Bullying in Let The Right One In
Award-winning Swedish Vampire Movie Targets School Bullies
Jul 15, 2008
Germany and Scandinavia have adopted the English word “mobbing” to describe the grownup, workplace version of what all too often happens at school: bullying. Some have noted a seeming epidemic of group bullying in German and Scandinavian workplaces and in schools in recent years.
This was perhaps most searingly burned into cinema goers’ consciousness via the Oscar-nominated 2003 Swedish film, Evil (Ondskan), about bullying at an all-male Swedish boarding school. The abuse was tacitly condoned by the schoolmasters and almost systemic, with fraternity hazing rituals as performed by sociopaths and without the redeeming aspect of...fraternity.
Like Let the Right One In, Ondskan is at least partly autobiographical. The novel that Ondskan is based on relates Swedish author Jan Guillou's actual experience.
Bullies in Let the Right One In
Certainly the bullying of 12-year-old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) in Let the Right One In—and this is no “boys will be boys” wedgies-in-the-locker-room humiliation, but really hardcore abuse in which the victim tends to end up in the emergency room—is central to the film.
The boys call Oskar names, publicly humiliate him and physically attack him with relentless frequency and determination.
At the Tribeca Film Festival 2008, where Let the Right One In made its U.S. debut, the writer of the novel and the screenplay, John Ajvide Lindqvist, explained some of his motivations.
"The movie portrayed the agony of my own childhood," Lindqvist told the audience, noting that, like Oskar, he was a victim of schoolyard bullying in 1980s Sweden.
One important element of the novel and the novelist’s life, that the movie avoids is homosexuality.
In the novel, according to Lindqvist, the character of Eli (played by in the movie by child actress Lina Leandersson) is not only a vampire but also a boy. The movie provides only the barest hint of this ambiguity when, as the children are lying in bed together, Eli tells Oskar, “I’m not a girl.”
Let the Right One In – Revenge Against the Bullies
In one of the final scenes of the movie, Oskar’s friendship with a vampire unexpectedly pays off. The scene involves the school swimming pool and Oskar’s nemesis with a posse that includes his hardened older brother, Eli shows Oskar just what her friendship is made of.
"I was looking forward to that scene for the whole book," Lindqvist said, “Because I finally got my revenge on my torturers.” Although the scene appears to be computer-generated, Lindqvist and director Tomas Alfredson note that it is in fact analog. Many of the sounds, for example, are low-tech: biting into a sausage and breaking open a watermelon figure in the mix, among other things.
Full Movie Review: Let the Right One In
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