Eli at the Hospital Window

[gkmoberg1]

[...]And the smile he gave to Eli humming in the taxi pretty much gives that all away.

Yes, but movie Håkan is not necessarily a pedophile. In Per Ragnar's view he was just a very lonely man.

Håkan could have been any number of things in addition to being a pedophile or instead of being a pedophile. When I first saw the movie I thought for a while that he was another vampire. The scene at the restaurant and then his biting the apple in the kitchen scene soon dispelled me of that possibility. That he might be a pedophile had crossed my mind. But so too had thoughts that he carried some form of narcissistic personality disorder and was attached to Eli so as to see what he could gain by it. I wondered if he was a form of sociopath. There are many monsters out there (and I mean people when I say monsters) who for their own interests would enjoy latching onto an Eli. Pedophilia can easily be left out of the equation.

[sauvin]

First few times I watched the movie, before locating a copy of the novel to read, I didn't pay much attention to Hakan. The guy was creepy, no two ways about it, for the way he looked at Eli, for his apparent readiness to kill for her and for the organised, planned and seemingly practised way he set about it.

Even if I hadn't read the novel, if I'd thought about Hakan at all, I would probably have gone down the same road Lacenaire did. If we assume that Eli is more than a single natural lifetime old, even if we're not given periods of something resembling hibernation, we're still stuck with a vampire who's vulnerable to daylight. This means she's vulnerable when she's not conscious. From what we're given in the novel, we don't know why she needs a minder, but we have to assume she does, and it puts her in a position of requiring he be implicitly trustworthy.

Doubting very much she'd be much inclined to trust her very life to the milk of human kindness and suchlike, I'd think she'd want to be in control of her circumstances in the most absolute terms possible, and this means having a very heavy thumb on her minder. I've sorted through a number of possibilities before and found nothing truly satisfactory. As an example, she could play the blackmail game with some severely compromised person, but something like that might wear thin over time as the threat she poses loses credibility or power as the darkness and the misery of life with her begins taking its toll. Folks like drug dealers, gun runners and other assorted antisocial lowlifes, I'd think, would be too unpredictable.

If she can't "persuade" people to help her with some kind of threat, then, I think she'd have to recruit people over whom she has some kind of natural hold, and the only thing I could think of would be a paedophile, or possibly some other kind of lunatic for whom Eli's monstrosity holds a particular power. Somebody with strongly held and contorted religious views (for example) would pose problems of predictability rather similar to those of drug dealers. With paedophiles, the attraction is implicit and potentially blinding as the case with novel Hakan turns out to be.

[Lacenaire]

This thread made me aware of something I had not thought about earlier: the antagonism that some seem to feel towards Hakan for “being” a “pedophile” rather than for what he does. I have to confess that initially I also felt in this way (when I saw the film) but I think that was because I assumed that Hakan was a rather different kind of pedophile from the one described in the novel. My initial assumption was that was killing boys because of the thrill this gave him and he had joined up with Eli partly for that reason. This initial idea was later somewhat undermined by the film (he did not seem to be enjoying himself much in his role as a serial killer) though the fact that he was murdering people for his apparent obsession with Eli precluded my feeling any sympathy for him.

Unlike some here I don’t believe at all that a grown-up Oskar or any other “normal” grown-up human could remain obsessed with a child-vampire, which is one reason why the “cyclic” theory always seemed ridiculously far-fetched. Of course I am aware that there are people here who have made the claim that living the life of a voluntary slave (a murderous one at that) to a child is something they might consider. Well, all I can say, that I hope they don’t really know themselves very well and/or have allowed their imagination to carry them too far.

As for Hakan of the book: to me his pedophilia, before he meets Eli, seems a rather benign one - which makes him only the object of pity rather than hatred or anything like that. He has many unpleasant qualities, particularly self-pity, and of course his obsession with children is unhealthy but until he meets Eli he is harmless. Only after that he become thoroughly disgusting and detestable. Pedophiles often claim that they are really “victims” (a good example is Humbert Humbert from “Lolita”) but actually in Hakan’s case this seems to be true.

[metoo]

Regarding Lacenaire's post above, I'd like to say that I join him in the hopes he express in paragraph two, and I agree to the view of paragraph three.

[a_contemplative_life]

Hakan seems like a person who knows there is beauty in the world and is drawn to it, but knows as well that his urges/desires are not beautiful, despite his efforts to harmonize them. He is therefore a conflicted human being, and it is the fact that he loves beauty, struggles with this conflict, and lived a quiet/benign life before encountering Eli that, in my view, creates the sympathy we feel for him. A couple of passages from the novel...

Reflecting on what had occurred at Ake's apartment:

The others had, one by one, been sucked off by the boy, but when it was Håkan's turn a hard knot formed inside him. The whole situation was too disgusting. The room smelled of arousal, alcohol, and mustiness. . . . Håkan pushed the boy's head aside when he lowered it to Håkan's groin.

In the toilet stall at the library:

He narrowed his eyes, tried to imagine the boy's gestures so they more closely resembled his beloved. It didn't work so well. His beloved was beautiful. This boy, who now bent down and pushed his head toward his groin, was not.

[jetboy]

Unlike some here I don’t believe at all that a grown-up Oskar or any other “normal” grown-up human could remain obsessed with a child-vampire, which is one reason why the “cyclic” theory always seemed ridiculously far-fetched.

Well if Hakan and therefore Oskar were merely "obsessed" with Eli I would understand your perspective but I think the point is that they loved or are in love with her and as wrong as it is for them to kill all those innocent people, they do it so Eli wont die. Its still far fetched I concur but thats why I like it, it makes it fairytale-ish.

As for disliking the pedophelia while condoning the killing, I think thats a cultural thing. Look at all the westerns and police drama's. I would say though that LTROI challenges that thinking in that most of us have more sympathy for Eli than all the victims put together.

[sauvin]

As mentioned before, playing devil's advocate isn't easy, and this unease will show rather glaringly as I tend to decline to deal with paedophilia directly in the following scattered thoughts. I suppose part of my sympathy for Hakan is in myself being a middle-aged man who has begun to decline physically. I do not understand paedophilia, but I do understand obsession.


Hakan’s story on the surface is told simply enough. Discovered as a paedophile at least to the extent that he likes to look at sexualised images of children, dismissed from his teacher’s position, burned out of his house and lucky to have even escaped the blaze in his underwear, he embarked on a program of slow self destruction. When Eli accosted him, as I recall, he’d already drunk his way through his savings and had been reduced to drinking alcoholic swill. A broken man, dying and with no apparent reason to wish otherwise.

It comes to most men somewhere between the ages of thirty and fifty to look in the mirror and see gazing back a man who was a man, no longer an immortal teenager with infinite stamina and dreams of future accomplishment, fame, riches and an endless line of loves to conquer and enjoy; the incipient crow’s feet at corners of the eyes or receding or greying hair announcing anew what he’d always known but hadn’t wanted to think about, that he will someday day perish, that his time may already have grown short before he’d properly had a chance to notice.

Whether or not he’d achieved his fame and fortune or left behind him a long trail of broken hearts - whether or not he’d had his amazing devoted wive and three-point-something children who were already themselves becoming young adults and making a way in the world - a man can always wish for more, and he can be small and selfish enough to ask if what he sees in the mirror is all that he is to become, if what he already has is all he’s ever going to have. This man is sensing that his value in the overall scheme of things has long since begun to decline.

A little known man of modest means who has a devoted wife, a child or two and a few very good friends could answer the image he sees in this mirror by saying “be it ever so humble, how many men truly have life better? What more could an honest and simple man want?” How much more terrible might it be for men like Hakan who have no apparent family, no friends, no house, no job and now no realistic ability to reach for these things? Worse, a man who is a monster and knows he’s a monster of almost the most unacceptable kind?

I personally envy any “normal" man who has already marked his fiftieth birthday who can also honestly say he has never reached this pass. It can be an unbelievably lonely experience, and cold: for many who have reached this pass, it’s the first time in their safe, comfortable lives they’ve felt the icy breath of Death beginning to huff down the backs of their necks.

On the park bench in the moments immediately before and the first few moments after Eli sat next to him, and he’d put his hand on her thigh, Hakan was already dead in every important way except physically.

Next station, Racksta....

His hands were shaking, and he rested them on his knees. He was terribly nervous.

”Is there really no other way?”

”Do you think I would expose you to this if there was another way?"

”No, but...”

”There is no other way.”

There’ve been other oft-quoted passages from the novel illustrating a disjoint series of odd little unscripted pavanes as the two monsters grapple with the normal rules of human interaction, playing at or trying to actually feel emotions they may have forgotten or yearned honestly to feel again. They serve (among other things) to clarify that Eli may well indeed have Hakan wrapped around her little finger, but that her control is far from complete as he becomes unwrapped at the idea of procuring more blood. This isn’t a Hakan being driven by homicidal insanity; he’s a man with principles and sensitivities that have to be pushed aside and held firmly at bay periodically. This trip to Racksta, according to the novel, is his third such sortie, and while one certainly appreciates his determination, it’s abundantly clear his enthusiasm for the task at hand is less than total.

This is a Hakan whose very life had been saved by a child who offered more than a fleeting respite or a few sporadic paroxysms. Restored by her money at least to the semblance of a decent and respectable life in the form of food, shelter, clothing and a demand that he abstain from the bottle that had accelerated his decline and made his despair more profound. If she could make hideous demands on him once having explained just how dire were her own circumstances, and given that she’s probably very close to his personal idea of the perfect partner in bed, it seems reasonable to argue that his feelings for her would stem as much from gratitude - and other things - as from lust.

What’s more is that she does seem to care about him, at least to a degree, and this, too, could have been unique to his experience. Is she lying when she says there is no other way? Maybe, and maybe not, but is she also lying when she suggests she wouldn’t expose him to “this” if there had been another way? Hakan doesn’t seem to think so, and even the shallowest concern for his well-being could serve only to strengthen this formerly drowning man’s clutch at the straw that Eli represented.

He continued to walk at a normal pace. Right leg, left leg. He couldn’t falter now. Terrible things would happen if he failed. The worst imaginable.

Today, at Racksta, he might indeed do a good job, receive praise, and maybe even a caress, but what is this “worst imaginable” possible consequence of failure? It’s not made clear, but later in the novel, Hakan is seen noting that failure would be much less likely to jeopardise Eli’s continued survival, unlike this time. Is it possible that Eli’s death might result if he comes back empty-handed? When this is exactly what does happen, what results is the impulsive and disorganised attack on Jocke and the subsequent ad hoc cleanup effort, clearly indicating that Eli’s urgent need hadn’t been feigned.

One suspects that what Hakan fears isn’t just her demise. Death, after all, is merely an extreme form of abandonment. Maybe he honestly does love her, and maybe he just thinks he does, but without Eli, he’ll go back to being worthless to anybody including himself. If this “worst imaginable” is meant to mean only that she’ll be that much more inclined to disallow sexual intimacy, it’s a weak meaning: the trip to the library shows (if nothing else) that loveless intimacy is easy to find even for a man with his tastes.

No respect for beauty - that was characteristic of today’s society. The work of the great masters were at most employed as ironic references, or in advertising. Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” where you see a pair of jeans in place of the spark.

The whole point of the picture, at least as he saw it, was that these two monumental bodies each came to an end in the two index fingers that almost, but not quite touched. There was a space between them a millimeter or so wide. And in this space: life. The sculptural enormity and richness of detail in this picture was simply a frame, a backdrop, to emphasise the crucial void in its centre. The point of emptiness that contained everything.

But why does this space exist? Is it that this life’s giver is loth to touch the body into which he’s about to impart the spark of life?

This passage has disturbing subtext in that it suggests that the rich mosaic described by the novel as a whole is similar, that paying too much attention to the details serve mostly to draw attention away from the novel’s true essence: a thin void.

Hakan sat on the floor in the narrow corridor and listened to the splashing from the bathroom. His knees were pulled up so his heels touched his buttocks; his chin rested on his knees. Jealousy was a fat, chalk-white snake in his chest. It writhed slowly, as pure as innocence and childishly plain.

Replaceable. He was... replaceable.

Last night he had been lying in his bed with the window cracked. Listened to Eli saying good-bye to that Oskar. Their high voices, laughter. A... lightness he could never achieve. His was the leaden seriousness, the demands, the desire.

He had thought his beloved was like him. he had looked into Eli’s eyes and seen an ancient person’s knowledge and indifference. At first it had frightened him; Samuel Beckett’s eyes in Audry Hepburn’s face. Then it had reassured him.

It was the best of all possible worlds. The young, light body that gave beauty to his life, while at the same time responsibility was lifted from him. He was not the one in charge. And he did not have to feel guilt for his desire; his beloved was older than he. No longer a child. At least he had thought so.

But since all this with Oskar had started something had changed. A... regression. Eli had started to behave more and more like the child her appearance gave her out to be; had started to move her body in a loose and careless way, use childish expressions, words. Wanted to play. Hide the key. A few nights ago they had played Hide the Key. Eli had become angry when Hakan had not showed the necessary enthusiasm for the game, then tried to tickle him to get him to laugh. He had relished Eli’s touch.

It was attractive, naturally. This joy, this... life. But it was also frightening, since it was something so foreign to him. He was both hornier and more scared than he had ever been since meeting her.

Did Hakan maybe resent that he was himself no longer physically a preteen whose staff had yet to experience the dull, wooden ache of desire for the unreachable distaff?

Generally, jealousy is wanting something somebody else has, but this word is also often used to describe the fear and resentment one feels towards another who is or seems to be in a position to take away what he already has and would like to keep.

This “fat, chalk-white snake” in his chest doesn’t necessarily have phallic significance. Hakan isn’t in a position to lose the lover he’s never actually had, although it could be said that young Oskar is very easily in a position to deprive him of what he might otherwise have secured eventually. The older monster is being quite honest in his self-assessment: “His was the leaden seriousness, the demands, the desire”, the humourless and lifeless cipher who can have no hope to offer anything emotionally enhancing to the re-awakening child. He can’t compete with Oskar at this level; he might not be able to compete at any level.

Did the man feel betrayed at discovering that his new life partner’s ancient knowledge and indifference weren’t those of an adult, and did their light, high laughter bring home to him just how fully he had allowed himself to be deceived as to her true nature - how he had worked at deceiving himself? Oskar was bringing out in Eli the very thing he lusted after most but on two occasions (in the novel) previously had refused to touch.

Beyond any dimension of his paedophilia, Hakan’s position itself might be under threat. If by some long stretch of the imagination this young blond interloper might perchance to elope with her, leaving him behind, he’d be back to where he’d been before: a man alone with no purpose in being. What man enjoys the prospect of a slow and tormented demise after having enjoyed a new life, however overcast and twilit it might be? It would have been vastly preferable to have been left to his original course.

And.... he’s not the one in control. Did he ever actually even have control of any sort? Did she? Oft-excerpted conversations are remarkably similar in essence to exchanges that might have taken place between two true preteens, fumbling, awkward and ham-handed power plays. Hakan’s “justification” that circumstances release him from responsibility in various other passages of the novel may itself be a straw man in light of his inability to operate at an intellectual or emotional level beyond that of a preteen in these power plays if he can be frequently stymied and run over by a child.

Insofar as Eli serves as a distorted mirror of himself, Hakan now stands revealed as a 40- or or 50-something man who had himself never progressed emotionally in important ways beyond the still growing young man who is bringing both monsters the truth about themselves. Eli really is a child, and for all his literacy and possible intellect, Hakan isn’t really a man at all. He’s an ineffectual child whose body just happened to age while his mind, like Eli’s, sustained an unnatural stasis.

Through their weeks or months of life together, they must both have realised at some level that theirs was a partnership of equals. Both were monsters, neither having become a monster knowingly or willingly, both were children and both were outcast. Eli had to have realised at some point in the back of her mind that she’d done to Hakan what had been done to her; how much this might have bothered her is a matter for a different discussion. She also had to have realised that whatever had been his true feelings towards her, there had been strong feelings of some kind, and that they weren’t contrary to the interest of her survival.

Had she shown prescience in the moments before deciding to accost him on his park bench, that he’d prove so loyal and so devoted and so remarkably willing (and able) to push aside his “lover not murderer” mentality for her?

Neither love nor necessarily even respect was in the gaze Eli afforded him at the hospital window in the movie; simple recognition of responsibility for his plight would have been enough, but this Eli who claimed she wouldn’t have exposed him to the risks attendant to procuring blood if there’d been another way is the same Eli who’d taken his hand (in the novel) between both her own and said “Hello, my friend”, and then tried to decline draining him because she’d then have to kill him.

[sauvin]

Unlike some here I don’t believe at all that a grown-up Oskar or any other “normal” grown-up human could remain obsessed with a child-vampire, which is one reason why the “cyclic” theory always seemed ridiculously far-fetched.

Well if Hakan and therefore Oskar were merely "obsessed" with Eli I would understand your perspective but I think the point is that they loved or are in love with her and as wrong as it is for them to kill all those innocent people, they do it so Eli wont die. Its still far fetched I concur but thats why I like it, it makes it fairytale-ish.

If that was a jab at my 40something Oskar, thank you. If so, however, what's so "normal" about this possible future Oskar?

As for disliking the pedophelia while condoning the killing, I think thats a cultural thing. Look at all the westerns and police drama's. I would say though that LTROI challenges that thinking in that most of us have more sympathy for Eli than all the victims put together.

How do westerns and police dramas relate to a culture-wide antipathy towards people who are sexually attracted to children?

[Lacenaire]

Unlike some here I don’t believe at all that a grown-up Oskar or any other “normal” grown-up human could remain obsessed with a child-vampire, which is one reason why the “cyclic” theory always seemed ridiculously far-fetched.

Well if Hakan and therefore Oskar were merely "obsessed" with Eli I would understand your perspective but I think the point is that they loved or are in love with her and as wrong as it is for them to kill all those innocent people, they do it so Eli wont die. Its still far fetched I concur but thats why I like it, it makes it fairytale-ish.

The difference between calling something “love” or “obsession” lies primarily in whether the person using these words wants to express approval or disapproval. Not surprisingly when people refer to their own feeling they rarely call it “obsession” (usually when they do so it is a kind of self-deprecating joke). However, when you look at this “from outside”, as a “third party”, you look for reasons and explanations. When I look at Hakan I can see reasons for obsession - essentially deriving from the fact that he is obsessed with boys (in a sexual sense) and Eli is for him just “the ideal” boy. (Of course this applies only to the Hakan from the novel). This to me is a reason for speaking of obsession, not love.

Oskar, on the other hand, has no reasons to be obsessed with Eli - in fact almost everything about her is highly unpleasant to him (including her being a him) and the only positive thing about Eli for Oskar is that she is his only friend in a thoroughly unfriendly world. This to me, justifies talking of love rather than obsession.

However, as I wrote earlier - this is all about the novel. In the case of the film - we known next to nothing about the relationship between Hakan and Eli, except that it is a relationship between a grown up man and a child in which the child exercises what appears to us an extreme and very unnatural dominance - something that to me strongly suggests “obsession”.

In fact, talking of “love” in this sort of context seems always problematic, unless it is “paternal love”. Which is why there have been so many references to “the Father”.

As for disliking the pedophelia while condoning the killing, I think thats a cultural thing. Look at all the westerns and police drama's.

I can’t understand this at all. What is cultural? Do you mean that people think that killing is worse that pedophilia (or maybe the other way round) because they watch westerns and police dramas?

I would say though that LTROI challenges that thinking in that most of us have more sympathy for Eli than all the victims put together.

Firstly, I am not sure what you mean by “us”. I don’t think it is true of most of the people who have watched the film as only a minority of them seem to have a positive reaction to Eli. However, there is of course, some truth in what you say, but in my opinion, it’s merely an example of the way our moral emotions are much more powerfully influenced by specific experiences than by abstract rules. A novelist or a film director can easily use this to create a sympathetic character who breaks all the “moral rules” and a “highly moral” and thoroughly detestable one. So there is nothing special in this respect about LTROI. We, or some of us, sympathize more with Eli than with her victims because Eli and Oskar have been made much more sympathetic, for those of us who identify with some aspects of their personalities or plight. The fact that Eli and Oskar ought to be “the bad guys” makes us feel a little guilty but in many cases not enough to change the overall attitude. But it is very easy to change this by a simple though experiment. Imagine simply another couple of lonely kids, just like Oskar and Eli who have just “found each other”. Imagine that the director made you first identify with them, or sympathize with them the way you sympathize with Eli, and then one of the becomes Eli’s victim. In this sort of way, I am sure one can quickly reverse this “distribution of sympathy”. The reason for that is, I think, that the sympathy for Eli and Oskar isn’t really derived from their circumstances or any facts about them (like Eli being a child vampire) but entirely from the way their personalities are presented. But we know that Eli does not select her victims on the basis of their personal charm or lack of it, so it is quite quite possible that some of her victims are so attractive that we would love them more than we do the little vampire - just that the author and the director have never given them the chance to use their charm on us. Instead they gave us Lacke.

[jetboy]

Just to clarify what I said earlier, I meant that most people have a much lesser problem watching stories dealing with murder than they do pedophelia. Theres an untold amount of movies, television, videogames etc that have people being killed, whereas pedophelia is treated with kid gloves. Killing can be an element of fun in a story as a matter of fact, especially for adolescent boys.