life; to stay, death.

Interesting to think that Håkan might have introduced Eli to Shakespeare...

Yes, this jumped out at me too. It seems obvious now, what with Håkan teaching Swedish in a high school, and loving literature, the classics.

.

Yep. Thanks. If you buy this retelling, it smoothes out a lot of otherwise abrupt or jarring transitions. I feel as though Eli has said, "Bli mig lite," and has done a Vulcan mind meld with me. That's hyperbole, of course, but focusing on only the film and the Swedish language has led me into a lot of interesting places.

I like the Håkan/Shakespeare angle, too. It looks as though Eli doesn't read much. Or write--her printed notes are of a style that I see on 18th century Swedish antiques and on 18th and 19th century hand-written records, although I don't know how near to our time the style persisted.

Anyway, glad you found my remix of this classic film to be interesting.

[PeteMork]

Anyway, glad you found my remix of this great film to be interesting.

I liked it too.
I thought you did a good job putting yourself in Eli’s head. I especially liked the following:

The boy interrupts her concentration when he says she smells funny. She thinks—Yeah? Well you smell like dinner.

This next one is an interpretation I like, because it shows what hundreds of years of isolation has done to her:

Only when the boy challenges her as to why she said she's “about twelve” does Eli realize how unprepared she is for the conversation, how few questions she would be able to answer without dissembling or without freaking the boy out. Although she spent the previous night wanting to see him and busying herself to appear normal, she did not think about how seeing him might actually play out.

Eli has, in all her years, never had much of a chance to think about a relationship of this kind. You show that perfectly with this one:

Now Eli feels even more confused. Does Oskar really like me as a friend, or is he just attracted to me because he thinks I'm a girl? She asks Oskar if he would still like her if she were not a girl. His response is vague but reassuring. He wants to know why she asked, but she feels too at sea to put any kind of answer together.

And I like this next one because…never mind. I just like it:

Anyway, she wonders, How is a friendship with Oskar supposed to look? I guess it would look like this, she thinks, and she shrugs her skinny little shoulders.

I especially like this next one because you have described perfectly, IMO, the look on Lina’s face when Oskar leaves.

Each thing Eli did to keep Oskar near just pushed him further away. Eli's heart is breaking. She aches. She waits for the dawn and the sweet oblivion that sleep will bring.

This one made me smile:

She hasn't practiced girl twirls a lot.

There are a lot more, but ACL has already covered a lot of them. A particularly good one of course was:

If Eli were a girl, she would probably have enough sense to burst into tears.

But I wonder if Eli, at least as we know her, would have used this as a tool to get her way. Or would her crying have been genuine? Only Eli (as a girl) will ever know.

[EEA]

I liked how Eli's insecurities are captured since she hasn't interact with someone her age in a long time. And with Oskar she becomes cautious since she doesn't want to lose his friendship. I also liked that Eli gives a reason as to why she wants others to see her as a girl. And as to what is the reason why Eli chooses not to cry in front of Oskar.
And that Hakan could have been the one that introduces her to Shakespeare.
Makes me want to see the movie again. Nice observations.

[dongregg]

Dear PeteMork,

You have listed just about every place that made me laugh or cry as I was writing the story. I know from your other postings that you and I are of one mind when it comes to Eli. Remember writing:

Four years after the last post on this topic, but I have to get it out. Eli has on her bright, freshly scrubbed face, and her clothing is fresher than when Oskar last saw her. Eli slides closer to Oskar on the jungle gym and asks, "Luktar jag bättre?" The hopeful and expectant look on her child face is heart breaking. It is parallel to the hopeful and expectant look when she rings Oscar's doorbell and says, "Tja."

Yes! You've given two examples that, after all these years, still affect me--almost as much as the first time I saw the film.

And just after your post, Jim Nolt wrote:

A moment from the film that most often comes to my mind is that moment just after Oskar tells Eli she smells funny. Eli stops turning the Rubik's Cube... raises her eyebrows... and utters a small hmmm. So beautifully done.

It was my puzzling over Jim's post for a lot of months that led me to "Yeah, well you smell like dinner." I thought it was better than "Well lah-di-dah" and other possible thoughts I've had. As Jim says, it is so beautifully done. I react to it every time I see a screen shot of it or when I get to that point when I'm watching the film. However, in my gut, I know it works just fine without a need for knowing what Eli is thinking.

Yes, I really did think of you guys as I was writing the story. And I thought of what you wrote elsewhere about Eli's face when Oskar left her apartment.

Many members of the forum have enriched my understanding of the film. Some have challenged my ideas, and some have supported them. It ain't over. I follow the forum every day and have not come close to reading everything. And rereading, as is so often the case.

So thanks for being a great companion on this journey. I feel like I have so many new friends who want to play with me. I know how Oskar and Eli feel!

Donald

[dongregg]

Makes me want to see the movie again. Nice observations.

I've got Trige wanting to read the story again and you wanting to see the movie again. Cue William Tell Overture. My work here is done!

[a_contemplative_life]

Others feel the need to account for the relationship, too, which I think is part of the reason that a few forum members have played with the idea that Eli is a manipulative, coldly calculating monster.

I never really seriously bought into that theory.

But I take Eli at face value (at least, her face as I see it). First, why is she in the courtyard talking to the boy in the first place if they can't be friends? That she doesn't know why doesn't mean that there isn't a reason. Dear Eli, get ready to be blindsided by something you've never experienced before--love at first sight.

An alternate title to my little story could have been "The Awakening."

I tend to see Eli's desire for companionship with Oskar as being driven not merely by "falling in love," but also because Oskar awakens a deep-seated need within Eli to be human again, and not only human, but a human child again. If true, it is a desire that is unique to Eli, arising as it would out of her being turned into a vampire at an early age.

No—the agon is how can I keep Oskar near me. I am totally gross and weird, and all my anxiety is about that, not about doing something rash and having to move, or getting found out and killed.

Yes. Eli wants Oskar to know and accept her human element--the part of her that she identifies are her true self and tries to protect through thick and thin. And getting Oskar to see that side of her but not be driven away by the, shall we say, less than pleasant aspects of her existence, is a tall order.

I think your Rubik's cube question may be unanswerable, but here's my take on the context it happened in. When Oskar asks her how she did it, she just says, dismissively, that she twisted it and then immediately moves close to Oskar and asks if she smells better. It's Oskar who has her attention, not the cube. Once his questions get her in over her head, she's glad to turn back to the Rubik's cube and show Oskar how she solved it. Why did she turn down the gift? I don't know, but I know it happened between "I don't care about the Rubik's cube right now" and, "Hey, let me show you how I did it." I thought it might be because, having solved, it no longer held an interest for her, but that can't be. It's probably as complex as the other puzzles she plays with over and over.

What do you think it means?

I interpret Eli's turn-down of the gift to arise from her perception that Oskar made the offer because he was motivated by pity. And although Eli appreciates his kindness toward her, I don't think she wants to be pitied. It may also be that Eli grasped that as long as Oskar kept the Cube, her knowledge of how to solve it and his desire for that knowledge would establish a connection between the two of them that she could build upon. Whereas, if she accepted the Cube from him, he would no longer own it and might therefore lose interest.

As for the scene where Eli bleeds, I think she couldn't even consider stomping her little foot and going off in a huff. Yes, a casual playmate might, and then make up the next day, but Oskar has utterly rejected her. Eli is a murderer and a thief. She doesn't have anything else to offer him, and she can't bear to be without him. She can only go forward and take her chances. She needs mercy (sympathy and acceptance), not justice. It's why I said if Eli were a girl, she could have just burst into tears. Probably would have worked just as well as the hemorrhaging. Well, it has always worked on me. There's room for, "I will die for you to show how much I care," but I don't think she could have gotten there yet. I think she is desperate and boxed in. Her heart has written a check that only Oskar can cash.

That is a great way to put it. I see a sacrificial element in Eli's choice. He wants to know what happens, and she decides that she is going to show him. And it won't be pretty, and it's going to be obviously painful. And her act of suffering will show Oskar just how much she is willing to endure to be his friend, even when, out of human weakness, he is misbehaving and abusing their friendship.

What were Eli's emotions when she killed Håkan? I think she was numb. Too much had happened too fast. She has lost Håkan and may have lost Oskar. She knows Håkan meant to die, so she is competently tying up a loose end, as he did for her so often. She may have found during the two nights without him and Oskar that her loneliness had come back with a vengeance and that she missed having Håkan around. I mainly think, though, that she is in such deep despair that she doesn't feel anything. I see that a lot when people are grieving a loss. Too many competing emotions lead to an overload, and so they just feel numb at first.

Håkan's demise probably reminded Eli of how things ended for other adult guardians/helpers she had in the past. It's a very bleak and discouraging moment. Her killing of Håkan bespeaks of failure--of an inability to escape from herself and what she is. She probably would feel emotionally numb, and she looks that way for the few seconds that we see her face after Håkan's fall.

[Eli throws herself to the floor and begins lapping up the blood.]

"Do you think she was trying to save Oskar by doing this?"

Yes I do. The sequence is bracketed by two looks—when Eli looks at Oskar before she throws herself to the floor to lap up the blood, and after she hears the voices of others coming up to the landing where Lacke and Virginia are.

First bracket: She looks at Oskar's hand and is transfixed for a moment by the blood. She looks at Oskar. Her stomach begins to rumble ominously. The blood has begun to drip onto the floor. She looks at it. She looks right at Oskar's face, looks down at the floor again, sort of swallows, and then throws herself down. It is a decision to drink from the floor rather than to kill Oskar.

Second bracket: She looks up from where Lacke has kicked her. Her eyes have a dazed look and she is blinking, like just waking up. She turns her head and looks at Lacke. She turns her head back the other way to look where the voices are coming from. She looks forward again. Her eyes widen as though she has just become aware of the overall situation. She bolts.

My read: From the time she saw Oskar's blood until she came to her senses and bolted, she was in a feral state of mind, a kind of trance like a big cat goes into when it springs into action. Tunnel vision. Watch films of lions and cheetahs hunting-- once they fix on a prey, they will bypass all other potential prey.

I think Team Eli pretty much gets this. There are a number of scenes in the film where members have felt that Oskar was in danger from Eli. I agree that there are such places, and this is the chief one.

Does this mean there are two Elis, human Eli and evil vampire? Or does it just show the behavior of a top predator? If Eli changes her hunting behavior, she's always in danger of the prey turning on her, as wildebeests and buffalos regularly do when attacked by lions. Unlike romanticized vampires, the best techniques would include stealth, speed, and a sure strike, not a bunch of seductive nonsense, or hypnosis, or other gimmicks.

But what do you think?

My thoughts are influenced by the novel, and especially JAL's description of Virginia's inner thoughts when she goes to Gosta's apartment and encounters him in the doorway. Her conscious mind suddenly is no longer in the driver's seat. It has been replaced by the vampiric element, which is now controlling her actions. So I interpret Eli's decision to go after the puddle as a last-ditch attempt to direct the vampiric element's focus away from Oskar and to the floor, and thereby avoid harming him.

Thank you again for creating the thread and for the close and knowledgeable reading.

Donald

Always a pleasure

P.S. - so much of what you attributed to Eli reminded me of my first FF, Reflections at Dawn. If you haven't read it and are interested in understanding why I say that, I would urge you to give it a try. I think you'll see what I mean...

[dongregg]

P.S. - so much of what you attributed to Eli reminded me of my first FF, Reflections at Dawn. If you haven't read it and are interested in understanding why I say that, I would urge you to give it a try. I think you'll see what I mean...

Thanks, a_c_l. I look forward to reading it.

[Jameron]

Thanks, a_c_l. I look forward to reading it.

Make sure you're on your own when you read it, unless you don't mind people seeing a grown man cry

.