If you read reviews of this film then undoubtedly you will notice similarities between the reviews for this movie and those of Let the Right One In and Let Me In. Pretentious movie critics assume that since something is in Swedish--something that is in anything other than English--must automatically be better than its English counterparts, as if Europeans are infallible filmmakers and their work untouchable. I have not seen Let Me In so I could not possibly compare, nor have I seen the original, Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In fact I have not read the book. So if you grow weary of being condescended to by the pomposity of these great critics for not having read the book or made the effort to go to an art-house cinema to see a foreign film then you are reading the right review. It is not that I am lazy or couldn't be bothered to look into any of this film's predecessors, it is simply that this was in the theatre down the street. So, ladies and gentleman, this post will be self-contained and without further reference to where it comes from, thereby making it without bias (save one: I historically dislike David Fincher films, but we can certainly discuss that).
Apparently one of three films to compliment one of three books which I expect to be more or less along the same line of content as this film was, this first part is a murder mystery that leads us to an island so backwards and so twisted it is not to be believed. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomvist, a disgraced journalist suffering from the failure of a libel lawsuit case. He is contacted by a mysterious, rich old gentleman who offers him the chance to escape the miserable world in which he is existing to write the man's memoirs. That is the official proposition. What he is actually after it for Mikael to possibly unearth new information about a daughter or niece or something of his who disappeared some forty years earlier.
It is quite an interesting mystery, filled with Nazis and incest and all sorts of things that intrigue me, but after forty years who really gives a damn? The film is two hours and forty minutes, and a considerable amount of time was spent focusing on this very old puzzle without giving it any relevance to the present. It took a good long while before I actually cared about the story that I should have been.
My interest in the plot was challenged even more so by a secondary character who was far more interesting in and of herself than the entire story--which, again, was filled with Nazis and incest, so she had to be pretty interesting. Lizbeth Salander is a young, striking and very troubled woman with an ugly past and an even uglier demeanor. An investigator originally sent to find incriminating information about Mikael during his lawsuit (which she did quite successfully), she becomes his research assistant, aiding him in tracking down, not only the missing girl, but also her killer.
She, as a character, was so interesting and played so well by Rooney Mara, that I became annoyed every time the story jumped from her life back to our Agatha Christie story. This girl is so complicated and so surprising that a film devoted entirely to her life of computer hacking, lesbian encounters, counseling sessions and chess games with her ward would have made a far more interesting and more rewarding movie-going experience. Not that I disliked this film, but a character study would have been much better. Not the writer's fault, I know.
This is a solid film. Nothing new, but it is directed well--if a little too blandly given the content, and acted very well. Mara, with her serpentine looks which say so much without her even twitching a muscle, will hopefully earn an Oscar nod in a couple of weeks. Again, Fincher teams up with some guy named Trent Reznor from some band called Nine Inch Nails (look for his nod to one of the greatest bands of all time in Lizbeth's friend's apartment) to create a score again worthy of an Academy Award. Reznor I guess has a knack for this sort of thing. His music was as direct and sharp as the art direction ought to have been.
The movie will hopefully appeal to a wide audience including those like myself who are virgins to the "Dragon Tattoo" series. I enjoyed myself and the rest of the audience seemed to as well.
3/4
*Note: How this film managed to avoid an NC-17 rating in entirely beyond me; I have seen it given out for far less than what this film presented. There are two rape scenes in this film which are violent, graphic and extremely uncomfortable to watch. Fincher does not handle the material lightly. Please be aware when going in that this goes far beyond traditional sex and violence, and will certainly disturb a great many audience members.
No comments:
Post a Comment