
Perhaps I'm looking into this film too deeply, digging through the frozen snow for the blood, if you will, but I think this is the most brilliant Holocaust film I've ever seen.
Squirming a bit? A wee bit surprised? Trust me, I feel you...but I mean what I said. To me, this film is using vampirism as a brilliant vehicle for the diabolic violence of the Second World War.
Let's start with the lead actors. On one hand, we have Oskar, blonder than blond, with translucent skin, a lonely lost boy in a country full of untouched and unbroken (pure white) snow. On the other side of the screen, we have Eli. Eli, people. Work with me here.... it's not like she's named Lina, Signe or Ikea, for that matter. Eli has dark, slightly curly hair, pronounced eyebrows and a troubling beauty far beyond her years. She can't stand the light and is portrayed as a blood-letter, a veritable vampire who sucks the life and energy from the white men and women around her.
If you're still with me, I'll continue. Enter the story of a forbidden love. Eli continually warns Oscar that "things can't continue like this". She can only travel by night and she spends her days hidden under five layers of blankets in a bathroom in a semi-deserted apartment. Certainly, we can see the comparison with the vampire lifestyle- the intolerance of light, safe passage in the evening, the endless need for blood...but what of the interesting addition to the vampire genre, the idea that vampires can only be accepted into someone's house if they are invited?
Here, I see a person seeking safe passage- an ostracized denizen looking for a haven. Eli's guardian warns her about seeing Oskar, and Oskar's absentee mother, when home, seems ill-at-ease with his newfound fasination in the morose next-door neighbor. Things are looking dangerous for the chosen son.
Theirs is one untimely and unlucky love. Eli is a pariah with a yellow star upon her adolescent chest, and Oskar steps one footprint closer to his grave ever time he meets up with her in the aluminum playground outside of their apartments. (Which are made out of brick, by the way- and you don't see brick buildings every day in Sweden unless we're dealing with chimneys). When it becomes too dangerous for the two to be seen together in public, they opt to communicate through a "wall"- tapping out simplistic messages using morse code.
This is impossible love, big time, but the ice is there to crack. Did I spend too many years with my nose against the uppity bridge of semiotics, or did the Aryan race just meet the "dark side" under the umbrella of the vampire genre?





