The 2008 top ten list is one of my favorites. While I can't say that I enjoyed all of these films equally, I can certainly say that I enjoyed every one of them and that I enjoyed saying good things about them, which I hope improves the quality of this set of reviews in particular. Here, we find a few major hits with independent and lesser-known films in the great majority, ranking from foreign films (such as Still Walking and Let the Right One In) to quirky dark comedies (Synecdoche, N.Y. and In Bruges) to the virtually unknown Chop Shop. Many of the films presented boast a predominately muted color palette of dusty sepias and business grey, others like Slumdog Millionaire are more fast-paced and colorful. Regardless, they're all good films, to one degree or another, and I certainly hope that each review here is able spark your interest for each and every one of them, because they all have very fascinating themes about a variety of topics, whether that topic be death, morality, or destiny. Until next time, here's this week's selection:
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton
Release Date: December 25, 2008
Running Time: 166 minutes
Rating: 4/5
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens with a seemingly unnecessary anecdote of a man, who, grief-stricken from the loss of his son in the war, builds a clock for a train station which only moves backwards. This anecdote, however, is everything but unnecessary: it is the key to understanding the entire story that will follow. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a story about a man (Brad Pitt) who was born shriveled and feeble, and ages backwards, appearing to look younger and younger as he grows physically older. The narrative from here on out moves all over the place, really, shifting between a series of people and places, centering on certain whimsical events and experiences- all tethered down by a relationship with one girl (Cate Blanchett) who stays with him through all of this. There are several very warm and wonderful images that stay with you from this film: notably, the wartime experience Benjamin has on his boat in the Arctic, or the quiet hotel in Alaska where he shares a short but tender romance with the beautiful Mrs. Abbott (Tilda Swinton). And yet as many beautiful and whimsical moments as there are, there are just as many grotesque and unsettling moments- an idea that sounds pleasant enough when told as a campfire folk tale is soon transformed into something that's more painful to watch up close. What I mean is, Benjamin Button may physically age backwards, but that doesn't mean that he's not mentally a teenager when he outwardly appears to be in his late seventies. When we see him befriend Daisy in childhood, they may be just two children playing together, but by all appearances this is the blossoming friendship of an eighty-year-old and an eight-year-old. This isn't inherently problematic, except for when the line between "girl friend" and "girlfriend" become blurred. Nearly everything about Benjamin Button's life is just so... inherently wrong- his childhood, his adolescence, his first sexual encounter, his first relationship, and especially his final years. It's all happening in the right order, but Button is forced to experience these events while under the curse of fatal whimsy. The screenplay was written in the same vein of Forrest Gump by the author of the Forrest Gump screenplay himself- and yet David Fincher's beautiful direction lends the story a level of emotional realism that subverts the very "southern Gothic charm" the story was intended to have. So instead, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not an amusing tall-tale, but rather the cruelest kind of tragedy. I've seen few things on screen as sad as a man senile who, physically a child, believes himself to be a child yet remains unaware of his imminent death, all while constantly puzzled by surroundings that almost lead him to remember the four decades of personal history that lie behind him yet fail to light a spark in his crumbling mind. This is when the story becomes more than just a deconstruction of the "southern fantasy", and more of an examination on the nature of time in general. We often wish that time could be turned back, but we wish this in ignorance of time's divine nature. To reverse the process of decay and change would be to create something just as wrong as Benjamin Button himself. And this is why the film chooses to close on the one powerful image that it does close on. Benjamin Button may not be the kind of dark thriller that we're used to seeing from Fincher- but it's handled beautifully nonetheless, (owing much to Alexander Desplat's dreamy soundtrack, which matches the melancholy sepia of the film perfectly), and for all its strange and awkward qualities, it still deserves a second glance from Fincher fans.
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon
Release Date: September 12, 2008
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rating: 4/5
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is considered to be a controversial film, and rightfully so. It tries to tell of the horrors of the holocaust from the perspective of the eight-year-old son of a concentration camp commandant. The horrors of the event are more or less pushed to the corners of the film, as the comfortable civilian life of its hero Bruno takes center stage. And yet... somehow the power of the event itself isn't diminished. The purpose of telling of a catastrophe such as this in a manner such as this is to highlight how easy it was for the German families to hide under the guise of ignorance from the reality of genocide that was going on all around them, whether they were truly ignorant or not. This idea can also apply to any kind of situation where the public chooses to turn a blind eye to any kind of hidden atrocity- I could list quite a number of things here, but comparing them to the Holocaust would be improper, so I won't. All that's left to address is the aesthetic of the film itself: which is excellently unsettling in its portrayal of a peaceful country house disrupted by brief grim encounters that our imaginative Bruno has with the dark world of his father. (Unforgettable are his glimpses of his sister's increasing devotion to the Nazi youth program.) Sure, the film's craft and pacing stutter at times. But the film's serious issues just about end there, in my opinion. Yes, it's important that you not be led astray by a misconception of what the film is meant to be, and for this reason I don't believe that it should be shown to particularly impressionable children who would otherwise be old enough to see it. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a film of fable, not fact: and let me explain why it should be this way. Many Holocaust stories isolate the event as a backdrop for some kind of a heroic event to take place, interpreting World War II as a time period where there were clearly defined "good guys" and clearly defined "bad guys", and then taking advantage of that dichotomy for the story's purposes. There is a problem with demonizing Nazi Germany, and that is because doing so removes the possibility of a genocide happening into the distant past. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas focuses on a Nazi family because it wants to establish that connection between the audience and the people that let evil men rise to power. It shows how easily something like this (or worse) could easily happen again in any society, and serves all too effectively in cautioning us about this.
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor
Release Date: August 30, 2008
Running Time: 120 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
There is something so inescapably appealing about Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, even if it is one of the most stylistically cluttered film's I've seen. Every movement of the camera emphasizes an impossible level of speed, whether it's following running children or just the lightning fast thoughts of its main character. This effect can succeed in capturing the mood of the film, but for a story with as much sadness and passion as this one, Danny Boyle's desire for flashiness often comes off as simply obnoxious. The story itself is that of Jamal Malik, a young Indian child raised in the slums and orphaned at a young age by the Bombay Riots. That's not where the story begins, though- one of the first things that we see is Jamal tied up in a police station, being tortured and asked how he knew the answers to all of the questions on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal is scheduled to appear on the game show the following night, and the show's producers, furious, are determined to find out how he cheated. Jamal, however, claims that he simply knew the answers to the questions, honestly, and explains the story behind how he learned the answer to each of the questions. Hence we are shown Jamal's personal history in the form of a series of bizarre anecdotes, all tying together to the central theme of destiny: that his life corresponds perfectly to the questions on this game show because it was fated to happen. Hence a rags-to-riches tale ensues, a tale which many have aptly compared to those of Charles Dickens, and a tale which is so suited to the backdrop of the modern game show. The more striking images in the film include a young boy covered in feces pushing through a crowd to get an autograph from his favorite actor, the same boy posing as a tour guide for the Taj Mahal and relating a fake history to ignorant tourists, and the same boy later being held at gunpoint by his teenage brother. The visual motif carried throughout the film is that of the train- representative of the rapid and unstoppable path of destiny- which will take Jamal away from his true love, reunite him with her, separate them again, and then bring them together one last time. Despite the almost overwhelming pathos of its most brutally human moments, Slumdog Millionaire lives up to its advertising as "the feel-good movie of the year", leading us through one narrow escape after another to bring us to the satisfying conclusion. Granted, it does seem less satisfying because very little in the film led you to expect anything else- but it remains a good example that a predictable ending can be a satisfying ending as well.
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
Release Date: December 12, 2008
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
Very early on in Doubt, it's made clear where the story is going when Sister Beauvier (Meryl Streep) voices her suspicions that Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) has been enforcing an unhealthy relationship between him and one of the school's students- or, more clearly, that he is a pedophile. The nature of the sin is meant to shock us, clearly, but Father Flynn's sin really could have been just about anything serious and it wouldn't have mattered. Doubt is not an exploration of sin, but an exploration of faith- and, of course, doubt. When Sister Beauvier makes her accusations, she does so with an unflinching faith. And yet, as the film illustrates, one can be certain about something, place absolute faith in it, and still be wrong. So what does this say about the nature, or the value, of faith itself? Also strongly present are the ideas of appearances and their relationship to reality- not necessarily false appearances. More like personality in relationship to righteousness. Whether or not Father Flynn is guilty or not, we can't help but observe his overly warm, friendly, and all-around lovable interactions with his congregation. Even when we do see the stern side of his countenance, he's such an easy character to side with. Aloysius Beaver, on the other stand, is repulsively strict, asking a girl to remove a barrette from her hair because it violates the school's standard of decency, and talking extensively on the evils of ballpoint pens. She is not the character that you want to root for or support at the beginning of the film. We want her to be wrong, and because of this, we suspect that the film will reveal her to be right. Regardless of the outcome, Doubt causes you to think about how one can be austere, cruel, and still loving and righteous, and also how the smiling, friendly, and jovial pastor can still be the source of unspeakable evil. This effect could not be achieved without the magnificent performances produced by the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman (though if you want his best performance, look to the review immediately after this one) and the beloved talent Meryl Streep. The sophisticated direction, as well, highlights some of the story's more important images and themes (I'm thinking particularly of the "feathers of gossip" sermon here), only strengthening the suspense of the ambiguity. I don't think that it would be "giving away the ending" to say that by the film's impressive conclusion, after revealing some very significant information, the film remains just as ambiguous as it was at the beginning. Naturally, things will be more ambiguous to some than others, but that's where it becomes necessary to rely on faith... and admit your doubt.
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson
Release Date: October 24, 2008
Running Time: 123 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
When you search the internet for "saddest movies ever" or "best tearjerker movies" many of the top results are "inspiring" melodramas, sappy romances, or movies about dogs or something. You won't find Synecdoche, N.Y. on any of these lists, and yet it is just about the saddest film I've ever seen. Sadder than inspiring dramas where characters are tested to their limits are the dramas where people fail to even come close to reaching the limit of their abilities and ultimately lie unsure of whether or not they're wasting their time. Sadder than tragic romances are films which acknowledge how rare true romance actually is, or films that go further to question the very existence of true love at all. Sadder than films where the dog dies are films where a man realizes all too late that he's been focusing so much on himself that everything that he treasures in life is slipping through his fingers with the inevitable passage of time. When he is told that his wife and daughter have been in Germany for a year, he responds, "It's only been a week." Falling under the delusion that it has been just a short vacation, he fails to notice when his own wife abandons him with her child. Even more sobering is his visit to Germany years later when he discovers that his daughter's nanny has sexually abused her and convinced her to stand nude in a pornographic exhibition, which is her father's only way of contacting her, while his daughter, refusing to interrupt her "performance", declines to say a word to him. At the core of Synecdoche, N.Y. is a tragedy of artistic ambition, as Caden Cotard attempts to construct a facsimile of the city around him and populate it with actors living fake lives, all as part of one large play which is being written/developed throughout its endless rehearsals, a play so large it will probably never reach an opening night nor will it come anywhere near to being performed, as Cotard begins nesting one play inside of another inside of another. Thus it has been constantly compared to Fellini's 1963 film 8 1/2, and not wrongfully so. All of Kaufman's films have what can only be described as Fellini-esque dialogue. Here, both films feature a director who mounts a project which becomes so large and vast that even they can't say what its about (the director's "project" in both films also features a very enormous set piece- in Synecdoche N.Y. features a warehouse large enough to house a city, with a warehouse inside it, with another city inside of that). But Synecdoche, N.Y. is about so much more than mere the hubris of a creator. It's also about roles in society that we construct for ourselves to inhabit, our paranoia of death, and the deception and inadequacy at the foundation of all human interaction. It is depressing because it delivers one painful truth after another, all dealing with the very nature of life itself. And yet, it doesn't really work as effectively as the Fellini classic. 8 1/2 attempts to focus on one core theme and communicates its thoughts on that theme very strongly. This film, by contrast, will think about anything and everything, to varying degrees of impact, so that you really have to watch it multiple times to glean everything from it that can be gleaned.
Charlie Kaufman, who wrote and directed Synecdoche, N.Y., remains pretty much my favorite person working in Hollywood today, because of his unflinching honesty in portraying the world (and his life in particular) the way he sees it, no matter how difficult it might be to market that to an audience, though this film is pretty solid evidence he doesn't give a shit about his audience. It is my least favorite of his works, and yet it's still a marvelous piece of work. It exists for the sake of its own message (and who can say what that is?), and horrid though it is, it is beautiful on that account, at the very least.
Director: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes
Release Date: February 8, 2008
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
It's impossible to sell off In Bruges as anything, really, because no matter what you pin it down as- comedy or tragedy, action or drama- it will do something to actively rebel that label. Hence it received relatively little success or attention at the time of its release, only to gain a continually growing status as a cult hit. When the movie introduces itself, it appears to be a "hit-man comedy"- there's something so ironic about two people who kill for a living being assigned to one of the most peaceful cities in the world. This is exactly what happens to Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), who are told to book a hotel in the quiet Belgian town of Bruges for a few days and do... nothing. Just wait for further orders, basically. Ken is enthusiastic about getting a chance to sightsee, while Ray loathes the place: "If I had grown up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn't, so it doesn't." By this point, In Bruges has all appearances of a dark comedy. But then we discover the reason for Ray's bitter behavior: on his last job, he accidentally killed a child in the crossfire. The moment we find this out, the story changes tone entirely, and begins to shift towards a more melancholy drama. Soon, Ray isn't the only one who's upset as Ken soon learns that his mission is to kill his partner as retribution for the death of the child. Hence the story becomes an emotional roller-coaster, taking us through scenes of intense action, scenes of intense humor, and scenes of intense pain, often all at the same time. The film shows us the humorous and odd side of life, but also breaks its own idiosyncratic tone to give us a dimension of bitter reality. The story's profound themes on redemption compliment this: Ray and Ken observe a Hieronymous Bosch painting and comment on heaven, hell and purgatory, which Ray describes as "the in-betweeny one. You weren't really shit, but you weren't all that great either." This is important because for Ray, Bruges functions a lot like purgatory- Ken is trying to redeem him, whereas the employer Harry desires just condemnation, but only Ray's actions throughout the film can decide whether he goes to heaven or hell. Writer and director Martin McDonagh has been described as perhaps the greatest living Irish playwright- I shouldn't let this be a selling point for the quality of the film's dialogue, but I'm going to go ahead and do that anyway. Of course, the dialogue from moment-to-moment is absolutely stuffed with gems of humor, but I want to address the story on a larger scale. Everything in the film ties into everything that came before it and everything that came after it: one thing follows another to lead to the conclusion, as if it's all being painted in one single master stroke. Exciting, heartbreaking, and delightfully quirky, there's very little that you can't love about In Bruges.
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Hiroshi Abe, Yoshio Harada, Kirin Kiki, You, Yui Natsukawa
Release Date: June 28, 2008
Running Time: 114 minutes
Rating: 5/5
Still Walking is a quiet Asian family drama about a pleasant afternoon in the idyllic springtime of Japanese suburbs. It has received unanimous praise, and so somehow I went into it with the expectation of being very bored. And I was- for the first fifteen minutes, at least- but then I began to figure out the connections between the characters, and everything suddenly fell into place. From that point on, I was engrossed. On the surface, this seems like just a movie about a casual family reunion. And on the surface, that's exactly what it is. Slowing the pace of the story and keeping the subject matter restricted to a simple level allows the director to draw attention to the subtext beneath the dialogue, and it's only when you notice that subtext and understand the significance of the event that you cease to skim past the scenes on their mundane appearances. To clarify: this is not a boring movie unless you allow yourself to be bored by it. The story centers around a roughly 24 hour period, encompassing the arrival of the guests followed by lunch, afternoon, dinner, bedtime, and their departure on the following morning. The hosts are an aging father Kyohei and his wife Toshiko; their guests are the families of their two children: first the daughter Chinami, her husband, and their children, and then the son Ryota, his wife, and her child. The occasion is the annual commemoration of the death of the eldest child Junpei, who died long ago saving a drowning stranger at the beach. It is clear that the father believes that the wrong son died; it is clear that the mother believes that the son should not have married a widow; it is clear that the stranger's life was probably not one worth saving in the first place. And somehow what is not said comes across so clearly through what is said. This is a film that is packed with human emotion in the most honest way, and yet there is so little "drama" in it by Hollywood standards. When I watched this film, I found myself fighting tears. First of all, because my grandfather, who passed away just five months ago, would have loved every moment of this film- it so perfectly encapsulates everything that he valued in a film. But secondly and more importantly, I could see within this film every Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner I had ever attended with my family. Not that we've had any tragedies like the loss of a child or anything. But somehow, as I've grown older, I've been able to notice the tension beneath the civility. To some people, Still Walking may seem like a pessimistic piece about donning false appearances of peace and contentment while anger and regret lie boiling beneath. And yet, to me, Still Walking seems more optimistic about one of the great facts of life: that although we may harbor slight bitterness for the people we call family, our civility and love for those people are able to overcome that, and through the sorrow of death, we can better learn to cherish the company of loved ones while they're still alive.
Director: Rahmin Bahrani
Starring: Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales
Release Date: February 27, 2008
Running Time: 84 minutes
Rating: 5/5
Perhaps the most critically acclaimed piece of neorealist tragedy is Vittorio di Sica's 1948 film Bicycle Thieves- and yet despite its enormous reputation, I can't bring myself to say that it's one of the greatest films ever made. Naturally, this isn't the review for Bicycle Thieves- so why do I bring it up? Because Chop Shop, despite succeeding Bicycle Thieves by about sixty years, embodies the same essential spirit of ambition and failure, but in a way somehow comes out as more far more brutal, far more compelling, and far more effective. In this film, there are no actors. We have people moving in front of a camera, and they are acting, but all of the characters in the story are named after the people who are portraying them. The setting defines the narrative: Willets Point, a certain area in Queens, New York defined by its abundance of scrapyards and repair shops. (And as in Bicycle Thieves, we see a certain image repeated endlessly, but this time it is not bicycle tires but car parts). Within this squalid and forlorn junk-heap we have our central character Alejandro: a street-orphan, living off of practically nothing, selling candy-bars and stolen car parts to get by on the day-to-day. He is accompanied by his sister Isamar (who goes into prostitution behind his back), and together they dream of raising enough money to get into a good school- the motivation of these characters is to lead a more or less normal life. And yet they are obstructed by the cruel hand of fate and the naïveté of their own decisions. Something in Chop Shop really captures the essential tragedy of the human condition. Alejandro's dream of the food truck could be representative of every human dream of success, and the result of his ceaseless efforts could be representative of every human failure. But what's better than that is that a film like Chop Shop says so much about America, about urban life, about the pressures facing those operating at the most desperate low of the economic spectrum, opening our eyes to their lifestyles and problems. It's social commentary; and yet it doesn't comment- it only portrays. Every bit of this film seems effortless; it's practically a documentary (I say this with no intention of undercutting the great amount of effort it takes to make a documentary). But it does far more than make us more mindful of the lives of the class of people that most middle-class Americans would like to forget about; and that's because it focuses on similarities, not differences. It is this ability, the ability to show us one character who really contains a bit of all of us, that makes the film so powerful and relevant- a film that will hopefully become less ignored as time goes by.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman
Release Date: July 18, 2008
Running Time: 152 minutes
Rating: 5/5
In an age where superhero films rule the box office, The Dark Knight stands out as one of the true cinematic staples of our era, met with enormous media anticipation, critical praise, and audience approval at the time of its release, and analyzed heavily by every YouTube critic since then. Clocking in at a good two-and-a-half hours, The Dark Knight is a fairly good example of a modern equivalent of the adventure epic- instead of horses racing across deserts, we see a motorcycle racing down the city streets, and instead of slow melodrama, we're delivered non-stop action. This is the definitive superhero epic, or should I say "vigilante epic" as Batman theoretically has no superpowers? How are we to define what is "superhero" movie and what is not? Of course, it is the structure of the film that really helps it too succeed- a structure that's too twisted to remember perfectly from memory, but which unfolds perfectly only as you're watching the film itself. That is, The Dark Knight is a complicated chain of events that can only be understood when you can see the forces driving those events- that is, the competing forces of order and chaos, good and evil, fate and chance, justice and corruption, truth and deception. These forces are personified through the two characters dancing around the center of the plot: Batman and the Joker, who compete for the spotlight in the film even more than they compete for control over the city. Yet still, there's room for a wide variety of supporting characters, each rising to a different position, representing different ideas and values in distinct ways, figuring into a story like pieces on a giant chessboard (yes, I know the metaphor is beaten to death throughout the film itself). First, note how we know Batman's identity as Bruce Wayne- but the Joker's true identity (within the context of the film) remains a mystery. Wayne's love, Rachel Dawes, is the smart and independent variation on the damsel in distress: Wayne can't get the girl because she knows he needs to get over his issues first. Harvey Dent shines out as a beacon of hope, and in a second-act subplot undergoes his own moral journey. Foxe, Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon are all key dominoes in the plot, but they also provide key viewpoints that challenge and/or motivate Wayne's decisions. At the turn of the millennium, terrorist attacks challenged our ideas of what measures were justified to preserve human life and public safety. The Dark Knight is effective in part because it embodies that insecurity and presents one ethical dilemma after another, really amounting to a deconstruction of our ideas of justice, leaving off with our hero in retreat. It is this film that remains the most striking and powerful of the trilogy: in fact, it's quite easy to say that it makes the other two seem underwhelming by comparison. More than that, though: The Dark Knight can stand perfectly well on its own, offering up just as much thought-provoking drama as it does brooding thrills.
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar
Release Date: October 24, 2008
Running Time: 114 minutes
Rating: 5/5
It's hard to define the genre that Let the Right One In really falls into. A casual observer would say "horror", and though it does have the general horror atmosphere and a few truly chilling scenes, it's very hard for me to really say that it is a horror film. It's really more of a romantic drama between two children (with fantasy elements, of course), though understandably it's not a film made for children. It's pretty exciting when the cute girl next door has a crush on you, even more so when she is revealed to have magical abilities such as flight, super agility, and immortality. And yet all of these powers come with a terrible price: being dead and subsisting on blood alone. The small boy at the center of the story is Oskar: bullied at school, he often entertains himself with violent fantasies of revenge. The girl who steals his heart is Eli (pronounced as Ellie), who slowly draws him into her world. Eli travels with a man named Hakan, who can easily pose as her parent or legal guardian in situations that require the purchase of train tickets or the renting of an apartment. Hakan is also responsible for killing strangers and bringing the blood back to Eli... that is, unless he messes up, in which case Eli has to go through the messy ordeal of killing and eating humans herself. And yet despite its gruesome subject matter, it's visually one of the most beautiful film's I've ever seen. I can't say how much the story benefits from the setting of suburban Sweden. Here, the camera seizes all opportunities to capture beautiful architecture lined with a thin blanket of snow, or a glistening forest of slender birch trees, or a lonely gymnasium pool, somehow made eerier by its brightness. Let the Right One In also manages to be tender and emotional- Eli and Oskar bond together because they are both outcasts in one sense or another. Eli provides Oskar with the sense family that he never had with his mostly absent parents, and also gives him the courage to stand up to the school bullies. Oskar, meanwhile, is Eli's gateway into the modern world- though trapped in a child's body, Eli is decades (possibly centuries) old- she wants someone who can make her feel young again. If you feel this has unsettling implications, you're absolutely right: and these implications are intended. Eli and Oskar's relationship toys with almost every concept that it can sink its teeth into- crossing over age, gender, and the barrier of death itself. Nonetheless, the mystery and beauty of their friendship pulls you in and wins you over- this is the perfect vampire romance. If you're in doubt, just watch the scene with the Rubix cube. You feel with such a great weight the loneliness of both of these characters. And yet, while this has the perfect makings of a love story and a coming-of-age story, it is neither- though it is easy to think so, and I wonder if this is, in fact, the story's intent: to deceive you. Though is seldom blatantly scary, there are things in this film that are downright terrifying, but in a subtle and much less noticeable way. Oskar's path in life is set up to bring about his own coming-of-age, his own rise to maturity, and yet that path is diverted by Eli, someone who remains eternally a child. This film, rather, is an anti-coming-of-age story- why? Consider what may happen to Oskar if he does fall in love with Eli? Perhaps he will grow older while she stays young? And what will that relationship look like? Suddenly we're reminded of Hakan, the "parental" figure in Eli's life who brings her blood- and suddenly a mental picture comes into focus of Oskar as one lover in a string stretching endlessly into the past and future. It's a lot more difficult to see it as a love story now, isn't it? Elegantly shot and brilliantly paced, Let the Right One In is the rare dark fantasy that comes out as smart and touching.
-Julian Rhodes
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