David O'ConnellThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
March 26th 2010 04:21
Condensing a runaway bestseller into a filmic equivalent is a tricky task for any director. Peter Jackson recently took a shot at Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and he made a good fist of it, being let down more by dubious casting than unfaithfulness. Blissfully, before the Americans could get their hands on their hottest literary property, the Swedes have rushed into production on adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, a posthumously published series of crime thrillers. A recipe for disaster seems on the cards in that all three were made in double quick time under tight financial constraints, but thankfully the resulting first chapter, helmed by Niels Arden Oplev, proves to be a positive step in the right direction. In fact it’s remarkable that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – which, literally translated, means Men Who Hate Women - not only works as well as it does but bears a distinctly cinematic sheen. (Like the latter two films, it was originally being considered for a release on TV alone before becoming a box-office phenomenon.)
The story centres on a publicly humiliated investigative reporter, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist), who is lured into the icy outreaches of the country by a retired and reclusive industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Sven Bertil-Taube). This is a man whose had an unsolved family mystery festering away in his heart for 40 years. In Blomkvist he senses the integrity of a man capable of taking a final shot at solving the case of his missing teenage niece Harriet. The novel is dense and multi-layered but screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg have stripped it down to its basic elements. What remains is a story that stands on its own without ever forgoing Larsson's basic thread, its sense of place, and the baffling historical mystery at its core.
There are no simple solutions for Blomkvist; the case is as daunting as it appears on the surface but with little to do but retreat and wait for his impending jail time to arrive, he delves headlong into the ugly past of the Vanger empire. He later acquires the talents of the enigmatic young hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who initially investigated every waking moment of his past for Vanger. There are no glaring trail of clues allowing you to take educated potshots at possible candidates; it’s all guesswork for the audience as the pair – forming an unlikely alliance - meticulously sift through the sketchy leftovers of the case, the most crucial of which appears to be a series of numbers and names written by Harriet in her diary.
There are a stack of subtle ways in which the screenplay has been altered to make the novel more feasible for cinema audiences. It’s to Arcel and Heisterbeg’s credit that none of the changes detract from the internal logic and momentum created by Larsson’s weighty tome. What emerges is a solid, engaging mystery with barely a weak link in the acting stakes. Nykvist isn’t quite the personification of Blomkvist I had in mind but he's a fine actor and his dourness seems appropriate enough. There’s no denying Salander is a self-consciously radical, unconventional creation. It requires a leap of faith to conceive of her existing in the real world, but Rapace holds nothing back, giving her a sufficiently flinty, hard-edged cynicism that comes across as both conceivable and, with such a wealth of dysfunction hinted at in her background, intriguing.
A couple of elongated scenes of sexual violence make for very uncomfortable viewing and are sure to push the buttons of some people. In fact, with its incestuous and Nazi undertones, a lot of the subject material is pretty unsavory stuff. The classy direction by Oplev under pressure did manage to steer me beyond anything more than fleeting musings on Larsson’s laziest traits; most obvious here is the depiction of the malevolent predator whose manipulation of Lisbeth feels lifted from the pages of a sordid and very well-thumbed cinematic textbook. Other scenes sit uncomfortably too, such as the ease with which provincial policemen hand over grisly crime scene photos to members of the public for perusal. At nearly two and a half hours, the film does seem to drag interminably, with an unnecessary ending or two tacked on, negating some of its impact. Nonetheless, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is reasonably compelling for much of its length and a worthy translation of the book.
Trailer here.
| 146 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Matt Shea
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
Very interesting review old top! I must get to see this film.
cheers
fog
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Was just commenting elsewhere this has me mildly intrigued.
I haven't read the books so know little of the universe.
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Hey Fog! Indeed mate, that original title is a pretty blunt one, not the kind to bring both sexes streaming into the cinema. I'd recommend this but the book is a much better experience - as always.
JD, you better get down to your local bookshop or else risk an overwhelming sensation of being the only man on earth not in the loop when it comes to Swedish crime fiction!
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Matt Shea