The story opens with the main character, Douglas. He initially presents as a well-meaning, good-natured boy, if somewhat odd or maybe precocious. This impression quickly fades as the story follows him, however. The table is set (or as one might say in Paris, le tableau prémonitoire) in the kitchen scene. The way his eyes linger on the knife, the joy with which he partakes in the dissection of the turkey corpse, his cold curiosity about the insides of human beings, and there it was; the glint of sociopath in his eyes. This impression only deepened throughout the film, which, as we all know because you all clicked the spoilers button, resulted in the death of the Man Upstairs when Douglas wields that same kitchen knife in a macabre reenactment of that turkey stuffing ritual, the one that his grandmother initially shared with such doting love.
When Douglas first spies Mr. Koberman approaching the lodging house, he is immediately suspicious of him, presumably because the man is using an umbrella on a sunny day. This is enough to get on that little monster's radar. From the beginning, Douglas takes every opportunity to be rude to the new lodger. That night at the dinner table (which is now literally set), Mr. Koberman reveals that he has aversion to silver. Not just a tactile allergen, but even the "sound of silver breaks threads all through (his) system." Pretty weird, but in a Paris lodging house in the 50's I'm sure you get all kinds of artists and sensitive types. Once the vulnerability is revealed, however, Douglas exploits it and torments Koberman with a fork until the man retreats to his room. Everyone knows he did it on purpose, but the way he tries to hide his behavior goes to show the boy's burgeoning skills as a manipulative sociopath. It's revealed in the next scene that Douglas's crush on Emmie is common knowledge, and Douglas, at quite a young age, identified that as something he could hide more nefarious behavior in, even if he isn't very smooth at pulling it off yet. Give him time.
If Mr. Koberman ever had any hope of survival after he crossed the threshold of this boy's lodging house, it would not survive the next two scenes. First, Douglas asks the man for foreign coins to add to his growing collection (they always have collections, don't they) and the man cannot provide one. A relatively innocuous scene at the time, but based on Douglas's later behavior, this refusal affected him deeply.
Second is a somewhat ambiguous scene. Mr. Koberman surprises Douglas while the boy is looking through some kind of colored binoculars, a device the boy says shows him, "... things ... places ... all kinds of worlds ... all of them different ..." Unlike his usual cheeky self, Douglas now is reserved, almost embarrassed, as though Mr. Koberman has stumbled into the boy's private worlds, wherever those are. But Douglas's imaginary space takes a tumble when Koberman drops the viewer out of the window. He apologizes and assures the boy he will replace them with new ones, real ones that show the real world. Douglas seems set on rejecting the real world, however. He goes to the street and despite the binoculars being completely smashed and in pieces, he picks up the biggest piece and looks through, declaring "it works!" It seems the boy will stay in the world of his choosing... He gives an ominous threat to the camera, directed at Koberman.
Later, Douglas is speaking to who I believe is his grandfather, or maybe just another lodger? In any case, Douglas uses this conversation to weave a belief in himself that Mr. Koberman is a vampire. "What if the differences between Mr. Koberman and vampires don't matter? What if he is one anyway?" Is what he asks. "Then it would be okay for me to kill him," being the unspoken motivation. The man Douglas is talking to is a native French speaker, and cannot understand Douglas when he speaks English too quickly. One wonders if this might be why Douglas chooses to talk to him about vampires instead of his grandmother; he knows either consciously or subconsciously that people who could understand him would not stand for him. Sociopaths often have an instinct for this, even if they do not recognize it at the time.
Douglas follows through on this threat very quickly. Thankfully the camera (respectfully) shifts to images of wind blowing through trees as the young boy stabs the sleeping lodger in the chest, methodically slices open his skin, breaks off or otherwise cuts through his rib cage, excises his inner organs, stuffs him with his coin collection, and sews him back up again. Not sure I would have wanted to see all that... We do see the inner organs, kind of, but perhaps we are still in one of Douglas's worlds. The pile of innards the boy presents to his grandmother are exactly what she teased him they would be during the kitchen scene: all eyes and stomach!
In a rather strange twist at the end, it turned out that Mr. Koberman may have been responsible for his own string of homicides. Not sure how I feel about that. But it wouldn't be Ray Bradbury without some ambiguity! Is it okay for a sociopath to kill a serial killer? Is that why the police congratulate the boy for his deed, rather than arrest or arraign to a mental health treatment facility? What will this unrestrained sociopath do next? So many questions...
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