The Impact of Choosing Less Beautiful Leads for LTROI

[sauvin]

This is particularly true of older movies, where the female protagonist tended to be young, blonde and unmarried, and the male lead tended to be a tallish mesomorph with perfectly combed hair. There were no pimples, rashes, scars, tattoos or other visual imperfections. There very often was such a "defect" with the Bad Guy(s), and these defects tended to be echoed in the schools of my time - unfortunate unliked kids with bad acne were invariably called "pizza face", kids with braces on their teeth were called "tinsel teeth", guys with glasses were "four-eyes", natural redheads were "carrot tops" - and on and on and on. The broad, simplistic concept is one of three camps: the good, the bad and the ugly, with an apparently high probability that the ugly can be safely and meaningfully conflated with the bad. Bad guys in movies won't always have scars, tattoos or whatnot, but they will often have eyepatches, limps, scraggly beards, pronounced accents, too many pizzas hanging over the belt buckle or something to make us treat them with misgivings. They're not necessarily "evil", but they're usually not people we'd want to be around.

With their compressed time frames, movies have to (try to) take short-cuts to communicate as much storytelling as possible with maximum efficiency; being a visual medium, they'll use visual clues artificially to convey or underscore something. Oskar is a beautiful young man, that's true, but his appearance is a bit elfin; from this, we get an immediate impression that while there's nothing really wrong with him, he's just a little bit... off in some intangible or ineffable way. Apart from her unwashed hair and scummy clothes, there's nothing outwardly objectionable about Eli at all, since both of these conditions are very easily remedied, and we can dismiss them, but these, too, are clues that there's something just a little... off... about a twelve year old girl with apparently no parents to tell her to bathe, wear presentable clothes and put on a coat before wandering out into a Swedish winter nighttime!

I think we're meant to be cathected to these kids from the very beginning, while simultaneously understanding that they're more or less perfectly innocent victims of awful circumstance. If they'd been less visually appealing, we'd have a harder time doing so because... well, in the case of Jimmy, for example, one of the first comments somebody from one of my childhood schools would have said is that Pizza Face needs to eat less chocolate or fewer potato chips, and use more Oxy-10 or something. The implication is that his outward deviation reflects some defect of character, or some moral or intellectual deficit. Tell the truth: in the opening scenes where Lacke is shown urinating in public, are we scandalised more by the fact that he's flouting convention in such a way, or by his unkempt and disheveled appearance?

[OutsideLookingIn]

Outward appearance doesn't affect my ability to enjoy a film as much as the actor's ability to portray his/her character. Steve Buscemi is one of my favorite actors and is not, by today's standards, a very attractive man. On the other hand we have Megan Fox, who while being very attractive, couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag.

The two child leads in LTROI delivered amazing performances, especially considering neither had much if any experience. Had their performances not been as great I might not have enjoyed this movie as much as I did.

[Nightrider]

A few thoughts...
Kare and Lina never appeared particularly beautiful to me. Attractive...maybe. Cute...yes. Beautiful? Never. I believe it was a conscious decision by Alfredson and Lindquist to create movie renderings of Oskar and Eli different in appearance from their book versions. I truly don't think
that we would be here on this website if two main characters in the film were not easy on the eyes. Apart from that, it was also a case of incredibly fortunate casting. What great luck it was finding two amazing kids like Lina and Kare. It's a perfect choice. Perfect.
I'm sure others will agree with me when I say that I can't imagine anyone else playing roles
of Oskar and Eli. They were right for the film and the fact that they were attractive was a bonus. Do I dare to say that LL and KH were born to play these roles? I think they were. Personally, I wouldn't give the movie a second look if different types were used in the film. There's already
plenty of "average" looking actors in the cast. The two protagonists had to stand out...had to look special...had to have that special glow.
I say, TA and JAL succeeded...and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Vitaly

[J.J.]

I truly don't think
that we would be here on this website if two main characters in the film were not easy on the eyes.

I'm sure others will agree with me when I say that I can't imagine anyone else playing roles
of Oskar and Eli. They were right for the film and the fact that they were attractive was a bonus. Do I dare to say that LL and KH were born to play these roles? I think they were. Personally, I wouldn't give the movie a second look if different types were used in the film.

Totally agree with that. In my opinion the main reason why almost everyone on this site adore Eli is that she is... something else.
Would it have been the same if she wasn't so cute...? I don't think so. Maybe the movie, the story, could have been just as good, but I bet the Fan Art forum would be quite different...

[shaggles]

Can't say I ever really thought about them as "beautiful." Oskar seems much improved over how he is described in the book. On the other hand it would be hard for anyone to live up to the description of Eli that's in the book.

[J.J.]

As Nightrider said, they both are "cute" rather than "beautiful"...

[jetboy]

I dont think I wouldve liked it as much because I wouldve felt like someone wouldve been trying to teach me something, like "you shouldnt be so judgemental". Sauvin brought up a good point about how movies use attractive people almost as a default and so we are all used to that. To change that wouldve made the movie about the audiences shallowness and its not about that IMO, its about how Oskar feels about, or views himself.

And yes, a contemplative life, its also that light/dark, mirror image thing thats going on between them that would be messed up without that Hollywood "default" that I mentioned.

[a_contemplative_life]

[Nightrider]

See, isn't Lina and Kare a much better choice than alternative options below? It would have been a totally different movie.

[lombano]

The film derives part of its power from its beauty, and part of the beauty has to do with the casting of the leads. It's not simply that good-looking kids were cast (as most run-of-the-mill films do), their looks were chosen in much the way a painter might choose models for series of portraits; they were an integral part of the aesthetics. Also, the beauty of many scenes wasn't just for its own sake, it was there to add to certain emotional reactions - Sauvin mentions Oskar's appearance being somewhat otherworldly; his extreme paleness (he's about as light-skinned as you can possibly be without being an albino) certainly contributes to that impression. If other actors had been cast that had been just as competent, but not as good-looking, the film wouldn't have collapsed like a house of cards; it would've still been very good but it would've lost some of its emotional power and its aesthetic appeal.
Having said that, I think the book made the right choice in making Oskar unattractive - different things work in different media, as after all a film is inherently visual and a book is not.
I do not regard myself as attractive.

Welcome, OutsideLookingIn!