Vampires Suck. Not all of them, though.

I have always been into vampires.

One of my "biggest regrets" is not having written a story that I had in mind when I was in primary school: it was about a vampire girl, aged 12, who didn't want to kill humans and then falls in love with one of them. Impossible love, of course. This made me jealous of every successful novel or movie that came out afterwards, from Interview with the Vampire (1994) to bloody Twilight (2008) and, finally, arriving to Let The Right One In.
Oh well...you can't patent ideas, can you?

The release of the American remake Let Me In by much respected director Matt Reeves, prompted me to watch the original Swedish movie, Låt den rätte komma in. 

I said I am into vampires, not horror movies. Therefore the immortal Christopher Lee and Murnau's Nosferatu are not included in the list. Hail to them, but no, thanks. Perhaps Gary Oldman's Dracula can still make it despite his various metamorphosis in furry wolf, giant bat, rats, old man, hot prince...
My ideal of vampire is, unfortunately, the Hollywood type: painfully beautiful, cold eyes, trickle of blood nobly falling from the corner of his mouth. Who, woman or man, wouldn't offer the neck to Brad Pitt? I bet Kirsten Dunst has a framed giant poster of this picture in her house.

Right, end of digressions.
Let The Right One In is very, very, very Ingmar Bergman: the silence; the suspended atmosphere telling us about a country where life goes on slowly, beaten by rigid seasons; the almost inquiring videocamera, closing up on the characters' soul. Real life is brilliantly painted in the movie and...oh, all of a sudden there is a vampire in the picture. It's a bit clashy, but nonetheless works.
Said vampire has no problem whatsoever in killing people and sucking their blood, to live. And the protagonist, Oskar, seems to have no problem with it either. A bit creepy there, I must say.

I was expecting someone to die. To turn into ashes. At least to get charged with murder, in the usually cathartic plot: the heroes win, the villains pay. Even if the villain is the hero.
Instead, the end - spoilers alert! - sees the two protagonists leaving the town together, with the boy ideally becoming the vampire's new guardian and partner (in crime). No issues about growing up apart, immortality vs mortality, etcetera. Quite a hasty, naive ending, and a shame, as it leaves too much space for imagination and a very worrying idea about rough justice: are you bullied at school like Oskar? Hit them harder, or befriend a vampire to have the thugs tore to pieces, why not.
This last bit, of course, adds a bit of implausibility to the whole situation, but the message is still clear: don't trust the system, do it yourself.

What happened to redemption? Lessons learned? Education?
I might sound like an old auntie or the preacher here, but movies are the reflection of real life, a mirror of what might happen. All of a sudden, movies are full of vigilantes administering their own justice.
And we sympathise with them, but maintaining at the same time our own judgment criteria.
I hope.

I would like to remember the vampire like this. A being torn between good and evil, that eventually pays or disappears. Every vampire movie teaches: you don't want to mess with the immortals.

Little note: I haven't read the book. Perhaps I should.

What is your profession?

Last night, on Five, there was the TV premiere of "300".

Believe it or not, I went to see it at the cinema when it came out, with a more than enthusiastic husband. I laughed from beginning to end, as I did again yesterday.
Because, let's admit it, that movie is hilarious: "Spartans! What is your profession?" and the consequent Auh! Auh! Auh! was the most common joke among me and my friends, especially if we were involved in sport contests. It made us feel like total bonkers and at the same time it was nice, bonding.

The reasons why I am writing this post about a testosterone movie, as you might be wondering, are two: with this, I open a new section of the blog, dedicated to reviews and many other N.E.A.R. - Not Exactly Art Related things. The second is that "300", directed by Zack Snyder, is a literal shot-for-shot adaption of the graphic novel by Frank Miller.

In fact, visually speaking, "300" is a comic strip translated for the big screen and, because of this, loved or hated by critics and the public. I read with great interest about the complaints on historical mistakes, the grudge bore by Iranians because of the way Americans depicted their ancestors the Persians, and the nonsense of the dialogues (Persian: "Our arrows will obscure the sun!" Spartan: "Then we'll fight in the shade." Delightfully yob-ish) but I won't discuss the plot here, just the "translation". Movies are made of image frames, and each frame, in my opinion, constitutes a unique "artist" vision. Snyder's one is extreme, fascinating and unreal at the same time. And, for "unreal", I mean even more unreal than a movie normally is, because it is in the nature of a movie to be something else from reality. For its strong graphic flavour, with every frame digitally reduce to its essential contrasts of light and dark, the natural colours almost erased from the palette, this work is neither a movie nor a comic strip, entering the realm of the undefinable tableaux vivant. Images conceived for the printed paper will inevitably clash with the celluloid world if literally transposed to it.

Although the result of "300" is fine, and visually speaking acceptable in some ways as an extreme, interesting experiment, I think that, as a "visual artist", Snyder made just a little mistake: wanting to justify his particular vision through an allegedly accurate referral to ancient history. This is the so much sought after connection with reality, sometimes pursued by both directors and the public, that in the end spoils the magic of cinema. A movie is there to remind us that everything is possible... in our imagination. The moving images just give shapes to this idea, with no need to convince us about the plausibility of certain facts. Snyder himself called Miller's graphic world "surreal" and wanted to reproduce this mood in his movie, so what was the need for historical facts? Not digging properly into history may lead to superficial results and that's exactly what happens here: everything is left on a very baroque surface with loads of style, but no depth.

In the end, "300" is just an interpretation of a legendary battle, consciounsly parodying the notions of glory and dying for the honour of the homeland. Such an absurd - and indeed surreal - movie to become a classic.

All right, I did say this post would be not art related, but I couldn't help such professional bias. After all, what is my profession?