Pool scene

For discussion of Tomas Alfredson's Film Låt den rätte komma in
Post Reply
User avatar
sauvin
Moderator
Posts: 3410
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:52 am
Location: A cornfield in heartland USA

Re: Pool scene

Post by sauvin » Mon Nov 02, 2020 7:59 pm

metoo wrote:
Mon Nov 02, 2020 5:23 pm
sauvin wrote:
Sun Nov 01, 2020 7:53 pm
In a really ham-handed effort at fan fiction, I'd postulated that Eli very was fully human (a girl, because I saw the movie before reading the book) except when the beast takes over when it's hungry or scared. Given that she can use that beast's extra-human abilities without being overcome by it (e.g., jumping off the jungle gym with preternatural slowness when the kids first meet), that fiction had Eli herself driving the beast in a fit of blind fury at the pool scene.

It was a powerful image for me, a beast possibly thousands of years old and directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people, invincible, inhumanly powerful and normally fearless, quailing in fear and being driven by the ineffable fury of a twelve year old child the way a slave might exert superhuman effort to comply with the will of a master wielding a particularly nasty whip.
I have had something similar in mind, the difference being that Eli didn't consciously drive the beast, but rather that the beast was aroused by the very strong feelings of fright and anger Eli experienced observing what was happening to Oskar.

Anyway, the result would be the same...
I have the impression that the beast knows hunger, fear and pain (sunlight, you know), and very little else. It's the Dark Side of human nature, boiled down to a thick, sticky goo and what we turn into when WE are mindlessly scared, in great pain or starved half to death. If the beast were simply aroused and acting on its fear or its hunger, how would it know to spare Oskar and the other kid?
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères

User avatar
metoo
Posts: 3678
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 12:36 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Pool scene

Post by metoo » Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:16 am

sauvin wrote:
Mon Nov 02, 2020 7:59 pm
I have the impression that the beast knows hunger, fear and pain (sunlight, you know), and very little else. It's the Dark Side of human nature, boiled down to a thick, sticky goo and what we turn into when WE are mindlessly scared, in great pain or starved half to death. If the beast were simply aroused and acting on its fear or its hunger, how would it know to spare Oskar and the other kid?
The beast would know to save Oskar because of the different feelings human Eli had towards him compared to those he had towards Oskar's enemies. The source of Eli's fear and target of his aggression was the latter, and that's what the beast would sense.

Regarding the fourth kid in the film - he was standing just next to Conny, so why was he saved? I have no idea. Perhaps Eli's fury waned after three kids had been killed and he realised that Oskar needed immediate help? This would work for both of our ideas of the interaction between human and monster.

In the novel, however, the Forsberg brothers and Oskar was at the far end of the pool, while all the other kids had gathered at the dressing room end. This distance might have helped saving them, but the main factor would have been that Eli was focused on helping Oskar out of the water after having dispersed with the immediate threat.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

User avatar
sauvin
Moderator
Posts: 3410
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:52 am
Location: A cornfield in heartland USA

Re: Pool scene

Post by sauvin » Tue Nov 03, 2020 6:42 pm

metoo wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:16 am
sauvin wrote:
Mon Nov 02, 2020 7:59 pm
I have the impression that the beast knows hunger, fear and pain (sunlight, you know), and very little else. It's the Dark Side of human nature, boiled down to a thick, sticky goo and what we turn into when WE are mindlessly scared, in great pain or starved half to death. If the beast were simply aroused and acting on its fear or its hunger, how would it know to spare Oskar and the other kid?
The beast would know to save Oskar because of the different feelings human Eli had towards him compared to those he had towards Oskar's enemies. The source of Eli's fear and target of his aggression was the latter, and that's what the beast would sense.

Regarding the fourth kid in the film - he was standing just next to Conny, so why was he saved? I have no idea. Perhaps Eli's fury waned after three kids had been killed and he realised that Oskar needed immediate help? This would work for both of our ideas of the interaction between human and monster.

In the novel, however, the Forsberg brothers and Oskar was at the far end of the pool, while all the other kids had gathered at the dressing room end. This distance might have helped saving them, but the main factor would have been that Eli was focused on helping Oskar out of the water after having dispersed with the immediate threat.
Yes, Eli was focused on saving Oskar, and it was Eli's rage that killed the boys. The last kid had already visibly opted out, I think, and that's why he survived.

I think we have different ideas of what the beast is. I remember nothing in the book and there's certainly nothing in the movie to suggest the beast's nature, so we're left with a lot to conjecture. What we're given is that it's some kind of pathogen (an "infection") that colonises the heart; given that it imbues the victim with extraordinary abilities (strength, speed, flight, dynamic dentition, etc), it'd be absurd to deny it doesn't also colonise elsewhere, including a brain. We don't know exactly what kind of pathogen it might be - a fungus, maybe?

I wouldn't ascribe to it any more than absolutely needed to satisfy the narrative, and this includes any kind of intelligence. It's a predator, and apparently solitary (otherwise, our Eliverse might have seen Oskar asking a small throng of Eliforms if he had a chance with them), and it'll have evolved enough to know how to assuage hunger, flee danger when it can and battle it when it can't. Any life form that doesn't know these simple, basic things wouldn't have seen at least several centuries of survival, and possibly more than millennia. It doesn't even need to know much about its host because its host can worry about the higher level nuts and bolts of basic survival, such as knowing where to go, where to hide and so on, how to move in the presence of people without being noticed - it can, in other words, leverage its host's knowledge of human strength and weakness, culture and such without possessing even the smallest fraction of that knowledge.

It is, in other words, an insectile entity in my view.

We know the beast can drive the host when it's hungry. Maybe it doesn't have to - remember the last time you went a day too many without eating anything and then sat down to the table with something that smells so good? Didn't need to be told to tuck in, did you? The brains took a back seat and the belly took over. The beast is in the belly of the beauty.

We also know that Eli can drive the beast. She wasn't hungry or afraid when she flew away from the hospital and towards Oskar. In fact, she was both hungry and afraid when she ran away from Oskar in the basement clubhouse and shinnied up a tree - but it was Eli who was afraid, not the beast. The beauty told the beast in her belly to shut up.

If Eli can use the beast to shuttle her off the hospital's fourth or fifth floor window ledge and to her friend's second-floor bedroom window, she could certainly tell the beast to do what she might have done herself if she hadn't had the use of the beast's extraordinary abilities: run in, punch a few noses, kick a few heads, break a few arms, shout out some foul language. It's just that... well... you know... the beast doesn't kick or punch.

It doesn't swear, either. It just screams.

No, I think the beast just wants what it wants, and when it flew into the pool room, it might have wanted blood - it'll always want blood, I think - but Eli didn't. What killed the boys was Eli pretty much bat-crap crazy out of her mind with anger, and the beast in this incident was just the delivery truck she used to run them over with.

In less literal terms, the beast is the distilled essence of the lowermost and hindmost parts of our own brains: it wants what it wants, and it's going to take what it wants, and just doesn't care what anybody might have to say about it. Our inner beasts are solitary creatures, and they live in all our bellies, beauty and brute alike, and we react to it with such horror because they're in constant conflict with the uppermost and foremost parts of our brains that demand we recognise that we have obligations to ensure the survival of our species at least to the same degree that we are obligated to see to our own individual survival.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères

User avatar
metoo
Posts: 3678
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 12:36 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Pool scene

Post by metoo » Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:32 pm

sauvin wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 6:42 pm
A lot...
I believe we have very similar ideas about the nature of the beast, Sauvin.
  • The beast has a very limited mental capacity, and relies on it's host for any intelligent behaviour.
  • I believe the beast can push its host towards the beasts (very simple) goals, but the host can resist.
    However, the basement scene shows that this push can be almost unbearably heavy, and a very strong will is required not to succumb to it.
    (I have the idea that Eli might never before have tried to resist, he didn't know that he actually could.)
  • Eli is able to control the beast. This is clearly so in the novel, where he "thinks" his teeth sharp and claws on his hands and feet.
    Later, after having met Zombie Håkan, Eli even wills his body to heal.
I also agree about the beast being the "distilled essence of the lowermost and hindmost parts of our own brains". However, even the lowliest beasts know to ensure the survival of their species as well as their own individual survival. And therefore, so would the vampiric beast - albeit, perhaps, on a much simpler level than its human host might muster.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

User avatar
sauvin
Moderator
Posts: 3410
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:52 am
Location: A cornfield in heartland USA

Re: Pool scene

Post by sauvin » Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:37 pm

Would a spider sacrifice anything for another?

(yes, yes, I know, spiders don't actually qualify as "insectile"! Leave me alone!)
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères

User avatar
metoo
Posts: 3678
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 12:36 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Pool scene

Post by metoo » Tue Nov 03, 2020 8:23 pm

sauvin wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:37 pm
Would a spider sacrifice anything for another?

(yes, yes, I know, spiders don't actually qualify as "insectile"! Leave me alone!)
Ah, did you by having "obligations to ensure the survival of our species" mean altruistic behaviour in favour of other members of one's own species? Well, that isn't required for the survival of the species. You only need to procreate...

That said, the beast wouldn't have any inclination towards altruism at all, I would think, so we might share a common view on that, too.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

Post Reply

Return to “Let The Right One In (Film)”