I saw Let the Right One In first and might prefer it by a small margin, because it seems to capture a bizarre and unsettling mood better than Let Me In. But ultimately I thought both were very good.
Slightly off topic, but I always find it odd how Americans will apparently refuse to watch movies with subtitles, as I have it totally backwards. I’ve grown up in a country where subtitles are the norm (usually English language movies and TV shows subtitled into my obscure first language), and have been reading them my whole life. My problem now is that I’m so used to them that I often have real trouble catching dialogue in movies if they don’t have subtitles. And it’s not a language issue - my English comprehension is just fine. In fact, the most comfortable way for me by far to watch an English language movie is *with English subtitles on. * :smack:
Of course, as long as I keep insisting on having subtitles whenever I watch a DVD, I’ll never really get better at doing without.
I’ll see that and raise you this:
I’m a Brit in Sweden, where all foreign stuff (that is not for young kids) is subtitled.
When I watch an English language film or TV show I still cannot stop myself reading the subtitles. They are just there. I can’t not read the things. I guess it is good for my Swedish …
I really enjoy both adaptations and think each is better than the other in their own ways. However, all this talk of making a “copy” is just ridiculous. It was a book first and books have multiple adaptations all the time. It’s not a remake of the Swedish version, it’s an American adaptation. Now, it’s perfectly fair to compare adaptations (like discussing which film version of Romeo & Juliet you think was best) but to call it a “copy” is unnecessary rhetoric… but then, what would the SD be w/o unnecessary rhetoric?
I don’t know about France or Germany but virtually all movies in China are subtitled since while China has one written language it has multiple spoken languages, Cantonese(the dialect spoken in Hong Kong) and Mandarin(the official language and the spoken dialect of Taiwan) being the two largest, and they are mutually incomprehensible.
I think most of the world watches subtitled TV shows and movies, however it’s not “Americans” who don’t like to watch subtitled shows, it’s English-speaking people.
People in Sydney, Vancouver, Melbourne, and Dublin are just as reluctant to watch subtitled show or movies.
They don’t like doing it because they’re not used to it.
For the record, I loved both movies and find the attack on the American version ridiculous.
They’re both adaptations of a book.
Beyond that, lots of movies get remade and in some cases the results are really good, I.E. John Carpenter’s* The Thing* or Red Dragon, and in some cases they’re horrible, I.E. Psycho or The Jackal.
“Let the Right One In” is an adaptation of a book with the screenplay being written by the book’s author. “Let Me In” is a remake of it. As anyone who has read the book can tell you, if Matt Reeves had really adapted the the book, “Let Me In” would have been a very different movie.
How exactly would it have been “very different” if it had genuinely been “an adaptation.”
There are several other characters and their relationships detailed in the book. We learn a lot more about Hakan’s past as well as Eli’s. Most importantly…SPOILER ALERT… in the book, Hakan doesn’t exactly die when he falls out of that window.
My point is that Reeve’s screenplay isn’t an original adaption of the book. It is a virtual remake of the original film with some superficial changes that don’t, in my opinion, improve on it.
Why couldn’t the changes from the book have made sense to the writers/directors of both? People that are good at adaptions tend to be fairly decent judges of what should stay or go, and it’s not that odd that different people would find the same things to keep/cut out.
Actually, I think that
the whole affair with Håkan after he falls out the window in the novel, as well as the whole androgyny debacle and just what happened with Eli’s privates,are better off dropped for the movie, and they shouldn’t have been kept in the novel in the first place. They’re interesting story ideas, just not really parts of *this *story, and they just seem messy and not really needed. I think Lindquist, the writer, understood that when he wrote the screenplay. The novel, it seems to me, doesn’t always know how good it is - that is, how strong the core story is, or just what that story is. Of course, the movies, both of them, have their own problems, although I will defend the original until I die - I love it to bits. In fact, thanks for reminding me of it, I need to go worship at its altar for a while.
It’s a funny situation. We have a novel and two movies, and I don’t think any one of them are the perfect expression of the story (though, again, I think the original movie is the best). Still, the story, the story in the story, as it were, is still there in the audience’s mind anyway, as if it goes beyond any specific expression of it. There’s something almost mythical about it, something Greek. Yes, I really do think it’s that good. At the same, time, of course, it somehow manages to hit the zeitgeist smack in the balls, and not take itself too seriously.
Heck, if they made, say, a comic book, exploring it in yet another way, that would probably be awesome too. I think it can take yet more probing.
Actually, the changes from the book to screenplay in both versions make perfect sense in that the elimination of the novel’s subplot’s keep the films focused on the kids. But I don’t think the “Let Me In” screenplay is as dependent on the novel as it is on the film it is a remake of.
One of Matt Reeves’ changes isn’t so superficial and it is the deal-killer for me. When we learn that Abby’s caretaker has been with her since his childhood this strongly implies, to me, that Owen is on the same track. Especially so in light of the fact that we see little of Eli and Oskar’s love for each other in their American counterparts. What made “Let the Right One In” so beautiful to me was that Eli had found a real soul mate in Oskar after many years of miserable loneliness. Not that she had found a new blood supplier as "Let Me In’ seems to imply Abby has.
I thought Let the right one in was like watching a boring docudrama. It had a bland feel to it.
Let Me In is one of my favorite movies. Tied with The Crow and Pan’s Labyrinth .
This is how I interpreted the ending of Let the Right One In. I just figured for her, the “soul mate” can’t really last a lifetime and they end up as blood suppliers. But that may be because I prefer that ending.
Let the Right One In certainly ends on one of the most beautiful dissonances (so to speak) that I know of. Does anyone know of a happy ending more disturbing than that, with equal amounts of “aaw, how sweet - wait, actually, hang on, let me belatedly realize the implications of this, oh holy* f**ck* that is messed up” -ness?
That’s one interpretation. However, I see too many indications throughout the film that Eli’s relationship with Oskar is deeper. Her tender touching of his arm in the bed scene. That she puts her life in his hands by entering his apartment without an invite. That she tries to eat the candy to please him, which COULD be manipulation, but then there’s that look on her face, which Oskar can’t see, afterward when she asks him, “Would you still like me if I wasn’t a girl?” And, she leaves without him. Of course, she comes back, but if she came back and saw Oskar playing in the pool and in no danger, she may have left, never to return.
Of course, Oskar’s love could put him in the blood supplier role in the future. But, as the film shows us, right now he doesn’t have the stomach for killing. And if Eli valued him as much as I believe she does, even though she hated killing to feed, she might opt for that in lieu of allowing her soul mate to put himself in danger.
It’s clearer in the book that Eli’s bond with Oskar means more to her than just a caretaker, but there’s plenty in the movie, some of it subtle, to convince me that this is true.
I agree that he’s a more than a caretaker now. I assume that her old caretaker started off as a soulmate too.
No, at least not in the book. Eli comes across adult Hakan as a homeless alcoholic and recruits him. The film leaves the question open.
He’s more than a homeless alcoholic in the novel. He’s also a
pedophile. Eli rewards him when he brings her blood by letting him have physical contact.
And Eli
really isn’t a girl.
I thought that change improved the story. It adds a layer of pathos to both the caretaker and Oskar.
I have one issue with the book. Lindqvist is so eager to hammer in the time frame that he keeps mentioning things that really were of no importance at the time, they just were there, part of everyday life. Apart from that I enjoyed the story as I am fairly familiar with the part of Stockholm where it takes place. One other thing I liked is that Eli is said to have come from a place not far from where I grew up.
BTW, this scene is supposed to take place right here.
