Let the right one in.
Let the right one in is a Swedish romantic horror which is directed Tomas Alfredson. The films main character is a young boy named Oskar who gets tormented and bullied at school, throughout the film he becomes friends and lovers with a vampire who recently moved in next door to him. It is set in western Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982. When Oskar is away from his classmate bullies in a safe place, his home, he plots what he want’s to do to them, he reads the murder enquires in the newspaper, and he then collects them and sticks them into a scrapbook, this could show it is special to him as he has keeping them safe.
The use of mise en scene is very important, as this makes shows the viewers how the actors feel, it sets the scene as if the character is feeling unhappy the film will be very dark and the music will be low however if they character is feeling better about themselves the music and settings will be enlightened. The film begins with dramatic music; this is to set the scene it represents Oskar’s mood, it shows the viewers he feels very low, the surroundings around him are dark and cold as it has been snowing, this could represent how Oskar is feeling, the icy snow for his heart, as we see he keeps cuttings of murders this could show he doesn’t have a heart and doesn’t care about the deaths. The snow could also represent his feelings, throughout the whole film it’s there, the weather can determine whether Oskar is happy or not, when it’s the sky is dark he is unhappy, he doesn’t like his life and he feels very down, however when the sky brightens up he has cheered up, this is shown when Eli says that she will be his girlfriend and also when Oskar starts to stand up for himself against the bullies, I think it’s very clever how they do this because both cases involve Eli in making the scene brighter and happier however she is completely the opposite to that.In the film there is not a lot of special affects, if any, this is because the film is a low budget however I think that’s what makes the film more realistic, just a simple outside scene in the snow can set the atmosphere. Because of the low budget they had to show the characters feelings in simple ways for example the way they dressed, you can tell they are not very expensive, some just rags, this could show what they were in the 1980’s with not much money, we can tell he is not well off from his small flat, the clothes Oskar and Eli wear are very dark and mutual colours at the start of the film, this shows their mood however when they become more comfortable with each other and become close their moods change and so does the colour of their clothes, it’s not a large difference as they didn’t want to completely change Oskar’s appearance just when Oskar and Eli are together Oskar starts to wear colours like red, orange and pink, personally I think red represents blood and anger but in this way they have used it to show happiness.
In the film the camera work was used very effectively, with a low budget they did as much as they can and it worked very well. It is quite simple as because of the low budget, no special affects and it being a horror they needed to make it simple for the audience as it would have drawn the realism out of it. Whenever something frightening or sickening happened the shot would go to a close up, however the violence would be shown off-screen, for example when Oskar is being whipped by the bullies you can’t actually see what’s happening, but after you see the cut on Oskar’s face. As well as the close up’s there were many long shots also, when Eli is in the tunnel saying ‘help me’ however it does go to a close up when she pounces on her target. There was also a lingering shot of his fathers friend, shown just in his sandals and socks in the snow.
The music and sound in the film is one of the most important factors, it sets the mood, if there is a sad or creep scene there will be low dramatic music however whenever the mood is enlightened it goes much more cheerful and high. It brings a lot of tension to the scene, it can build up a point in the scene, the music gets louder and louder at one point until it completely stops to draw us in, this is what happens in most films, it draws us in as we know something is going to happen and in this film it is used very well. At the end of the film also music is used from the audio player, the music was quite upbeat, for the film anyway, Oskar was dancing/exercising in the water, then when the bullies walked into the swimming pool area it was still on until when one of them kicked it into the water, this could be seen as they were putting a stop to the happiness as the song was quite a happy song, they were now going to make his life misery once again. The use of sound was also used very well, when the bullies are telling him to ‘squeal, squeal like a pig…’ Oskar talks to himself quite a lot, when he is out in the courtyard ‘fighting’ with the tree, he repeats the saying, pretending the tree is his bullies he is standing up too, he does this to show he can stand up for himself, however he cant, at the beginning of the film, he wants to a brave tough man who can stand up for himself, however he is just a small weakened boy until Eli comes along.
Claude-Levi Strauss was a French pronunciation, the write of ‘Let the right one in’ he was born on the 28th November and died on the 30th October 2009. His focus was binary opposites, for example, good v evil and happy v sad, he believed that everybody had a total opposite to the other, we can tell this by the film, Oskar could be seen as a good lad however bad also because of the newspaper cuttings and the knife under his bed, although you can see that he is bullied, these are bad and they could of pushed Oskar into the position he is in, keeping a knife under his bed for the safety against the bullies.
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian Soviet formalist who was born on the 29th April 1895 and died on the 22nd August 1970. His theory was that every person has a role, these were, the hero, the villain, the donor, the princess, her father, the helper, the dispatcher, and the false hero. I think most of these roles are Eli and Oskar, for example Eli being the false hero as she helps Oskar however she has committed many murders and Oskar being the helper, although he doesn’t do much to help he does keep check on Eli.
Tzvetan Todorov was born on March 1st 1939 and is living in France to this day from 1963. He is a Bulgarian structuralism linguist publishing influential who worked on narrative from the 1960s onwards including writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory.
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