Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

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Jameron
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by Jameron » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:58 pm

a_contemplative_life wrote:Maybe one thing they might have done would have been to add a line of dialogue to make the audience understand how recently their relationship had begun.
This would have saved so many IMDB arguments over the years, and would have quashed any claims that the film is suggesting that Oskar follows Håkan in servitude to Eli.

However, Tomas is a keen "show, not tell" director. There are hints that Håkan is relatively new to killing for Eli, but maybe one has to already know this in order to spot them? IDK.

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"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."

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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by Drakeule » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:22 pm

I think the only way people (especially Americans) could accept Håkon as a pedo would be to add his back story. And i believe TA was really trying to shorten the story as much as possible. I read somewhere that when they approached JAL with the idea of making it into a movie he thought it would have to be two movies. TA showed him what to cut but i would have loved to see the whole story on screen.

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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by ltroifanatic » Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:13 am

Hakan's back story as a movie.That's something JAL and TA could really sink their teeth into.I'm not sure the general public would go to see it but fans of LTROI would.He's one of the most complex characters in the book.
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by a_contemplative_life » Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:33 am

Jameron wrote:
a_contemplative_life wrote:Maybe one thing they might have done would have been to add a line of dialogue to make the audience understand how recently their relationship had begun.
This would have saved so many IMDB arguments over the years, and would have quashed any claims that the film is suggesting that Oskar follows Håkan in servitude to Eli.

However, Tomas is a keen "show, not tell" director. There are hints that Håkan is relatively new to killing for Eli, but maybe one has to already know this in order to spot them? IDK.

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What are the hints?
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by sauvin » Thu Mar 30, 2017 7:33 am

I sometimes click on the "view content advisory" for a movie on the IMDB site, and am dismayed by some of the things that people warn about. Often enough, there'll be long, solid walls of text like "a man and a woman kiss, they hold hands, they kiss, we see the outline of her butt through her dress as she bends over" - an exhaustive itemisation of what could be infractions only of policy in a middle school that absolutely prohibits personal contact or "immodesty". What's almost worse is when a critically acclaimed movie with high user rating advises that it's not suitable for underaged persons because "breats and public hair are visable".

I'm also sometimes depressed by news stories like the recent one about a fifteen year old girl who may have absconded with her school teacher who's in his early 50's. The bits and pieces of the news that I've run across suggest that they'd had a relationship for at least a little while before their disappearance together, but the media are treating it as a straight up kidnapping. It may well yet turn out to be exactly that, but in the absence of enough evidence to support such a conclusion, I find the media's treatment of the matter rather one-sided: Older man? Underaged woman? Yup, he's a predator, no questions asked, and she's a victim no matter what these two people might say when they're eventually brought before a board.

Would Hakan's paedophilia hinder the film? In Europe, I think, TA & JAL could manage it without tilting the movie too far away from its present moral ambiguity, but maybe not without tilting it away from the essential love story. Remember LMI? That few seconds of railroad station photo booth photo strip showing an unchanged Abby and a twelve year old Thomas together pretty firmly cast her as some kind of dark seductress and Owen as Victim Number Umpteen in what's been dubbed "the Thomas cycle". More than one WTI board member has flatly stated that this suggestion alone killed LMI for them, and I don't remember that everybody who said this was American.

With the United States busily trying to stamp out sex in the mass media and trying to make certain Junior doesn't find out about what "that" is for until after he's turned 21 at the same time as busily trying to sell things like Viagra to anybody with a spare dollar or two, I'd definitely say that the northernmost parts of the New World are hopelessly confused. Factor into this confusion an apparently widely held and growing conviction that all men over the age of (oh, say) 16 are possessed of unrestrainable sexual lupinity, I'd definitely speculate that including Hakan's paedophilia would push one of Stephen King's "big red horror buttons" for the American public much harder than it'd be willing to accept. Homosexual paedophilia may well be the worst of the sexual Big Red Buttons between American men, who generally (1) would cheerfully personally murder child molesters and (2) admit that "yeah, I know we're supposed to be tolerant and understanding of men who don't like women, and I agree with that in principle, but, well, see, my boat just doesn't float that way..."
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by Jameron » Thu Mar 30, 2017 7:37 pm

a_contemplative_life wrote:What are the hints?
The hints as I see them are...

His ineptitude. Someone that has been killing and draining people at regular short intervals for decades (or even only a few years) would have learned how not to stand in wait on a public path in full view of possible witnesses. If Håkan had been doing this for a long time without having been caught, or even raising people's suspicions enough to remember his face, he would have had a plan for when he is close to being disturbed mid act, not just ram everything in his bag and run away, but forgetting the one thing he was there for ... the blood.

His obvious fear of Eli when he returns empty handed. If Håkan had been serving Eli for years it would have been obvious to him that Eli wouldn't kill him for this because he must have returned empty handed before, and yet Håkan is terrified in the film and asks for forgiveness. This is a sign that Eli is still somewhat of an unknown to Håkan.

Eli's apparent lack of emotional concern upon hearing of his detainment in the hospital. If Håkan had been serving Eli for a long time there would have been something approaching a symbiotic relationship of mutual dependency. Whereas in the film Eli reacts in a way that suggests that this development is an inconvenience that needs to be resolved. In a similar vein to a sailor learning that a storm is moving from Forties to Fisher and so he has to plot a new course around it.

Eli's lack of apparent closeness to Håkan in almost every interaction they have. The only time any kind of affection is shown is when Eli strokes Håkan's cheek in order to avoid promising not to see Oskar, and he is clearly playing Håkan.

Any long standing co-dependant relationship would generate an emotional landscape, be it affection or resentment, we get none of this, suggesting to me that they are in a relatively new relationship.

.
Last edited by Jameron on Sat Apr 01, 2017 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"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."

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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by dongregg » Thu Mar 30, 2017 8:11 pm

Jammer - Very thorough and convincing. :)
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by PeteMork » Thu Mar 30, 2017 9:36 pm

Jameron wrote:...Any long standing co-dependent relationship would generate an emotional landscape, be it affection or resentment, we get none of this, suggesting to me that they are in relatively new relationship.
I agree with you completely. But there are many folks out there who, justified or not, would interpret Eli's lack of closeness to Hakan as a lack of compassion, due to his [imagined] sociopathic tendencies. They would argue that he would have to be a sociopath to be okay with ensnaring so many helpless children over the centuries and raising them to be mass-murderers--a classic case of a circular argument, IMO. :think:
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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by Jameron » Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:19 pm

PeteMork wrote:
Jameron wrote:...Any long standing co-dependent relationship would generate an emotional landscape, be it affection or resentment, we get none of this, suggesting to me that they are in relatively new relationship.
I agree with you completely. But there are many folks out there who, justified or not, would interpret Eli's lack of closeness to Hakan as a lack of compassion, due to his [imagined] sociopathic tendencies. They would argue that he would have to be a sociopath to be okay with ensnaring so many helpless children over the centuries and raising them to be mass-murderers--a classic case of a circular argument, IMO. :think:
Agreed. Furthermore, if you were to point to times when Eli shows compassion for Oskar, as evidence of his lack of sociopathic tendencies, they will claim that it's all a ploy to entrap Oskar.

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"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."

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Re: Would Hakan's pedophila hinder the film?

Post by dongregg » Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:37 pm

Jameron wrote:Agreed. Furthermore, if you were to point to times when Eli shows compassion for Oskar, as evidence of his lack of sociopathic tendencies, they will claim that it's all a ploy to entrap Oskar.
And they have made such claims, here and on IMDb.

I teach my psychology students to listen with their hearts, not their ears. Good advice, I think, for anyone who watches LTROI.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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