review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Nov. 8th, 2009 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicAll I knew about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, 2009, Sweden, dir. Niels Arden Oplev, based on the book by the late Stieg Larsson) was this picture and a one-sentence summary in the AFI European Union Film Showcase booklet. It was a gorgeous picture—the facial structure reminded me of 
kabal42's—and I thought the film might have some stuff in it about punk or goth or gender politics.
But wow. It was far more than that, and it was excellent. It was tight, it was long, it was gorgeous, it was understated, it was powerful, it was superbly acted. You cared about the characters, and you had to work just hard enough to understand everything that was going on, staying engaged without getting lost. It's worthy of the $100 million it's already grossed in Europe. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award.
In many ways a traditional murder mystery, it was also about rape and the refusal to be knocked down and different kinds of revenge, if not recovery. The Swedish title and the title of the book it's based on translate to "Men Who Hate Women," and that's appropriate for the abuse explored here, where men exercise sexual power over women who are physically or politically weaker. There were some scenes near the beginning that I don't think mainstream American audiences would know what to do with, for being so unrelenting, unblinking, quiet, realistic. It wasn't romanticized, nor was it gratuitous. (Nor, thankfully, was it as long and disturbing as the scene in the French film Irreversible.) Rather, as the director affirmed in a Q&A afterwards, showing the horror of sexual assault in the first half of the film then made it simple to evoke the same squirmy nausea-anger later when other, similar crimes were being discussed, without having to illustrate them. Very effective.
Similarly, a shot of the main character waking up in bed with another girl efficiently and unobtrusively raises the question of whether she's turned there because men have so consistently hurt her, or, equally interesting, if she's bisexual and the director/screenwriters didn't linger on it. It's always nice when characters can have so-called alternate sexual identities in stories that aren't just about those sexual identities.
The shift in title from Men Who Hate Women to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is also appropriate since, apparently, in the transformation to the screen the main character changed from investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) to hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who I agree was more interesting. The film review I linked to with that picture of her said Lisbeth was cold and unable to connect emotionally, but I very much disagree. She has been mistreated since she was a kid, and she's walled herself off out of self-protection, but those emotions are still boiling just beneath the surface. They come out in her focused fury at the lawyer Bjurman and others, and her interaction with her hospitalized mother, and her shaking hands after being assaulted or questioned, and her nightmares, and her tentative advances to Blomqvist.
I could say stuff about the plot and the amusing showcase of different winter coats and the reference to Nazism in Sweden, and the film's celebration of thorough research, and how all the hacking should have been outdated but managed not to be for the most part, and how the audience chuckled sometimes when the Swedish was close enough to the English subtitles to be recognized (like "mord" for "kill")—even though it's got nothing on Dutch—and so on. Or how the director had a fabulous accent that reminded me alternately of Vincent Perez and Sebastian Roché, even though they're Swiss and French and the director is Danish.
Instead, will just say that the film is due out in the U.S. in March, and it comes highly recommended. Fans of the series in the audience were excited to hear that the second two books were already in production for TV and are now being prepared for feature release -- same cast, different director -- and that if this one does well, they might be released stateside as well.
*
One down, five to go this month. Stay tuned.
kabal42's—and I thought the film might have some stuff in it about punk or goth or gender politics.But wow. It was far more than that, and it was excellent. It was tight, it was long, it was gorgeous, it was understated, it was powerful, it was superbly acted. You cared about the characters, and you had to work just hard enough to understand everything that was going on, staying engaged without getting lost. It's worthy of the $100 million it's already grossed in Europe. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award.
In many ways a traditional murder mystery, it was also about rape and the refusal to be knocked down and different kinds of revenge, if not recovery. The Swedish title and the title of the book it's based on translate to "Men Who Hate Women," and that's appropriate for the abuse explored here, where men exercise sexual power over women who are physically or politically weaker. There were some scenes near the beginning that I don't think mainstream American audiences would know what to do with, for being so unrelenting, unblinking, quiet, realistic. It wasn't romanticized, nor was it gratuitous. (Nor, thankfully, was it as long and disturbing as the scene in the French film Irreversible.) Rather, as the director affirmed in a Q&A afterwards, showing the horror of sexual assault in the first half of the film then made it simple to evoke the same squirmy nausea-anger later when other, similar crimes were being discussed, without having to illustrate them. Very effective.
Similarly, a shot of the main character waking up in bed with another girl efficiently and unobtrusively raises the question of whether she's turned there because men have so consistently hurt her, or, equally interesting, if she's bisexual and the director/screenwriters didn't linger on it. It's always nice when characters can have so-called alternate sexual identities in stories that aren't just about those sexual identities.
The shift in title from Men Who Hate Women to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is also appropriate since, apparently, in the transformation to the screen the main character changed from investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) to hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who I agree was more interesting. The film review I linked to with that picture of her said Lisbeth was cold and unable to connect emotionally, but I very much disagree. She has been mistreated since she was a kid, and she's walled herself off out of self-protection, but those emotions are still boiling just beneath the surface. They come out in her focused fury at the lawyer Bjurman and others, and her interaction with her hospitalized mother, and her shaking hands after being assaulted or questioned, and her nightmares, and her tentative advances to Blomqvist.
I could say stuff about the plot and the amusing showcase of different winter coats and the reference to Nazism in Sweden, and the film's celebration of thorough research, and how all the hacking should have been outdated but managed not to be for the most part, and how the audience chuckled sometimes when the Swedish was close enough to the English subtitles to be recognized (like "mord" for "kill")—even though it's got nothing on Dutch—and so on. Or how the director had a fabulous accent that reminded me alternately of Vincent Perez and Sebastian Roché, even though they're Swiss and French and the director is Danish.
Instead, will just say that the film is due out in the U.S. in March, and it comes highly recommended. Fans of the series in the audience were excited to hear that the second two books were already in production for TV and are now being prepared for feature release -- same cast, different director -- and that if this one does well, they might be released stateside as well.
*
One down, five to go this month. Stay tuned.
no subject
Date: Nov. 9th, 2009 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 10th, 2009 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 9th, 2009 01:55 pm (UTC)(And I will read your review when I am finished!)
no subject
Date: Nov. 10th, 2009 12:26 am (UTC)