Struldbrugg

Em tempos de febre de vampiros (se você olhar a página de programação de cinemas da Folha, Lua Nova ocupa uma coluna inteira), Deixe Ela Entrar (Laatt dem Rätte Komma In), que já fui assistir no cinema três vezes e cuja versão de papel comecei agora, não tem absolutamente nada a ver com a horda de outros mal distinguíveis uns dos outros. Ou melhor, tem a ver sim - do mesmo modo que Uma Modesta Proposta tem a ver com panfletos de economistas ortodoxos.

(Se você não gosta de saber a estória antes de assistir ou ler, melhor parar por agora. Para dar um espaço, segue uma foto de Isabelle Adjani e Klaus Kinski em Nosferatu.)



O filme segue as aventuras de um menininho que encontra uma menininha e descobre o amor. Só que a menininha é uma vampira. E não uma "vegetariana" como a galera de Crepúsculo ou o Pequeno Vampiro, nem uma criatura romântica, atormentada e cúl como o os da Anne Rice e derivados (Vampire, True Blood, etc). E ao longo do filme você vai descobrindo outros detalhes - por exemplo, que o velho que se muda pro condomínio junto com a menininha Eli é o último menininho que se apaixonou por ela, deixando no ar a impressão de que esse é o mesmo destino de nosso herói Oskar. Ou que quando ela diz que não é uma menina não quer dizer que não é humana, mas que é um eunuquinho mesmo. Coisinhas assim.

Tudo isso conduzido com extrema delicadeza, e sem transformar as personagens em caricaturas baratas, e é aí que reside a força do filme. Deixe Ela Entrar é uma estória de terror, e uma tragédia no sentido antigo da palavra, justamente porque você sente que, todo mundo fazendo o que deve ser feito, as coisas levarão a um resultado horrível. É ao mesmo tempo profundamente realista no tratamento da relação entre os dois - Eli sabe que vai usar e abandonar Oskar, ao mesmo tempo que se apaixona por ele, e por isso fica relutante.

E é esse realismo, essa seriedade e delicadeza, que fazem do filme uma excelente paródia tanto de narrativas recentes sobre vampiros quanto de estórias de amor infantil ou os Bildungsromanen que infestam as telas. Uma paródia escrachada, convenhamos, não leva nada a filmes que já são quase paródias involuntárias de si mesmos. Não pode, entretanto, se gabar de ser o primeiro a sacanear de maneira maestral os que anseiam pela vida eterna, afinal o mesmo autor da Modesta Proposta que mencionei acima escreveu isso aqui: (leiam também a versão pornô do Manara)

After this Preface he gave me a particular Account of the Struldbruggs among them. He said they commonly acted like Mortals, till about thirty Years old, after which by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, encreasing in both till they came to four-score. This he learned from their own Confession; for otherwise there not being above two or three of that Species born in an Age, they were too few to form a general Observation by. When they came to four-score Years, which is reckoned the Extremity of living in this Country, they had not only all the Follies and Infirmities of other old Men, but many more which arose from the dreadful Prospect of never dying. They were not only Opinionative, Peevish, Covetous, Morose, Vain, Talkative, but uncapable of Friendship, and dead to all natural Affection, which never descended below their Grand-children. Envy and impotent Desires are their prevailing Passions. But those Objects against which their Envy principally directed, are the Vices of the younger sort, and the Deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of Pleasure; and whenever they see a Funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a Harbour of Rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no Remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their Youth and middle Age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the Truth or Particulars of any Fact, it is safer to depend on common Traditions than upon their best Recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to Dotage, and entirely lose their Memories; these meet with more Pity and Assistance, because they want many bad Qualities which abound in others.

If a Struldbrugg happen to marry one of his own kind, the Marriage is dissolved of course by the Courtesy of the Kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two come to be four-score. For the Law thinks it a reasonable Indulgence, that those who are condemned without any Fault of their own to a perpetual Continuance in the World, should not have their Misery doubled by the Load of a Wife.

As soon as they have compleated the Term of eighty Years, they are look'd on as dead in Law; their Heirs immediately succeed to their Estates, only a small Pittance is reserved for their Support, and the poor ones are maintained at the publick Charge. After that Period they are held incapable of any Employment of Trust or Profit, they cannot purchase Lands or take Leases, neither are they allowed to be Witnesses in any Cause, either Civil or Criminal, not even for the Decision of Meers and Bounds.

At Ninety they lose their Teeth and Hair, they have at that age no Distinction of Taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without Relish or Appetite. The Diseases they were subject to still continuing without encreasing or diminishing. In talking they forgot the common Appellation of Things, and the Names of Persons, even of those who are their nearest Friends and Relations. For the same Reason they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their Memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a Sentence to the end; and by this Defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

The Language of this Country being always upon the Flux, the Struldbruggs of one Age do not understand those of another, neither are they able after two hundred Years to hold any Conversation (farther than by a few general Words) with their Neighbours the Mortals; and thus they lye under the Disadvantage of living like Foreigners in their own Country.