Eli at the Hospital Window

[jkwilliams]

This is going to be so embarrassing for me if I'm the only one here that never noticed this before.

… and Eli tore her head away from the woman's throat. The blood tasted like medication. Morphine.

Because of his horrible injuries, it's probably safe to assume that Håkan is just as loaded up on morphine as the Cancer Lady was in the novel. And when you consider that, Eli's odd reaction to drinking his blood at the hospital starts to make a little more sense.

Eli is drugged.

Notice the strange expression on Lina's face when she suddenly pulls her head back and lets Håkan's body fall to the ground. Not only does she forget to break his neck, she doesn't do anything to make sure he's dead. She just stares down at him with a confused look on her face and drools blood all over her shirt. (The IV bag behind her is very noticeable in this shot.)

Right after this Eli flies to Oskar's room and crawls into bed naked with him. It's totally out of character for Eli to do something like that (at least with Oskar) but you have to remember that he's still under the influence of morphine. In the novel the very same thing happens right after his encounter with the Cancer Lady.

Of course I might be looking at this all wrong.

[Nightrider]

I think you might have something there.
Eli does behave rather uncharacteristically after tasting Håkan's blood. He would have been full of morphine due to serious nature of his injuries.
In the novel that scene is kind of glossed over and was described from the point of view of security guard. The movie version had all kind of possibilities.
Good catch.

[Marlow]

Jkwilliams your observation makes logical sense, if the movie was thought out in that much scientific detail, with the emphasis on scientific. It would explain Eli forgetting to snap Hakan's neck. I think it very well thought out, but I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Having seen the movie first, I was unaware of the vampire rule that exists in the LTROI universe that it was necessary to break the neck of a victim to stop their "zombification." There is no directorial explanation necessary for someone coming to the movie first; the viewer assumes Hakan is dead and no further effort on Eli's part is expected. But then, if Eli's expression was that of being drugged, would Eli still be able to fly? Eli was unable to walk for a while after his encounter with the Cancer Lady in the novel. It is amusing to think of a vampire flying around under the influence, though. Again, seeing the movie in the absence of the foreknowledge provided by the novel, it really wasn't necessary to think of Eli being able to fly. Certainly, in parsing the movie, it is been mentioned that you can hear the whoosh of Eli's flying departure in the soundtrack. All these details may very well have been included, but are unnecessary in thinking of LTROI as a film only.
My interpretation, possibly of Eli's expression, but definitely her going to Oskar, is that he realizes that he is all alone with the immediacy of Hakan's death. Eli goes to Oskar for solace. I think Eli's "window reaction" chosen for the movie was the dramatic one of Eli's loss of her sole companion, as sorry as Hakan was in this regard. Her going to Oskar reflected Oskar being her sole human contact at that point in the narrative.
Your explanation is certainly more consistent with the scientific reality of Eli's drinking opiated blood. I think my interpretation is more suited to an emotional narrative and LTROI, the movie, being considered as a film unto itself.

[djrees56]

WOW,this really got me thinking.I'm going to be watching LTROI again tonight. I always wondered if Hakan was......REALLY DEAD after all Its debatable because you can see his breath(or last breath...maybe )in a close up after he lands on the ground. Might explain why Eli disappeared ..to confront or finish Hakan ...sorry,just excited about this

[sauvin]

This may be one of the places where the novel and both film blew it from a technical POV. Hakan or Thomas would still have been hopped up to their eyeballs, I'd think, so soon after the initial injury. I know that burns from an actual fire can take a few eternities to subside, and can't imagine that chemical burns would differ much in this respect - and all three of these guys were *massively* burned. Novel Eli went loopy after eating a little bit of Cancer lady, and it looked to me like she siphoned off a good litre or two from Hakan in the movie.

I was in the hospital in the early '70's having my neck all ripped up and stitched back together for a couple of weeks, and I remember being given quite a few pain meds, but I don't remember morphine figuring largely in the pharmacopoeia I was given. What other drugs do you suppose might have been used at the time? Cancer Lady might just have been opiated to the eyeballs because she was checking out anyway, so physical addiction and/or lethal dose wouldn't have been overarching concerns.

I'm with Marlow where the LTROI movie is concerned, though. I don't remember the details from the novel exactly, but Hakan's murder was interrupted. It looked to me like movie Eli watched Hakan fall and observed that his *head* hit the canopy with a resounding thud. One presumes such an impact would have broken his neck in a few thousand microplaces. Her vision and hearing are probably acute enough to have observed his final exhalation, and I do[i/] presume this is what we saw and heard.

The somber look we saw just before she took flight, then, struck me the same way it did Marlow: she's all alone now, "sorry as [Hakan] was", and decided to fly off to Oskar for comfort.

[mackousko]

I must say . O like this new POV on this scene. I never have thought of it this way.

[Ash]

Third degree chemical or thermal burns are usually not painful because the nerve endings in the skin have been destroyed. So Hakan may not have been needing such a strong analgesic such as morphine.
And I agree that Eli realised that she was now alone without Hakan, and rushed off to find a suitable replacement (ducks for cover), only joking.

[gkmoberg1]

I don't remember the details from the novel exactly, but Hakan's murder was interrupted.

Yes. In the novel, Eli is making an escape away from the policeman guard who had been placed in Håkan's hospital room. Eli scrambles up onto the roof of the building and the policeman exits the room, shouting for help and then looking for the stairs that would take him to the roof. So it is after both Eli and the policeman depart and then after the arrival of a floor nurse, Håkan falls from the window. I don't think the book covers whether Eli is aware or saw Håkan fall from the window. Nor does it seem to include and indication that Eli is effected by Håkan's medications.

[jkwilliams]

I was just trying to point out that there are some details in this scene that match up with ones in the Cancer Lady scene from the novel. And since JAL also wrote the screenplay, it's hard for me to believe that that's just a coincidence.

I'm sorry for any confusion.

[Jameron]

I was just trying to point out that there are some details in this scene that match up with ones in the Cancer Lady scene from the novel. And since JAL also wrote the screenplay, it's hard for me to believe that that's just a coincidence.

I'm sorry for any confusion.

Hey, don't worry.

I'm sure no-one here meant to make you feel bad about pointing this out.

I must admit that it is an interesting observation. It does indeed seem strange that Eli didn't check that Håkan was dead, we saw her making sure that Jocke was dead, and we know why (from the novel). I attributed this to the fact we saw Håkan bounce off the canopy outside the hospital, as stated by Sauvin, I'm pretty sure the odds on surviving that fall are practically non-existent. But maybe you're right, maybe Eli's failure to make sure could be due to some kind of pain relief meds, in Håkan's blood, effecting her.

As for Eli crawling into Oskar's bed naked, it does seem a huge step in familiarity. I always put that down to the realisation on Eli's part that she was completely alone now (without Håkan). She probably felt a little vulnerable still and sought some kind of comfort. But her judgement could well have been slightly clouded by Håkan's meds, and it was that that helped her to make that leap of faith in Oskar and reach out to him emotionally. Something she might not have been able to do at that point without being a little high.

It's always interesting to hear new ideas and viewpoints

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