I’ve been meaning to post a lengthy headcanon about Lestat for awhile now. Specifically, one that involves how he is currently. It all began perhaps a year or so ago when a post came to my attention: an update on our favourite Vampires straight from the author’s mouth. She specifically pointed out that Lestat was alone and not with the others. This seemed out of place to me, since Lestat is quite the social being that craves companionship. So I began to wonder…
Why? Why is he alone? What could have possibly happened that he is now away from Louis, David, Marius, and all the others?
There was only one answer that I could see. Lestat finally must have done something that ended with the others not wanting to have a thing to do with him. Why else would he not be pursuing them in some way?
Since he was turned in Paris, and perhaps even before then, Lestat began digging this metaphorical hole down and away from all those who ever once cared about him. It was as if he was searching for some buried treasure, some prize and would do anything to get to it more expediently. Thus, he never thinks how his actions will affect others. Never. So all his mistakes, all his “adventures” have dug this hole deeper and deeper.However, there has always been a ladder that was lowered down into this hole, and his friends, companions, and would descend it to try and convince him to, to help him to climb out. First, it was his mother, then Nicolas, then even Armand, and then Marius. Next, it was Louis and then David, who would descend down into this metaphorical hole several times, more than others ever would. Both of them, leaving a lantern, reminded Lestat of what he could have at the surface. If he would just listen to them for once.
Then that something happened. What that something is, I’ve yet to figure out, but whatever Lestat did, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say. And then his way out of this hole was gone. The ladder was removed, the lantern snuffed out, leaving Lestat with only a fleeting reminder of what was and what could have been: the dim light from the entrance of the hole he had dug himself.
This broke him, no doubt sending him into some kind of mental break, and now he has to find his own way out; to find some way to begin making up for all the wrongs he has done.
And Lestat does this alone.
“… two wet shriveled things that had been alive, mother and daughter in one another’s arms, the murdered pair on the kitchen floor. But these two lying under the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, … the hand that clutched at the child was whole like a mummy’s hand. But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.”
– Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire
I remember when I first saw the movie this scene destroyed me. It blew me away to be honest, first, out of sympathy for the character’s loss and also for just how perfectly this one moment, Louis’ expression of grief and compassion for these two people he’s just lost, encapsulated his character.
^This commentary is BEAUTIFUL go read it. ;A; It’s probably the ideas there that drew Brad Pitt to the role, and unfortunately, alot of Louis’s internal turmoil didn’t make it into the movie.
“[Louis] doesn’t hide away or back down, but transforms that grief into a single minded, eerily calm wrath that razes the theatre and its inhabitants to the ground. (That look he gives Santiago after this moment… He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t need to, you just know immediately, “shit’s about to go down.” and it’s all the more chilling because it’s a startling shift from Louis’ introspective empathy to something much more raw and brutal.)
I’ve never understood how anyone can dismiss him as the whiner, simply because of Lestat’s comment at the end of the movie. I took that line the way friends will dig at each other, slinging transparent insults without really meaning it.”
Honey, I play a vampire that shoots fire out of his hands. Pyro jokes are inevitable around me.
|| Anna Rice – Interview With The Vampire
“Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.”
Brad Pitt is doing a subtly different performance in these two roles, using similar physical mannerisms, but not identical. A comparison can be drawn. Maybe Louis would be the colder version, Mills the hotter version, of reacting to this similar situation.
- Both have been roughed up somewhat by their antagonists at this point, but are dressed nicely.
- Both are reacting to the first moment of being informed that their wife/S.O. and infant child was murdered (for Louis, Madeleine is the freshly made child!).
- What’s especially upsetting about Louis’s loss is that it echoes the beginning of the movie, in which he’d lost his wife and child in childbirth. He’s come all this way and IT F*&KING HAPPENED AGAIN GDI SANTIAGO ;A;
- What’s especially upsetting about Det. Mills loss is that he didn’t know he was going to be a father! ;A;
- Both have to grieve very quickly in order to move on to…
- ☆*:.｡. ~VENGEANCE~ .｡.:*☆
- Det. Mills serves it up fresh, impulsively, just walks right into the trap laid for him by his antagonist.
- Louis serves it a bit cooler, the next night, with some planning involved, and alot more death, taking his antagonists by surprise.
- Both essential use fire to do it. Firearm! Get it?? yeah.
- Louis knows Revenge is a dish best served en Flambé.
