We, The Infected

http://www.let-the-right-one-in.com/fan ... es-vampire

This is also an internal running monologue in (one of) my interpretations of Eli, the same interpretation as the one I tried to convey at the candy store. This is the scene where Eli interposes a door between herself and Oskar first time we see them together again after she'd fled the basement clubhouse after Oskar's abortive attempt at bloodbonding with her.

I like your interpretion of the hands on the glass door. Eli's reaching out for Oskar. Have not seen it just like this before, but you've convinced me. It's just beautiful.

drakkar wrote:I like your interpretion of the hands on the glass door. Eli's reaching out for Oskar. Have not seen it just like this before, but you've convinced me. It's just beautiful.

It would have been much easier for me to say what I see going on here in narrative form, rather than an internal monologue. Here, I'm trying to explore what might have been going through my head if I'd been Eli. In other topics around this very forum, I refer to the hands on the glass as "the little hand dance".

Narrative or monologue, Eli is showing acute emotional vulnerability; she can be hurt. Rather badly, actually, and she's keenly aware of it. The little dance with the hands wouldn't be a verbal thing in either of the kids' heads, it'd be a subconscious expression of an awareness of that vulnerablility on both kids' parts. It's an unspoken, unthought way of asking "How much can I trust you?"

sauvin wrote:It would have been much easier for me to say what I see going on here in narrative form, rather than an internal monologue. Here, I'm trying to explore what might have been going through my head if I'd been Eli. In other topics around this very forum, I refer to the hands on the glass as "the little hand dance".

II see the difference. I've been observing what's going on between Eli and Oskar, I got that Eli was very vulnerable - having given up and was back to square one (her clothing, Virgina's blood still under her nails). So I was interpreting the "hand dance" as an unconscious desperate reaching out for each other. You make it conscious (at least partly) on Eli's behalf and I like that take. After all it makes Eli more assertive, responding actively to Oskar's return, which suits the character better.

This nicely captured some of the pathos of Eli's character. I especially enjoyed:

How can it be that Oskar can make me feel so good and so bad, sometimes at the same time? How is it he can make me feel so safe and so scared at the same time?

* * *

Now, I'm going to lose Oskar. Not just a friend. Oskar. I'm going to lose being with somebody who makes me feel things I don't remember ever feeling before. I'm losing the friend who can make me laugh. I'm going to lose being able to forget about being me for hours and hours and hours at a time.
I'm going to lose me.

* * *
. . . Oskar... can't you smile, not even a little? Can't you find some way to let me know it's going to be OK, that you don't hate me? Can't you even stand to look at me anymore?
Oskar... just... look at me? Please?

I would love to see what you think was going through her mind at the moment she decided to kiss Oskar after Lacke's death.

Eli wrote:Why have I never grown up? I've never figured that out. Why am I still little, as old as I am? Why is there so much I don't understand that grownups seem to? Don't people always say that experience comes with age? Why isn't it also true that age comes with experience?

To me, this statment perfectly sums up why Eli is such a sympathetic and intensely beautiful character in my mind. She has had to live through experiences that most adults could not survive without incurring serious mental problems, at the same time she is an eternal child. However, even as a child, these things have given her a quiet wisdom and directness, less the overpowering bitterness and anger that an adult ego would use to defend itself with -- emotions a pre-pubescent child cannot possibly avail herself of. In other words, she is STILL an Innocent. A defenseless Innocent, whose very life experiences are at constant odds with a normally sweet, child-like view of the world. To me, her untenable situation empasizes the difference between what we wish the world were like, and what it actually is, seen through adult eyes. How can you not love someone who is cursed with this crystal-clear vision of reality? Which is why I can't bear the thought of her dying in any epilogue.

To me, this statment perfectly sums up why Eli is such a sympathetic and intensely beautiful character in my mind. She has had to live through experiences that most adults could not survive without incurring serious mental problems, at the same time she is an eternal child. However, even as a child, these things have given her a quiet wisdom and directness, less the overpowering bitterness and anger that an adult ego would use to defend itself with -- emotions a pre-pubescent child cannot possibly avail herself of. In other words, she is STILL an Innocent. A defenseless Innocent, whose very life experiences are at constant odds with a normally sweet, child-like view of the world. To me, her untenable situation empasizes the difference between what we wish the world were like, and what it actually is, seen through adult eyes. How can you not love someone who is cursed with this crystal-clear vision of reality? Which is why I can't bear the thought of her dying in any epilogue.

I like it, really nicely said

PeteMork wrote:In other words, she is STILL an Innocent. A defenseless Innocent, whose very life experiences are at constant odds with a normally sweet, child-like view of the world. To me, her untenable situation empasizes the difference between what we wish the world were like, and what it actually is, seen through adult eyes. How can you not love someone who is cursed with this crystal-clear vision of reality? Which is why I can't bear the thought of her dying in any epilogue.

This is another well formulated reason I cannot condemn her. If Eli was an adult I would have to.
Eli is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever encountered.

PeteMork wrote:How can you not love someone who is cursed with this crystal-clear vision of reality? Which is why I can't bear the thought of her dying in any epilogue.

I cannot imagine any happy end to an epilogue involving Eli's death. If that happens, JAL must - God forbid - have changed his mind.

a_contemplative_life wrote:This nicely captured some of the pathos of Eli's character. I especially enjoyed:

How can it be that Oskar can make me feel so good and so bad, sometimes at the same time? How is it he can make me feel so safe and so scared at the same time?

* * *

Now, I'm going to lose Oskar. Not just a friend. Oskar. I'm going to lose being with somebody who makes me feel things I don't remember ever feeling before. I'm losing the friend who can make me laugh. I'm going to lose being able to forget about being me for hours and hours and hours at a time.
I'm going to lose me.

* * *
. . . Oskar... can't you smile, not even a little? Can't you find some way to let me know it's going to be OK, that you don't hate me? Can't you even stand to look at me anymore?
Oskar... just... look at me? Please?

I would love to see what you think was going through her mind at the moment she decided to kiss Oskar after Lacke's death.

Contemplative, the POV I perceive in your writings may have had something of a corrupting influence. This is not a bad thing! - this whole forum has given me perspectives on things I'd have never even glimpsed if I'd never thought to look for help on the IMDB boards in which *somebody* invited me HERE. Frankly, if I'd been stuck with the IMDB boards, I'd still be muddling with much more primitive and harebrained appreciation.

If you like it so damn much, I'm pleased. Seriously.

As for what might have been going on in Eli's mind in the interpretation I've been sharing, now that you request it, I'll give it a go. It's either that, or start considering sharing a far darker interpretation the movie makes possible (even if unlikely).

I think I've mentioned elsewhere I almost never write fiction. I've even admitted to having the kind of background that almost mitigates intractably against writing fiction; imagination in matters such as these is alien. These monologues I've been writing are simply my own attempt at understanding what it is I find so compelling about this movie, and about Eli, observing a very simple missive: always write what you know, never what you don't.

This is the game "Speak for X", for which X has primarily been Eli so far. One of the major parameters for this game is to avoid injection (or is "projection" the word I really want?) as much as possible, but given the nature of the subject and the context within we find it, some degree of this forbidden element is unavoidable.

Another parameter to which I've been trying to bind is to avoid cloying fawning romanticised worship, and I've been trying not to assume anybody knows who the characters are or has any particular feelings for them. Granted, the knowledge that Eli is a vampire is assumed, but apart from this, have I succeeded?

As for The Kiss, well... that one may be just a tad more complex. Eli's move away from a twilit emotionally half dead existence as as well advanced as we see in the movie, and blood in this scene is a final challenge to Oskar's tolerance for difference she has to pose before trusting him completely. As usual, I'll have to pick my way through it one step at a time and just see where it goes.

What do you think - should I finish the confrontation scene, the half that occurs AFTER her having apparently showered, or would you rather I tackle Lacke's murder? I'm finding I have to write these things as time and inclination permit; the fact that I have something bouncing around in my head doesn't necessarily mean I'll have the ability to push it into a word processor. Something within has to whisper "Bon ben, mon vieux, c'est l'heure... "

sauvin wrote:What do you think - should I finish the confrontation scene, the half that occurs AFTER her having apparently showered, or would you rather I tackle Lacke's murder? I'm finding I have to write these things as time and inclination permit; the fact that I have something bouncing around in my head doesn't necessarily mean I'll have the ability to push it into a word processor. Something within has to whisper "Bon ben, mon vieux, c'est l'heure... "

Sorry if I'm interrupting with the obvious, but Eli's thoughts in the scene of Lacke's murder will pretty much determine her whereabouts until the pool scene, and her incentives for returning. A topic much debated. I'm really looking forward to that.