I saw lots of different emotions flitting by in rapid succession. Among them, I thought I saw gratitude and awe, but there doesn't seem to be any support for a claim that his was a reaction of unalloyed joy. I also saw fear, and possibly resignation and traces of revulsion.lombano wrote:When Owen is rescued at the pool, his face suggests to me that he would have rather drowned because he knows the horror that awaits him as he lies at Abby's blood-covered feet.
Is this necessarily true? Resistance to change can occur even in one so young, and in Owen's case, at least, it seems that very big changes are in store, and he knows it. Very big changes are in store for Oskar, too, but maybe that fact just isn't as immediately obvious while he's still trying to collect his wits. He did almost drown just now, remember.lombano wrote:With Oskar, the imagery is of birth or baptism, of starting a new life. It's just one scene, but one that illustrates the fundamental difference between both films: the cycle is just about the worst possible outcome, far worse than a suicide pact, for a example.
Both boys were strongly enough willed to swing the pole at a bully's head. Either boy knew at some level what his girlfriend was before knocking on her apartment door to demand some answers, and knew with greater certainty when she came knocking on his door seeking reconciliation. Both boys reacted with horror when the bleeding started and took immediate, effective action to stop it, with Owen explicitly expressing concern that his cavalier behaviour could have cost her her life. Both boys acted in her defence against a far larger enemy - with Owen facing a trained and armed (and possibly blooded) murderer rather than a sodden and dissolute stewbum.lombano wrote:Abby, obviously profoundly unhappy, clings to life seemingly solely out of survival instinct, while Owen is too weak-willed to defy her.
My initial reaction to the movie included a marked antipathy towards the music ("too [BEEP] screechy!"). I can't comment too much on the rest of the moviemaking except to note that LMI tended to be shot in a pissy shade of yellow, where LTROI tended more towards a bluish white.lombano wrote:LMI is thus the darkest, most pessimistic incarnation of the story. That, aside from other faults like a much weaker score and cinematography (and I wasn't that impressed with Owen as a character) and a lack of subtlety, is why I far prefer LTROI.
LTROI finished up on a much more uplifting note; first time or three I watched it for real, it left me with what must have been a stupid sappy sloppy smile on my face. Love Has Conquered All, it seemed. If you can let go of your humanity and let old dreams die, the kids really do move on to what very well could be a "happily ever after" for them - but only for them.
The thing about LTROI's final minutes, though, is that the theme that played was very complex, by turns joyful and mournful. Slow, sedate, sweet, sorrowful - and if you actually watch the credits all the way through to the end, you'll see where the background turns red for a few moments.
As I recall, that stupid, sappy smile on my face lasted for quite a while until it occurred to me that Oskar was 40 or so now (at the time), and spent a whole boring afternoon shift doing nothing but throwing boxes from one side of the room to the other and wondering what life had been like for him in the intervening years assuming he'd not been turned.The picture that emerged wasn't pretty.
This is one of the myriad beauties of TA's movie, that it say so much without actually saying much of anything explicitly. In this vein, I found Reeves' movie more honest, if also less appealing.
The only other major difference for me between the two movies is the impression of Eli gradually rediscovering what it is to be human, and Oskar (for some reason I can't put a finger on) does seem stronger than Owen, or maybe just more stoic.
Abby, on the other hand, was an emotionally drained preteen lugging around some immensely painful baggage when the movie started, and remained an emotionally drained preteen lugging around some immensely painful baggage towards its end. She seemed to know a lot more about how to catch a man's eye than Eli did, and seem to rely on that knowledge more. Before the pool scene, Abby and Owen didn't so much discover romance, redemption or anything so emotionally stirring, having seemed instead just to be a pair of latchkey kids who'd latched onto each other.
But, hey, what do you want? Either movie is a monster movie!