MovieChat Forums > Ondskan (2003) Discussion > Did Erik evolve from the beginning?

Did Erik evolve from the beginning?

posted 11 years ago by Gambitt
4 replies | jump to latest

I overall liked the movie, but one pretty important part was unclear to me. Was Erik a horrible bully himself at the beginning of the movie? Or was he just a troubled misunderstood kid?

If the former, then the movie doesn't really explain his transition very well. The head of the school that is expelling him accuses him of truly being evil. But almost immediately, when he enrolls at the new school, he demonstrates a very profound and determined sense of justice. If there was an evolution, it wasn't really explained or demonstrated. My wife thought that the change was due to his being removed from the immediate influence of his abusive step-dad but I don't find that explanation very satisfactory.

The alternative is that he was just a misunderstood kid who always ended up with the shortend of the stick at his original school. That's fine, but IMO it makes the movie much less interesting and a bit underwhelming considering the title and the accusation by the first dean.

Thanks for your thoughts and perspectives.

[–] bellypoint 11 years ago

In the book you get it all explained but frankly it's a mix of both things you wrote. He is very misundrstood but also he was abused my his stepfather. As he wasn't with his family (not being beaten) he slowly stopped abusing others. In the book as well he's doubting whether he should beat these kids in the beginning and I quote: "I think it's unfair". He didn't think it was right to bully or beat others but he just did it because of the fact that he was confused but also to feel some kind of revenge against his stepfather--or at least get it all out. Hope it helped!

[–] Gambitt 10 years ago

Thanks for the response.

[–] DMarkwick 10 years ago

I just saw this movie. To me, it seemed that Erik lived a live on the "other" side of the bully/dominate fence, being a beaten child taking his frustrations out on weaker prey. When his role is flipped, he sees how bad that situation is and refuses to be cowed by it and decides to destroy it instead.

[–] spookyrat1 10 years ago

I think that's the beauty of this film which I believe takes a more open ended path to that of the source novel.

We assume from the beginning that Erik is a bully like his step father. But then we don't see any more of this behaviour until the end of the film when we realise that what we saw at the start may have actually been Erik reacting to bullying similar to that received from his step father, or the school prefects at Stjärnsberg.