Eli’s Eyes
In the book upon which the film is based, there is a moment of transformation for Oskar: “For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was…himself.” Seeing through Eli’s eyes is a huge thing for Oskar and the film conveys this magnificently through directorial manipulation of a natural resource: actress Lina Lina Leandersson’s naturally large eyes capable of either conveying a wealth of emotions or having a wealth of emotions interpreted by the viewer. The imagery is not that we see Oskar seeing himself through Eli’s eyes, but that we ourselves can see how Oskar—or Hakan or anyone else—could see something special in themselves through those windows to the soulless vampire.
Trans-Vamp Vision
At one point, Eli inquires of Oskar if he would still like her as much were she a boy, it is part of the allusive way that the film handles what is explored in greater depth and detail in the book. The novel is far more explicit in providing the backstory to Eli: she began life as a boy. This fact is not mentioned explicitly, but a quick and shocking flash of imagery makes it clear: a brief shot of Eli, nude, a castration scar on her crotch the only evidence left of her biological gender.
Bloodletting In
One of the “rules” of being vampire—which is apparently not well known considering how many people wind up becoming victims of them—is that they can’t enter any domicile unless they have been invited. Since this rarely becomes an issue in movies, for whatever reason, the actual impact of coming into a home without being invited is even more an unknown quantity to moviegoers. The mystery is revealed in one of the most horrific scenes in the film when Oskar—having briefly rejected Eli upon discovering her secret—allows her to enter without inviting her. The imagery here is significant as relates to the demythologizing of the vampire which part of the construction of the film. This is a movie that shows in no uncertain terms that being a vampire is not romantic at all, but is a very messy and disgusting way to live.
The Bullies
One way of interpreting the film is an allegory about the plethora of school shootings in which the shooter’s violent eruption is payback for bullying. Just as taking an assault weapon into a school and shooting down people who both did and did not bully the shooter is a completely over the top and unacceptable means of revenge, so is the befriending a vampire with supernatural powers. The allegory is not perfect, of course, because Oskar’s revenge does not involve his own hand on the trigger and, more importantly, the moment of truth is genuinely a case of self-defense: Oskar is less than half a minute away from being drowned when Eli saves him. On the other hand, Eli does not merely save him, but leaves a bloodbath behind in doing so. The imagery of the swimming pool scene where Oskar’s dreams of revenge finally play out for real are nevertheless allegorically realistic as many of these school shooters who have survived themselves have described the entire event as something like an out-of-body experience which sounds very much like the imagery of Oskar underwater with the sound eerily filtered and his own hand in the proceedings disconnected as the massacre ensues.
