Who loves Abby?

[Bioroid]

I'll hijack the thread: Does anyone envy Owen & Abby? Especially if you don't envy Oskar & Eli.

I'll raise my hand to this one.

I actually envy both couples as I see essentially the same type of love between O&E and O&A. I know others will feel differently, and to me it's completely understandable (especially in light of the revelation of the photo booth thing in LMI).

I don't envy either couple's erm... disadvantages... but I do envy the love relationship between them.

LMI was my first, and it came at a time that was about a year after a bad breakup, and I'd basically given up on relationships, as mine had all ended badly.
Before getting into the dating world, I was a VERY naive person. I didn't even get my first kiss until 20.

After trying out dating for a while, I realized just how naive and "innocent" I was, and I just sort of became bitter.

Then I saw LMI, and I was struck by what I saw as not only the genuine love between A&O, but the overall sort of childhood innocence to it, which is something I always wanted in my own relationships.

It was like what I wanted in a relationship was being played out on screen, and so I did (and do) envy that, and I suppose that's why LMI struck me.

LTROI was the same basic thing, but as I'd already seen LMI, my initial impression of LTROI was that it felt like sort of a rough draft of LMI (the only differences I really liked being that Hakan wasn't a childhood friend, and the whole bedroom scene in LTROI I felt to be much better than LMI).

Of course, after re-watching LTROI numerous times, I've come to appreciate it for its own unique touches, and I put it on the same level as LMI, however LMI remains sort of my first love.

[sauvin]

I'll hijack the thread: Does anyone envy Owen & Abby? Especially if you don't envy Oskar & Eli.

Woofie, you can hijack my topics with questions like that any time you want! Especially since you're really trying to ask the same question I am.

[DarkGuyver]

I'll hijack the thread: Does anyone envy Owen & Abby? Especially if you don't envy Oskar & Eli.

I'll raise my hand to this one.

I actually envy both couples as I see essentially the same type of love between O&E and O&A. I know others will feel differently, and to me it's completely understandable (especially in light of the revelation of the photo booth thing in LMI).

Yeah, I envy both couples too. It's really hard to find somebody you can really connect with like that in the real world.

[jetboy]

This is why I cant stand LMI, because of the comparison. Because of LMI, all of a sudden Eli's endless years of pain and suffering is....lesser. Because of harsher bullies, Oskar is now a psycho wierdo who doesnt deserve love as much as Owen because he doesnt fantasize about killing, because Owen's a good boy. Hindsight is 20/20 and its easy enough to turn things up to 11. Im sure its just as easy to make Abbeys experience seem less tragic too, but so what. Is this a race to see who can be more tragic?

The question is, did LMI bring something new to the world like LTROI did (meaning something significant) or did they just magnify and lessen things that were already their?

I don't believe that one frame of Tomas' film was any different after the release of Let Me In, nor did I notice any change in even a single character in any versions of the novel that I have. Eli's suffering is neither mitigated nor made worse. The only thing that could have changed, I think, is your perception of them. So if this is really the case; that LMI changed your perceptions of a film that you love, doesn't this argue that LMI did indeed bring something significant to the story? I guess we could quibble over exactly what could be considered significant, but wasn't this at least significant to you?

My perception of Eli or Oskar will ever change because of LMI. Thats a laugh! Sorry to undermine your argument before it barely got started.

My point is the rest of the viewing world. The ones who will see LMI before LTROI because of the money they had available for advertisement and distribution. Before LMI came out, Oskar was a bullied boy whose mind was going bad because of it. He was having nasty thoughts in secret. He needed help. Oskar represents kids with problems like that. LMI came out and made the bullies worse and the mother alot worse, yet made Owen not have the nasty thoughts and habits. This in turn, and has been backed up by quite a few, makes Oskar less sympathetic because Owen isnt turning bad because of the abuse, Owen is stronger. This turns Oskars role of representing kids with inner problems to being a psycho wierdo because he is succumbing to the dark side while Owen is being brave.

As for Eli, you said that Abbey is even more tragic than her because at least Eli found her true love whereas Abbey hasnt. For one that isnt true because Jenkins character wouldntve done all those things if he wasnt loved back. Its too severe for it all to be in vain. And anyways you say that she doesnt have the ability to see the love shown by the two males so how can it be more tragic. But mostly I want to say that Eli has been in misery for who knows how long. The book says 200+ but the movie doesnt so it could be thousands. Anyways its a long time. To say Abbeys more tragic is not worth mentioning, both have had more misery than anybody deserves by a long shot. What I want to say is that nothing LMI did should be compared on the level of LTROI because of the level of copying.

LMI made everything harsher and the characters braver. In comparison that affects the viewing of LTROI if you saw LMI first. LMI not only copied but had the advantage of hindsight and has taken LTROI's characters and cliched them up. LTROI didnt have this advantage, yet it should have the benefits because it did the work and took the risks.

So what I mean about what did LMI bring of any "significance", for one, had nothing to do with how it changed my perception of LTROI, lets make that perfectly crystal clear. It had to do with me wondering what it brought, that wasnt already brought by LTROI, of any significance that would warrant its making from an artistic view point. What made it so important to make that would make LTROI not enough? I understand the potential for capital but is there something else that just has to do with the art? "Of any significance" being the key phrase.

[sauvin]

LMI made everything harsher and the characters braver. In comparison that affects the viewing of LTROI if you saw LMI first. LMI not only copied but had the advantage of hindsight and has taken LTROI's characters and cliched them up. LTROI didnt have this advantage, yet it should have the benefits because it did the work and took the risks.

So what I mean about what did LMI bring of any "significance", for one, had nothing to do with how it changed my perception of LTROI, lets make that perfectly crystal clear. It had to do with me wondering what it brought, that wasnt already brought by LTROI, of any significance that would warrant its making from an artistic view point. What made it so important to make that would make LTROI not enough? I understand the potential for capital but is there something else that just has to do with the art? "Of any significance" being the key phrase.

I sometimes watch movies whose remakes I'd already seen. Generally, the original predates the remake by many years, so it'd be fair to say the originals had been crafted for a different audiences living (by definition) in a different time and (therefore) a different culture even if the country is the same. Sometimes, the original comes out ahead for me, sometimes it doesn't.

As an example, I offer the horror flick "Lolita" whose the more recent (1997 or so) version was considerably more explicit and tragic. The version from the early '60's, Kubrick's version, was far too talky, and if you hadn't already read the book or weren't already deeply sexually jaded, you would have walked away from it not knowing what the stupid thing was even supposed to be ABOUT. Nevertheless, the original version caused quite a few minor scandals, as I understand it. I guess Americans from the '60's were even more uptight than we are today, and more sexually paranoid.

Bear in mind that LTROI is a Swedish movie, and LMI American. Grouse all you want about what Reeves did with it (I have a few peeves, too), but he did make a movie an American could conceivably understand. Bear in mind, too, that LTROI itself hasn't exactly been a blockbuster - even before LMI came out, there've been a few reviewers who called it a "head-scratcher" with "gratuitous gore" and "disjointed plot lines" and "characters' motivations being unexplained" and suchlike. As such, my suggestion is that LTROI seems to be something of a Rorschach test and an IQ test in the form of a twit filter - if you "get" it, you're not a twit, and if you don't, you're an idiot.

Bear in mind that most Europeans view some aspects of we collectively describe as "reality" with nearly perfect diametric opposition to general American views. Sex, for example, seems to be something you don't expose the kids to, but "kids", depending on locality, means anybody under 12 or 14, and European attitudes towards nudity would give many Americans a stroke. Excessive or gratuitous violence, however, seems to upset many Europeans where Americans just shrug, throw up their hands and ask "What's the big deal?" With Americans, the bloodier it is, the more garishly colourful and cacophonous, the better.

I am personally cathected to LTROI more than to LMI, but I don't personally begrudge the latter whatever successes it may enjoy even if it causes newcomers to the story to look upon LTROI as being "too slow" and "too quiet" and "too heavy with the symphony". If they want to see Oskar as more psychotic simply because his tribulations paled (physically) in comparison to Owen's, well, that's their loss, not mine. It's not your loss, either.

Quite the opposite, I presently welcome LMI precisely because it could wield a larger advertising budget in the US, because it could (possibly) find wider distribution and exposure in the US than did LTROI. I don't suppose that most people who've seen LMI might have been curious enough about it to realise it'd been a remake, let alone go looking for the original. Of those people who might have, I don't suppose that most of them would be able to articulate or enumerate the differences between the two movies or appreciate the subtleties LTROI brought us that LMI seems to lack. Eli, to most such people, probably would seem lifeless and wooden, with Oskar just being some effeminate and ineffectual dweeb who eagerly sold his soul to the Devil for just one more kiss.

What was so "cliched up" about LMI?

Abby's eliform vampirism is virtually unprecedented in the American mind, and this may be partially responsible for its chilly reception. She's not really a vampire cast from some classic archetypal (e.g., Draculean) mold, and she's not really human - even if she were fully human when she's not in her "puberty gone disastrously wrong" mode, she can't be like other twelve year old children in any significant way. So, what is she, really? This kind of question would leave Joseph Q. Sixpack totally nonplussed and quickly reaching for a beer and a TV remote control.

Is this "cliche" where the vampire has her Renfield? Maybe, but classical American vampires don't generally display profound tenderness towards their "servants" - and their servants rarely (if ever) return in like kind, seeming to prefer to dream of their own promised eventual transmogrifications into powerful and immortal agents of human destruction. Not so Thomas, who loved Abby while he could, in any way he could even while doing so was sucking the very life out of him. Far from reveling in dreams of bloody power and demanding it at the end of his days, he knowingly and quite willingly surrendered his own existence trying to secure hers. This, too, I think must be quite foreign to an American mindset.

And if these "cliches" involve Lestat or Cullen, I'm done. Their vampirism is nominal at best, at least for the children of the '60's and '70's who've grown up with a very different notion of what a vampire is and what it represents.

The fact is, I have this fear that most Americans, even the staunchest horror mavens among them, would watch LMI (but not willingly, nor more than once) and not understand it. If this is true, blasting it because it might somehow eclipse the LTROI we love is baseless. The potential for appreciating either movie just isn't there.

As for "art", well... what is that, really?

[DMt.]

Lovingly crafted material?

Evidence of the godhead in the works of humanity?

High-quality endeavour?

Inspired creation?

You could go on about it forever, and we do

[jetboy]

LMI made everything harsher and the characters braver. In comparison that affects the viewing of LTROI if you saw LMI first. LMI not only copied but had the advantage of hindsight and has taken LTROI's characters and cliched them up. LTROI didnt have this advantage, yet it should have the benefits because it did the work and took the risks.

So what I mean about what did LMI bring of any "significance", for one, had nothing to do with how it changed my perception of LTROI, lets make that perfectly crystal clear. It had to do with me wondering what it brought, that wasnt already brought by LTROI, of any significance that would warrant its making from an artistic view point. What made it so important to make that would make LTROI not enough? I understand the potential for capital but is there something else that just has to do with the art? "Of any significance" being the key phrase.

I sometimes watch movies whose remakes I'd already seen. Generally, the original predates the remake by many years, so it'd be fair to say the originals had been crafted for a different audiences living (by definition) in a different time and (therefore) a different culture even if the country is the same. Sometimes, the original comes out ahead for me, sometimes it doesn't.

As an example, I offer the horror flick "Lolita" whose the more recent (1997 or so) version was considerably more explicit and tragic. The version from the early '60's, Kubrick's version, was far too talky, and if you hadn't already read the book or weren't already deeply sexually jaded, you would have walked away from it not knowing what the stupid thing was even supposed to be ABOUT. Nevertheless, the original version caused quite a few minor scandals, as I understand it. I guess Americans from the '60's were even more uptight than we are today, and more sexually paranoid.

Bear in mind that LTROI is a Swedish movie, and LMI American. Grouse all you want about what Reeves did with it (I have a few peeves, too), but he did make a movie an American could conceivably understand. Bear in mind, too, that LTROI itself hasn't exactly been a blockbuster - even before LMI came out, there've been a few reviewers who called it a "head-scratcher" with "gratuitous gore" and "disjointed plot lines" and "characters' motivations being unexplained" and suchlike. As such, my suggestion is that LTROI seems to be something of a Rorschach test and an IQ test in the form of a twit filter - if you "get" it, you're not a twit, and if you don't, you're an idiot.

Bear in mind that most Europeans view some aspects of we collectively describe as "reality" with nearly perfect diametric opposition to general American views. Sex, for example, seems to be something you don't expose the kids to, but "kids", depending on locality, means anybody under 12 or 14, and European attitudes towards nudity would give many Americans a stroke. Excessive or gratuitous violence, however, seems to upset many Europeans where Americans just shrug, throw up their hands and ask "What's the big deal?" With Americans, the bloodier it is, the more garishly colourful and cacophonous, the better.

I am personally cathected to LTROI more than to LMI, but I don't personally begrudge the latter whatever successes it may enjoy even if it causes newcomers to the story to look upon LTROI as being "too slow" and "too quiet" and "too heavy with the symphony". If they want to see Oskar as more psychotic simply because his tribulations paled (physically) in comparison to Owen's, well, that's their loss, not mine. It's not your loss, either.

Quite the opposite, I presently welcome LMI precisely because it could wield a larger advertising budget in the US, because it could (possibly) find wider distribution and exposure in the US than did LTROI. I don't suppose that most people who've seen LMI might have been curious enough about it to realise it'd been a remake, let alone go looking for the original. Of those people who might have, I don't suppose that most of them would be able to articulate or enumerate the differences between the two movies or appreciate the subtleties LTROI brought us that LMI seems to lack. Eli, to most such people, probably would seem lifeless and wooden, with Oskar just being some effeminate and ineffectual dweeb who eagerly sold his soul to the Devil for just one more kiss.

What was so "cliched up" about LMI?

Abby's eliform vampirism is virtually unprecedented in the American mind, and this may be partially responsible for its chilly reception. She's not really a vampire cast from some classic archetypal (e.g., Draculean) mold, and she's not really human - even if she were fully human when she's not in her "puberty gone disastrously wrong" mode, she can't be like other twelve year old children in any significant way. So, what is she, really? This kind of question would leave Joseph Q. Sixpack totally nonplussed and quickly reaching for a beer and a TV remote control.

Is this "cliche" where the vampire has her Renfield? Maybe, but classical American vampires don't generally display profound tenderness towards their "servants" - and their servants rarely (if ever) return in like kind, seeming to prefer to dream of their own promised eventual transmogrifications into powerful and immortal agents of human destruction. Not so Thomas, who loved Abby while he could, in any way he could even while doing so was sucking the very life out of him. Far from reveling in dreams of bloody power and demanding it at the end of his days, he knowingly and quite willingly surrendered his own existence trying to secure hers. This, too, I think must be quite foreign to an American mindset.

And if these "cliches" involve Lestat or Cullen, I'm done. Their vampirism is nominal at best, at least for the children of the '60's and '70's who've grown up with a very different notion of what a vampire is and what it represents.

The fact is, I have this fear that most Americans, even the staunchest horror mavens among them, would watch LMI (but not willingly, nor more than once) and not understand it. If this is true, blasting it because it might somehow eclipse the LTROI we love is baseless. The potential for appreciating either movie just isn't there.

As for "art", well... what is that, really?

Well Im American and I loved LTROI and disliked LMI so that theory doesnt really work. On top of that, Im not the only one.

Your Lolita reference has a space of 30 years between them. I think this is significant. Its the blatantly doing it to make money off of it and not inspiration that irks me so.

Yes LMI could and has advertised LTROI to a wider audience but I still think viewing LMI first can alter the enjoyment of LTROI and LTROI did alot of the original work that LMI benefitted from. Its not baseless because I have heard people say so. They say, because of the comparison to Owen, Oskar looks like he was "born bad" instead of representing what happens to human nature when someone is lonely and hateful for too long. In contrast they take away this element of Owen and this is one of the examples of "clicheing up". Americans may like their protagonists to be strong against overwhelming obstacles and I do too but this is escapism and its not what the original was all about. I wouldnt mind this so much, and may have liked it, if it didnt put Oskar in a light where people are judgemental against him. Other forms of cliche is the bullies. Their all about a foot taller than Kodi with none of the complexities of the original who sometimes dont want to bully. The mother might as well be Carries mother, so over the top that it further renders Oskar as being born bad because they dont see that as normal as the mother is, its not enough. She doesnt even know about Oskars bullying or if she does explains it away as kids being kids. Either way she's not helping her son. LMI's mother could desensities future LTROI viewers from these subtleties. I dont consider Abbey to be amongst these "clicheisms".

Another way that LMI could affect future viewers of LTROI is taking away the ambiguity of the bloodgetter. Alot of people who dont mind LMI didnt see this in the original. I saw it and what an experience. Your going along with this love story and bam it dawns on you why Hakan poured acid on his face and the anwer is the love going on with Oskar. There was no need to explain. Unfortunately people who view LMI first wont be able to have my experience without any hints.

And the biggest offense of all is that the source of all that LMI benefitted is the one that suffers from LMI. LMI knew that it had to make room for the already existing LTROI. LTROI didnt yet it did most of the work and came up with all the great ideas. LTROI was used and I mean this in the negative way.

[sauvin]

Well Im American and I loved LTROI and disliked LMI so that theory doesnt really work. On top of that, Im not the only one.

According to my passport, so am I. American, that is. I liked it, too, and so your statement seems to imply that since I liked it, too, I can't say that an American can't or won't like LTROI. When I say that Reeves made a movie an American might understand, I don't mean that all Americans who see it will understand it or like it, I simply mean that the movie may be more reachable to the average American. Furthermore, we've both seen plenty of evidence of Americans having seen LTROI and thought it stupid long before LMI was even a widely circulated rumour. It'd really a shame IMDB doesn't have longer term storage so we could wade back two or three years to see just how idiotic some of the reactions have been.

If you want to know the truth, the first couple of times I watched LTROI, I, too, thought it a bit brain-damaged.

No, you're not the only one. But we are so few.... so few...

Your Lolita reference has a space of 30 years between them. I think this is significant. Its the blatantly doing it to make money off of it and not inspiration that irks me so.

Yes, and there are several thousand miles and a language or two separating LMI from LTROI.

Yes LMI could and has advertised LTROI to a wider audience but I still think viewing LMI first can alter the enjoyment of LTROI and LTROI did alot of the original work that LMI benefitted from. Its not baseless because I have heard people say so.

I've heard lots of people say lots of baseless things. Don't get me started.

LTROI is virtually unknown in the US. It's around, there's a copy for rent at the video store just around the corner from me, and there's a couple copies at the place that sells used DVDs just down the road. LMI is less unknown, I see more copies of it floating around than of LTROI. I didn't see either at Walmart in the $5 bin, and that's not a good sign. Generally, if it no longer sells well, Walmart drops it.

But the longer odds are that Joe Sixpack will run across LMI before he'll run across LTROI, and maybe he'll pick it up. Maybe he'll like it, maybe not. Seems to me, longest odds are, he'll not be much impressed with it, maybe he'll say "Yea, Abby was a cute kid". He won't know or care that it was a "remake", and probably couldn't be arsed to try to find it on Amazon.

These things, they have spectra - or, if you like, areas under a bell-shaped curve. Some will absolutely hate it, these people will fall under the left-handed skinny part of that curve, and some will absolutely love it and will fall under the right-handed skinny part. Most will just go "Meh", and they're the ones that give the curve its bulge in the middle.

Translation? Only a small fraction of the people who actually DO see LMI will be moved by it in a way we consider positive.

Something similar is true for LTROI, but we're looking at smaller numbers now. If I remember correctly, LTROI screened for only a single week at the Big City an hour's drive from where I live, and with its two dozen odd screens, it can carry even sluggishly selling stinkers for several weeks. LTROI never even made it out into my little corn field, never came within an hour of me.

Compare this to LMI's having stayed in the Big City for three weeks in spite of the fact that the first two times I saw it, there weren't enough people in the theatre to fill an SUV, and the last time I'd seen it, I had the whole stadium-style room to myself.

Of the relatively few folks who watched LMI and gone on to hunt down LTROI, I'd fully expect behaviour over "large numbers" to again describe these bell-shaped curves, with some of the LMI-initiated hating LTROI (skinny left hand side), some of them absolutely loving it (skinny right hand side) and the bulk of them saying "Meh, that was mildly interesting..." (the bulged part of the curve). The only problem with making this kind of statement is that NOW we're into small sampling theory. Skew, kurtosis and suchlike could go all sorts of crazy directions.

My point, and I maintain it, is that many more Americans will see LMI than LTROI, and it's my hope that they'd realise there had been an original, try to find it, and from there try to understand it.

I'm not hopeful. I've never found a place on the Internet dedicated to discussing LMI that isn't overwhelmed with the intellectually void and the academically catastrophically challenged.

Other forms of cliche is the bullies. Their all about a foot taller than Kodi with none of the complexities of the original who sometimes dont want to bully.

I don't recall that LMI's bullies were seamlessly enthusiastic, either. Do you have a copy of LMI? Maybe you should watch it a few more times.

The mother might as well be Carries mother, so over the top that it further renders Oskar as being born bad because they dont see that as normal as the mother is, its not enough.

I've not figured out what Owen's mother's deal is. That's OK; I've not figured out what Oskar's mother's deal is, either. It's true that we're not explicitly shown that Oskar's mother suffers any obvious "flaw" apart from being absent a great deal, and prone to treating Oskar as some kind of possession rather than an actual son. It's true that Owen's mother is a religious fanatic on the surface, and a drunk. Yes, Joe Sixpack might claim that Owen's home life is a lot tougher for that very reason, but his cousin, the one who actually managed to graduate high school and can read, write and honestly understand words of two syllables or more, knows better: neither boy effectively has a mother to confide in and rely on.

She doesnt even know about Oskars bullying or if she does explains it away as kids being kids. Either way she's not helping her son. LMI's mother could desensities future LTROI viewers from these subtleties.

Owen's mother similarly knows nothing.

I dont consider Abbey to be amongst these "clicheisms".

This is a hopeful sign.

Another way that LMI could affect future viewers of LTROI is taking away the ambiguity of the bloodgetter. Alot of people who dont mind LMI didnt see this in the original. I saw it and what an experience. Your going along with this love story and bam it dawns on you why Hakan poured acid on his face and the anwer is the love going on with Oskar. There was no need to explain. Unfortunately people who view LMI first wont be able to have my experience without any hints.

"The love going on with Oskar" is why Hakan poured acid on his face? How did we draw this conclusion? What experience did you have with the manner of Hakan's passing?

And the biggest offense of all is that the source of all that LMI benefitted is the one that suffers from LMI. LMI knew that it had to make room for the already existing LTROI. LTROI didnt yet it did most of the work and came up with all the great ideas. LTROI was used and I mean this in the negative way.

Such is the nature of time. Forerunners often don't know there's some future iteration to "make room for".

And now that the topic has been hijacked Yet One More Time, I'm going to suggest that this topic is all about "Who Loves Abby", and not about "That Nasty American Movie That Stole from LTROI and Destroyed It".

Bashing LMI in any way this thread is off topic.

[TigerEyes]

Another way that LMI could affect future viewers of LTROI is taking away the ambiguity of the bloodgetter. Alot of people who dont mind LMI didnt see this in the original. I saw it and what an experience. Your going along with this love story and bam it dawns on you why Hakan poured acid on his face and the anwer is the love going on with Oskar. There was no need to explain. Unfortunately people who view LMI first wont be able to have my experience without any hints.

"The love going on with Oskar" is why Hakan poured acid on his face? How did we draw this conclusion? What experience did you have with the manner of Hakan's passing?

I don't get how you drew that conclusion, Hakan didn't pour acid on his face because of Oskar, but because he didn't want to be caught and be linked to Eli, which is explained between Eli and Hakan. Granted, he didn't carry the acid before Oskar, but he probably didn't think of it at that time. He did feel replaceable, but that may not have been the reason he threw acid on his face.

[jetboy]

Another way that LMI could affect future viewers of LTROI is taking away the ambiguity of the bloodgetter. Alot of people who dont mind LMI didnt see this in the original. I saw it and what an experience. Your going along with this love story and bam it dawns on you why Hakan poured acid on his face and the anwer is the love going on with Oskar. There was no need to explain. Unfortunately people who view LMI first wont be able to have my experience without any hints.

"The love going on with Oskar" is why Hakan poured acid on his face? How did we draw this conclusion? What experience did you have with the manner of Hakan's passing?

I don't get how you drew that conclusion, Hakan didn't pour acid on his face because of Oskar, but because he didn't want to be caught and be linked to Eli, which is explained between Eli and Hakan. Granted, he didn't carry the acid before Oskar, but he probably didn't think of it at that time. He did feel replaceable, but that may not have been the reason he threw acid on his face.

Excuse me, I did word that wrong somewhat. What Im saying is that Hakan poured acid on his face because he was, and maybe still is, in love with Eli, like Oskar is, and wanted to protect her. Pouring acid on ones face is a very extreme thing to do. The movie doesnt really explain why. To me it would require as much of an extreme reason to have it make sense. The movie is showing us this potential reason with the blossoming love between Oskar and Eli. What Im saying is that Hakan could have been in the same position Oskar is in now, with Eli, 30-40 years ago. Combine this with when Hakan was Oskar's age, Eli would have looked exactly the same and only an unhappy, lonely a person, like Oskar, would find themselves in Hakans shoes.

This answer is also for Sauvin who wanted clarification on my meaning.

I guess Im still hijacking so if someone wants to go on we can start a new thread.