Man on Film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Having both read the book and seen the Swedish film, there was a hope coming into seeing David Fincher's take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that someone would finally cull a good, balanced story out of the material. The novel had significant structural issues with its climax coming about 150 pages before the end of the book, and the roughly 300 pages of bookended Mikael Blomqvist fall and redemption ultimately fall flat. The Swedish film does turn its focus much more to the search for Harriet's killer, virtually ignoring Mikael's story, but there are some issues with Niels Arden Oplev's take as well, namely casting and the lack of rationale behind Mikael and Lisbeth Salander hooking up. But most of the substantive issues with the Swedish film lie in the fact that there are significant plot holes to get lost in. 

Fincher's turn at the helm, aided much by a smoother Steven Zaillian script, is a marked improvement. For starters, it's David Fucking Fincher behind the camera (at least in the larger, non-literal sense). Whatever issues one may have had with relative duds Panic Room and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, his entire catalog of films look fucking amazing. He has an aptitude for the aesthetic aspects of film-making that few working directors have. If one only partially subscribed to auteur theory feeling only comfortable applying the name to a select few directors, there is no goddamn way that label wouldn't be attached to David Fincher. The ambiance he builds in his films lend to an unease among the viewership, especially in his darker works. Setting him loose on a wintry Scandinavian crime tale with very dark elements seems like it is perhaps the most logical choice for this Americanization. His adeptness in the arena of mise-en-scene set his film apart from both other entrants in the contest. 

Honestly, from the moment that the opening credits kicked off, I was sold. The all-black nightmarish tar sequence set against the sonic backdrop of the heavy Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross/Karen O cover of "Immigrant Song" is unsettling and rocks the audience. Karen O's vocals are fucking awesome. The duality of Karen O, who I'm both afraid of and drawn to, is perfect for this song, and the duo of Reznor and Ross clearly have something going here in the wake of their second straight stellar Fincher score, this one seeming to have only been topped by this year's Cliff Martinez Drive score. 

Past mise-en-scene and score, there is still quite a bit to like about Fincher's rendition of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's primary asset is in its casting. Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara have great chemistry together, and Craig (unlike his Swedish counterpart Michael Nyqvist) is clearly handsome enough to be able to reasonably attract the much younger Salander. Apologies to all who find this take on the Swedish film, but from a strictly superficial standpoint, it simply was not believable that she would jump him. Both inhabit their roles with aplomb. The secondary characters are well-cast, too. It is difficult to imagine a better [non-Swedish] fit for the role of Henrik Vanger than Christopher Plummer. While not as meaty a role as his fantastic turn in Beginners, he holds down the role of tortured patriarch with the requisite gravitas. Stellan Skargard has the range required to pull off the role of Martin Vanger, even if much of his character-development is left out of the finished product. 

Given all the praise I have heaped upon this film, it would almost seem as though I took no issue with the film. That would not be the case. Unfortunately, just as with the novel and the Swedish film adaptation, the bookending of all of the developments in the Mikael Blomqvist storyline leads to a disjointed and unearned redemption. He falls from grace, goes to the country with his tail between his legs, ignores his problems under the condition that his efforts will be rewarded in the delivery of Wennerstrom's head on a platter, and passes the next two-plus hours working on the interesting mystery while the resolution of his own problems is COMPLETELY IGNORED. How is this not problematic? Sorry if the arm-chair screenwriting is coming off as a bit pedantic but wouldn't the obvious solution to this problem be to have Lisbeth conducting her own investigation into Wennerstrom in secret and parceling out that information occasionally throughout the narrative? Without something of that nature, no one gives a fuck about what happens to Blomqvist by the time the Harriet mystery is resolved because they've been encouraged to forget about his problems by the fact that any mention of his redemption story virtually disappears from the screen for the greater course of the movie.

It is just so goddamn frustrating to see a story that could have been great told in such an anti-climactic way when such an obvious solution lies right there in plain view. Luckily, Fincher's vision carries this film into a realm that its Swedish predecessor was unable to enter. Most of the potential plot-holes in the emphasis on narrative economy are circumvented with efficient use of the montage and other non-dialogue driven information provided on-screen. The only real issue, and it is a big one, is the aforementioned disappearance of the Blomqvist story only to find ourselves right back in it well past the point at which we all forgot about it. Once forgiving this shortcoming, it is evident that this is as close to being great as anyone has gotten with this story, which is saying something. 

The Queue Continuum: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

As promised last time, here is the first entrant into what should be a fruitful, if often shorter, additional section to the blog.  One in which we (perhaps only royally speaking) look at movies that are available on Netflix Instant Queue and therefore instantly accessible to many of you readers.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the Swedish adaptation of the absurdly (and arguably unjustly) popular Swedish crime novel by Stieg Larsson.  Having just finished the book, I decided to throw this on in the midst of a Netflix-athon with Munch My Benson co-contributor, softitems.  Given the freshness of the material, I oddly found myself feeling obligated to explain things, and this was not because of any shortcomings on her part.

Honestly, the film seemed to be a bit of a mess to me.  Since the book shared a similar shortcoming, I suppose it only makes sense in the end, but it just felt like there were plot holes.  This is largely because the book is an unwieldy material to have to adapt.  There are essentially 150 pages before the disappearance of Harriet Vanger is touched on and another 100 after that aspect of the story is resolved.  These 250 pages deal largely with the mostly disposable Wennerstrom Affair, but there is also crucial character development of the male protagonist that occurs therein.  As this section is largely omitted from the movie, the development of Mikael Blomkvist is sorely lacking.  Without this, the fact that Lisbeth (the female protagonist) is drawn to Mikael kind of comes out of the blue.

Given that they are screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg were tasked to adapt a 600 page book, they probably did about as well as could be expected.  There is a lot of fat in the novel, and for the most part they trimmed it well.  A few characters were combined and the mystery was streamlined a bit.  I don't know that I would say the film wasn't worth watching, but I honestly have to say, given its shortcomings, that I am actually curious to see the impending American remake, and you couldn't have said that about most of the American takes on the Scandinavian oeuvre. Given that Steven Zaillian is adapting the screenplay, and David Fincher is directing, I can't imagine it won't be an improvement.

The other thing that struck me while watching the film was, "Wait, I don't remember the Scandinavian peoples as being particularly homely..."  Yet, here, frankly, not an attractive cast.  Pretty much across the board. Call me shallow, but it made me feel like I was watching a mid-90s BBC production.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I just did not get why the book and now the movie are all the rage.  They're both all right.  The book is readable.  The movie is watchable.  They are both entertaining enough, but they both seem flawed, and the thing that redeemed the book for me--the interesting relationship between Mikael and Lisbeth--is kind of handled poorly in the Niels Arden Oplev film version.

But it is out there for you to watch.  Did anyone out there feel strongly differently?

(Man, some of that subtitle spelling is bad...)

Reading Rainbow: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Inconsiderate Prick Announcement:  This post is coming right before the post of a new series I intend to kick off here entitled The Queue Continuum in which I give at least a quick response to something on the old Netflix Instant Queue, which I'd imagine many of you frequenters also have access to.  Predictably, the first entrant in The Queue Continuum looks to be the Swedish film adaptation of this very novel, which I watched last week.  

I may use that space to open up this space to a few more writers, but I haven't really decided on that yet nor have I really approached anyone about this.  You guys probably know who you are, if you see this before I get a chance to talk to you about it, give me a shout/drop me a line.

Despite the fact that we haven't actually met or had a "club" meeting, I sort of read this for an impromptu book club.  That isn't to say that I didn't want to read it or hadn't bought it over a year ago, but my desire to read it was met with an approximately equal amount of reticence to pick up something that to me had the same off-putting buzz that The Da Vinci Code had.  If that many people are reading something, it can't be good, right?

What made things worse was the fact that every time I was reading the book in public, someone would invariably walk by me every 20 minutes or so and say, "Oh, I loved that book."  Rarely was this person someone who struck me as a reader.  Is it dickish of me to say this?  Yes.  Let me refer you to the name of this site.  I will simply say that I felt far less self-conscious reading the Grace Kelly bio that I had finished just before this (write-up still to come!) than when I was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo out in the open. 

Having gotten those qualifiers out of the way, the book was all right.  It was certainly a page turner.  Well, the last 350 pages were. While I wouldn't say Larsson's slow open is an insurmountable obstacle, complaints about how nothing happens for the first 200 pages or so are not groundless.  There is a lot of exposition and even more character development that could probably be compressed a bit.  For the purposes of this novel at the very least, there are multiple characters that are fleshed out much more than they need to be (I'm looking at you Dragan Armansky).

The third-person omniscient narration is probably a misstep at least as much as genre is concerned, as selective insight as to what secondary characters are thinking makes for an unbalanced tale and it does not work for the crime/mystery genre.  Why, for instance, do we know what Nils Bjurman is thinking throughout the scenes he appears in while the same treatment is not given to other characters like Cecilia or Martin Vanger?  Why are we shown how evil one character is while we are left to guess with others (although it is the inverse of this relation that is more troubling from a narrative standpoint)?

It also isn't a particularly surprising novel.  It never felt like plot points came from out of nowhere to surprise you.  Harriet's fate seemed obvious to this reader from the start, and frankly this was at the instant Henrik propositions Mikael.  It was, in short, predictable.

Larsson's failure to balance the two mysteries is truly the root of the problems with the novel.  With two puzzles needing solving, he is ultimately unable to balance the progress toward the respective resolutions well, which leads to roughly 150 pages of arguably needless and certainly excessive exposition for a mystery that then mostly disappears until page 490 or so.  When a book is as easy a read as this, it is not impossible to get past this, but the lack of balance to the two narrative thrusts is problematic. 

What does work and ultimately can be seen as the novel's redeeming quality are the lead characters, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander.  Each character is intriguing enough to want to go along on their journey, and upon being brought together, they play well off of one another despite their disparate personalities.  While the novel probably would have been better served without their eventual (read: inevitable) romantic involvement, their relationship still works, and Larsson allows for the bittersweet coda that would not have been in the cards otherwise. 

Again, the book is an easy read.  For all its shortcomings--and there are plenty--The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is fairly decent.  Whether or not its decided average-ness calls into question its massive worldwide success is another matter entirely, but that really distracts from the point of this exercise.