My version of LMI

Elsewhere online, plenty of debate swirls around two film versions of the same novel--Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist.  Me, I loved the book and both films.  But then my mind went to the Japanese novel Ringu, which became a series of successful Japanese films.  And then a Korean film.  Plus an American movie, The Ring.  Last I heard a Hindu version was in the works...

So what if a third version of Lindqvist's book were filmed?  Here's how I'd do it.  Be warned--if you haven't read the book or seen at least one of the movies the following probably won't make a lot of sense.

The Right One (based on the same Jim Morrisey lyric as the novel and first film) would be set in a fictional West Island suburb of Montreal called Noirville.

To distinguish things, I'm naming my two central characters Orrin and Elle.  No, I've never been to Montreal but have read quite a bit about it for a variety of reasons. The West Island is a more 'rural' area and is somewhat heavily Roman Catholic. With that in mind I'd say Orrin goes to a Catholic school run by nuns. More, I'd have him the child of a mixed Anglo-French/Protestant-Catholic marriage that has failed and the bullies would target him in some sense along those lines. Why? Because it seems to me a major theme in the story is they way we refuse to find emotional connections with each other yet also how we do find them. Ethnic and religious conflict seem a good way to illustrate that without having to go overboard. Not that such would form a major plot point, but it would be part of the background and context.

My version would include the police detective character from the book, someone who more-or-less accidentally interacts with all the major characters at one time or another. Said encounters would make up something like a Greek Chorus to the story--not overtly but as a bit of punctuation. He'd be talking to Orrin's class at the start of the tale.  Later he'd meet the couple who'd later be destroyed by Elle, gently warn them about driving while drinking.  As killings by the so-called West Island Ripper became known, he'd appear on television, etc.

Elle's helper, whom I'd call Harmon, is a bit different from either Hakkan or Thomas. I'd like to hint he is a priest, perhaps a pedophile but also a man who has lost his faith then found it again in the service of this genuine supernatural creature. More, I'd like to show Elle as exhausted by his attentions and expectations--he doesn't see her after all but a kind of symbol.

Would I deal with Elle's gender? Depends. Given my druthers, yes. And I'd also like to include Zombie Harmon. My concern would be time, but if this weren't a motion picture it might work. Let us assume it a four hour cable miniseries and then we can go with that. But the whole Zombie thing would need to be streamlined a fair amount--its major dramatic purpose to indicate just how troubled and alone Elle's existence has been.

Actually, a fair amount of the story would be told from Elle's viewpoint. Would love to see a camera shot of her 'landing' at the Hospital window, especially from her POV. And that is also how I'd do the pool massacre--with Elle watching her dear friend Orrin then reacting with such incredible violence at seeing what was happening. Rather than stay with Orrin, I'd have the camera see with Elle's eyes as she destroyed each of the bullies--their terrified faces, the blood spattering everywhere, her leaving one of them alive because of youth and innocence, then plunging into the water to retrieve Orrin who has lost consciousness.

Cut to the aftermath, to the puzzling forensic evidence, the detective trying to figure out what to tell the missing boy's mother...

And somewhere, maybe in a hidden corner of an abandoned windmill where we saw Elle go after leaving the apartment building, we see the steamer trunk. Within it, Elle holds the soaking wet, seemingly dead body of Orrin in her arms. She wakes as the sun sets. Then, do does Orrin, his eyes catlike for a moment. He sees Elle--and smiles.


Just wanted to get that off my chest.

My Guest Blogs!

I've been guest blogging lately at vampires.com and thought to share some of them...

Children of the Night is about child vampires and what their portrayal may tell us about ourselves.

What To Do With Dracula? examines the way we seem to have wrung everything we can out of the book and character--or have we?

Tales of Persuasion

I came late to Jane Austen fandom. Not too surprisingly, although her more famous works such as Sense and Sensibility as well as Pride and Prejudice deserve plenty of applause, it is two other works that grabbed my heart. Oddly, or not, my faves are the lady's first and last novels.

Northanger Abbey was her very first novel, and dealt with a the young Catherine Moreland venturing into the real world with little same her own tiny experiences coupled with what she'd gleaned from novels.

Persuasion, her last, tells of Anne Elliot -- a much older (but still young) lady, one who has seemingly missed her chance at love and as a result happiness. Years before the story's beginning, Anne was in love with a Captain Wentworth, a then-penniless officer of bright prospects in the Royal Navy. Her late mother's friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her to reject the Captain's offer of marriage. Now, she is hardest-working and least-appreciated daughter of a spendthrift baronet forced to rent his estate to make ends meet -- and the admiral to whom he rents the place is wed to the same Captain Wentworth's sister! More, in the interim, he has made his fortune with prize money while Anne is now viewed as a spinster.

What follows is a seemingly gentle, but subtly tempestuous tale of these two somewhat-older persons finding each other once again. Austen rarely takes an obvious or easy way to the climax of her novels. This shows itself no exception. For example, we learn that Anne need not have been a spinster at all. She had another offer of marriage, and looks to be perhaps gaining another two -- one from a like-minded widower, another from a charming and intelligent cousin. This is important because in Austen women are in some real way always the equals of men. Equal in foolishness or venality, maybe -- or equal in passion and strength. In this case, the point is that Anne need not have pined for Wentworth yet she did. And being the eminently sensible, utterly reliable, demonstrably self-possessed person that she is -- why should that be? For the same reason Wentworth, a very handsome and wealthy man considered pleasing by virtually every girl he meets, does little more than flirt while hovering around Anne's life, often glaring at her or avoiding her yet never roaming far. Why? Because these two love each other with a depth quite beyond their petty errors or misjudgments.

This is, IMHO, one of the world's great love stories.

And recently I've watched two different adaptations of it, both made for television. Both are also excellent. Interestingly, both are also very different from one another, yet faithful to the source material. Bravo on both counts (or all three -- depending upon how one looks at it).

The 1995 version stars Amanda Root and Cieran Hinds as the once and future lovers. While Hinds is an actor I admire greatly (he'll be in the next two Harry Potter flicks incidentally), this was the first time I was aware of Ms. Root. She frankly deserves more acclaim than I think she has received, but then that might be a false impression. Evidently she works long and often in Britain.

The 2007 version stars Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones as the leads, and they likewise make a wonderful set of lovers. I'll admit to playing some favorites in both cases. For the one, I prefer Hinds' Captain Wentworth while for the other my choice would be Hawkins' Anne Elliot. Not to put down either one of their partners, who are very good and admirably suit their roles.

What is interesting is how the two productions approached their material. Here is a simple one -- the naval officers in the earlier version wear their uniforms, whereas the latter do not. This reflects the more naturalistic appearance of the '95 production. Clothes look more worn, candlelight is noticeably dimmer, and the action correspondingly more subtle (this is helped by the fact that Mr. Hinds is one of those actors who can do with a glance what many others might need a soliloquy to accomplish -- Ms. Hawkins is another one). Yet the action of the later version is more telling, often more exciting. The visit to the shore ( such an important event) takes place in bad weather, unlike the relative calm and sunny day of the first version (well, second--but I haven't seen the still earlier one). The long and weary journey to tell news of an accident is shown rather than skipped over, while Anne's sense of having actually gone through these trips is stronger. Likewise, the climax of the tale involves Anne actually racing to find Wentworth in the wake of receiving his letter -- she is literally breathless as she says her lines, and you can see how she trembles between her own self control and the passion of that moment.

In the '07 version the story veers between the POV of Anne and of Captain Wentworth himself. As a result, he is much less a cypher and we follow his own personal journey. Unfortunately, this costs some set up of essential exposition regarding the intentions of Anne's cousin. Such is handled much better in the '95 adaptation. Likewise there is a certain "sameness" to many of the male cast in the later one, in terms of general look and dress especially. Not so the earlier one, when it is easy to tell all characters apart at a glance -- not only in terms of looks but in dress.

At the same time, it is difficult not to see how some characters are made more overtly sinister in the '95 film, probably against the actual text. Lady Russell, for example, comes across as rather a villain in the earlier production -- a self-satisfied snob playing with Anne's life according to rules that have precious little to do with Anne's happiness. The later version is someone much more benign, who feels some guilt over the consequences of her persuasion. She has an agenda, to be sure, and one at odds with our own hopes but we also get the feeling that she would probably end up very pleased with how Anne's life ended up.

Likewise Anne's father, an arrogant fool as in the book, is interestingly different in the two versions. One has him as something of a ridiculous fop, pathetic in his own way and surrounded (by preference) with women as silly and petty as himself. Another dimension seemed to exist for the second (or third) version, albeit a subtle one. He appears to be treating his favorite (and most snobbish, like himself) daughter as a surrogate wife -- not in terms of sexuality but in terms of a partnership. He frankly comes across as a darker individual, and Anne a more impressive person having resisted his ways.

Both versions come up with endings not really in the novel. In '95 they made much of Captains having their wives aboard, and we see at the end Anne Wentworth beside her husband at sea. It was a lovely image of freedom from their pasts. The filmmakers twelve years later ended with the Captain giving his bride a special wedding gift -- the house where she'd grown up and which she clearly loved dearly. It felt more like a fairy tale ending, as well as a testament not only to Wentworth's esteem of his Anne, but his understanding of her.

In short, I recommend both, having appreciated both and remain grateful to those who created both versions.