Sad, bitter news today. I am behind the times, as I have just heard an American company is remaking one of the favorite movies, made from an even better book, the Swedish film Let the Right One In. BUY IT on Amazon
Of course, because of the mad success of the brainless, poorly made and worse acted Twilight series, every ignorant fuck who sees this new American version will think, “oh, another rip-off movie for Twilight, with young vampires”, but they will be, as they always are in everything they say, think and do, wrong.
The original novel on which the movie was based was published in 2004, a year before the first Twilight book. It had been conceived even sooner. The movie came out in 2008, the same year as Twilight, but of course before the success of Twilight could have affected, or corrupted it.
While Twilight is ignorant, asinine, lame, banal, cliche, ripped off, too stupid to know it’s stupid and loved by stupid women and girls of all ages, LTROI is the opposite: touching, scary, moving, strange, intelligent, daring, original.
Which is why I dread the American version: they will fuck it up beyond all recognition.
First off, as is often the case in foreign films, they have really good young actors. You don’t get the mugging cuteness of a Britbrat like Freddie Highmore or the irritating precociousness and arrogance of 99% of American child actors. The lead actors in the Swedish version remind me of the kid who was in Time Bandits: refreshingly natural and unaffected, with none of the horrid American “stage-mothered” affectations American brats use.
Also, LTROI is thankfully missing the gauche, overblown and over-the-top acting style used by the cretins in films from the Sandlot to Spy Kids and beyond, a near-cousin of teevee acting and a descendant of the truly abominable Broadway acting style. I’m not one of the fans of Kirsten Dunst’s turn as a child vampire in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. She has that over-managed, over-sly and unnatural manner that smacks of “acting!” and I’ve yet to see an American kid actor without it. Elijah Wood came close in Avalon, but not quite (actually, the female lead sort of superficially resembles a young Wood- she’d need a nose-job before she even find an agent in the US, however).
That’s not even to mention the true real-life monster of a human being the actors who play in most American movies are, like the fucking CUNT who plays the lead in Twilight, I can’t be bothered to find out her name, I detest her so. And the fagboy who plays the vampire paedophile who molests her with his cold sparkly dick is more laughable than scary.
That’s yet another point: the Swedish actors, without exception, are not “Hollywood pretty” or beautiful by American celeb standards, or even what they call “Hollywood Ugly”, where Minnie Driver is supposed to be the ugly girl of the group.
That’s not to say they aren’t attractive: they just look like real people. The female lead would probably be unable to get an acting gig in America, at any level or medium. Even character actors and bit players have a certain “look” to them. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are schlubs by Hollywood standards, but they still have that Hollywood look. The people in the Swedish film look like people you work with, the people you see at the store or sitting beside you at the movies. No American film really feels “real” because of this, and this film feels very real for the same reason.
Again, that’s not to say the female lead is not beautiful. She is, she has character and depth and a meaningful, deep and resonate beauty vastly superior to the sheen of a Reese or an Angelina. The Americans will surely fuck that up, casting someone slick and superficial and a shitty actress to boot. When they voted Witherspoon the Oscar, you could pretty much kiss any semblance of real acting talent in American movies goodbye, it was no longer necessary, although Cher and Julia Roberts had already demeaned the standard of an award won by real technicians and artists for decades, and the well named Sandra Bullocks just continues that fine tradition of shiny plastic bimbos winning because they “look the part”, not because they have an ounce of acting talent.
Americans do many many things well. Making subtle and elegant and deep films is not one of them. The typical American thinks Independence Day was a great movie, or any of the newer Batman “reboots” (god, I fucking hate that phrase). They would not like the Swedish version of LTROI, but I’m sure they will find the new version passable, because it will conform to all the American movie tropes. Already reports are that the script will leave out various elements which may confuse and disorient American viewers, like a Hottentot with a banjo.
The music is great as well, also without the Hollywood sheen. I haven’t heard a soundtrack as good or as moving since Slingblade, which was, probably not coincidentally, made by a Hollywood outsider. The dreck from John Williams, Hans Zimmer, James Horner and Newton-Howard and other grindhounds who pump out shit like a bilgepump is as disposable and worthless as the movies they accompany. Max Steiner must whirl in his grave at the latest Elfman excess.
Even the rock music in the original LTROI has a Nordic charm and innocence to it. Aerosmith doing Diane Warren, or the inevitable Taylor Swift & Kanye West duet or whatever other shit the American producers make a deal to include, will not be an improvement.
Anyway, it’s with sadness that I found out, very late it seems (I don’t visit “Ain’t It Cool News”, they bother me too) and I mourn in advance for how they’ll ruin a great original, and the American version will overwhelm the foreign one all out of existence, ala “Vanilla Sky/Abre los Ojos” and a hundred other great little foreign films with character, and originality, and passion, and realness.