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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Art 1/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 3/5
Dragon Tattoo is a minorly improved American re-make of a Swedish film based on a posthumously published trilogy by writer Stieg Larsson. Unlike the other recent Swedish import, Let Me In, Dragon Tattoo doesn’t feel inwardly satisfied with mere copy, and aims to give a sharper, more cinematic, professionally competent and sober take on the original. Fincher might not put out bombastic concept films anymore, and some of his movies are just disappointing, but his technical abilities and cleanness of vision are extremely adept. He’s given some help here from a kinda-sorta interesting idea from the Larsson novel, thematically involved with violence against women, which was inspired by the writer’s own guilt from his real life experience of once sitting idle while a teenage girl was gangraped. The concept gets a little puerile and hammy by inflating this incandescent moral figure burning in his psyche, as she manifests on the page, and on the screen as a punk bisexual superhero that gets sexual revenge on her tormentor … yeeeaaah, you’re right to picture fromage boiling in the oven.
I’ve been wrong before, and I think I’ll have to re-assess the original Swedish version of this movie. As I recall, and you might be able to dig it up in my index, I tossed out some nonchalant dismissal of the original Dragon Tattoo film, the second half for which I have only the vaguest of memories, thanks to combining sushi and piñacolladas. Mindlessly scarfing down (and up) a bucket of tortilla chips puts a very weird spin on a flagrantly “rapey” movie becoming a “popcorn” film. Anyways, I was wrong in dropkicking the concept put across by the first film, and I shouldn’t have dismissed it out of hand like I did. But that isn’t to let these two films, the American and Swedish version completely off the hook. I have a serious problem with the erratic pacing and the non-existent and meandering focus (is it a mystery? Is it a serial killer movie? Is it about a superhero rape survivor overcoming her demons? A romance? All of the above? None of the above? What the fuck is it? Make up your fucking mind! That ending was so sudden and weird and solved nothing! Scandinavians are so goddamn awkward!).
The success in Dragon Tattoo does not come from the expected quarters: Fincher isn’t at his best, Trent Reznor is getting too comfortable with himself as a composer, Daniel Craig is ehn (though he’s setting a pattern, unfortunately). Instead, the success bursts from unexpected quarters. I sincerely wish to avoid taking anything away from Noomi Rapace’s character in the original, but there’s simply no comparison with Rooney Mara’s tremendous take on ‘Lisbeth Salander’. Where Rapace went for a jaded rock star, Mara’s Lisbeth is almost autistic, and a pure extract of robotic logic. Her stoically anti-emotive coldness makes this movie, and makes Larsson’s concept seem to work better. This is officially the arrival of Rooney, together with Reznor she’s a Fincher holdover from The Social Network (where she combined with Jesse Eisenberg for one of the best opening scenes in recent melodramas), and I really can’t wait for more from this waifish glam chick with unlimited potential.
It feels weird seeing Stellan Skarsgård as the ‘token Swede’ or ‘token Euro’ yet again, but his performance in Dragon Tattoo is hardly unwelcome: I think he’s beginning to make a case for himself being one of the more underrated and subtle yet reliable character actors. He isn’t a force of nature like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Harry Dean Stanton. No to achieve such a level distinction, he’d have to carry a middle name. His expressive face and delivery are easily underestimated in Dragon Tattoo and elsewhere, but it hits you later on that this guy hits home runs without any flash.
Gratias ago tibi!
Ad arbitrium, amicus.