Take Me Over

Sometimes I want to be taken over. Just so that I can forget about myself for a while. My class is doing a yoga unit and our teacher keeps telling us to "forget about your problems. Let your mind go blank. Let any worries that you had throughout the day float away". I never understood that. I can’t forget about the problems I have because I carry them with me by just being me. Its impossible for me to let the stress of my history test next period to just float away. Being stressed over a test is who I am.  I try to let my mind go blank but it only brings my problems to the surface. So it was very refreshing to let myself go today in class. Walking around as someone else brought new problems that weren't mine. They were so interesting to experience. I saw everybody differently as well. Megan angered me, Barry was below me and Luke scared me. Even at those times when I felt as if I was breaking character I still thought a little like her. As if I really was Irene and Irene didn't want to become Kalli. I feel bad for those art haters out there who aren't able to let loose for a while. They’re stuck with themselves for the rest of their lives. 

 

Let The Right One In

Wow what a creepy movie. It really stuck with me. I was walking upstairs by myself and in my house there is a full wall window that you see as you walk up the stairs. The window was frosted and all you could see through it was the still silhouette of a dead tree and the empty white concrete ground of my backyard. Walking up those few steps seemed to be the longest and scariest experience of my life. 

For me, the reason the movie was so disturbing was because there was a sense of emptiness to it. The snow created a wide-open alone feeling that chilled you down to your bones. The still deadness of the lack of camera movement added to the creepy feeling. They turned space and stillness from comfortable to sick and eerie. Also, the camera was either really close to the actors or the shots where taken from a distance. I felt as if I was constantly being pushed and pulled. When the cameras were close, I felt close to the characters, like they were letting me in. but when the cameras were far I felt as if I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. Like I was spying and witnessing something that I shouldn’t have. I guess that this was a way to let the audience create what was happening in their own heads. Sound effects replaced close-ups. It was really interesting to experience a gory movie where nothing gory happened. All they did was set the situation up and use a few noises to send you to the darkest places of your imagination. I read that they would record the actress speaking for Eli eating a melon and then use that recording whenever she would feed. Amazing. 

The director also left a lot of the story up to our imagination as well. He never really goes into Eli and Hakan's back-story other than show that she is a boy. He makes you come up with what happened to them on your own. What I found really interesting was the relationship behind Eli and Hakan. At first, I thought that he was her father, and that he was afraid of her while at the same time loving her. There is no information to prove this wrong since Eli never says her actual age. I researched this and found theories on how Hakan might have been like Oskar. Maybe, when Hakan was once a boy she purposefully manipulated and befriended him so that he could become her blood supplier since she seems not to like actually killing people. It’s clear that Hakan has strong feelings for Eli as he even commits suicide for her. I don’t think that Eli loves him the same way back. Although she shows compassion towards him she didn’t seem upset when he died. It’s possible that Oskar is next in line to replace Hakan. She even seems to provoke his violent side as if preparing him to becoming a murderer.  In the novel, Eli and Hakan's relationship is completely different. Apparently she hires him to kill for her and he is happy to do so because he is a pedophile and is attracted to her child body. Personally, I prefer viewing the movie this way. I don’t think that Eli is manipulating Oskar. It’s nice that so much of the story is untold so that you can come up with your own way of seeing it.