The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor)

I Blomkvist A Girl

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

(Män som hatar kvinnor)

Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Norway 2009

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Momentum Region 2 (original theatrical cut)

Warning: Spoilerama ahead!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is one of the last movies I watched at the cinema before I finally decided to start up this blog site. As such, it feels kinda ironic that this first installment is actually the last of the three I’ve actually got around to reviewing... the other two are here and here. In hindsight and having watched it again, of course, I can confirm that this first installment is a much better offering than the next two movies in the sequence in many ways.

I’m a big lover of the novels and the second and third of the movies, especially, did not do any justice to the characters and events as portrayed in Stieg Larsson’s original Millenium Trilogy. At the time I saw those, I don’t think I was aware that the movies had been cut down from episodes of a Swedish TV series, with the second and third movies coming off particularly harshly from all accounts. I’ve recently realised that the boxed edition of the movies that has recently come out, at least here in the UK, contains these original, extended (or uncut to be more accurate) and episodic versions of the movies... so I’m now looking forward to grabbing this box sometime next year and giving these versions a go in the hopes that all the vital (and even some of the not-so-vital) elements of the novels are faithfully covered and the end of the third part actually gives one more of a sense of resolution as it did in the novels when you realise the true emphasis of the emotions the characters Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are feeling. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest has more of an up ending because of the history of the characters when they reach this point and, although we get exactly the same ending scene in the movie version, the lack of the parts of the story explaining the dynamics of the relationship between these two characters turn it into something of a flattened ending... rather than giving things the slight sense of hope contained in the novel.

But anyway... let me divorce myself from all that and fixate on the first movie because, as I said before, it’s a far better movie than the two which follow it.

A lot of this, I think, has got to be in the way the movie is put together. It’s a lot more leisurely in its pacing and editing, the cinematography is quite beautiful and there are some wonderful transitions and montages in this movie. I feel the direction is a lot more.... well... confident I guess. It’s not all cut shot, backwards and forwards “to”ing and “fro”ing as the second and third movies, which were helmed by a different director, seem to descend to quite often. There’s just something in the way the shots are lit which give the film, perhaps a little less visual clarity, but certainly a more sense of poetry in the images. A beautiful shot of a bridge with traffic going over it (not the main bridge which is essential to the storyline in this one, although the emphasis of that is toned down in the movie anyway) is not just used as an establishing shot, for instance, but a shot to be held for its own beauty for several seconds in and of itself.

The performances are all dead on but the two main elements which are pretty much missing in action in the movie, the swinger lifestyle of Blomkvist and Erika Berger (once a big wheel in the BDSM scene) and the Modesty Blaise-like personae of Lisbeth Salander as she adopts various disguises to build up her riches around the world, pretty much kill the set up for the next two parts. I’m hoping they’ll be among the elements touched upon in the extended/uncut versions in the new DVD set... especially since Erika Berger is such a strong character in the original novels and absolutely essential to the third book.

To be fair to the director of the two movies that came after this however, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is really the only part of the Millennium Trilogy which could be viewed as a stand alone story... being as it’s really an extended locked-room mystery story, with the whole island as the locked room... whereas The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest both interlock with each other and present a single narrative which derives from the character threads and set ups from this first story. So this one is less conspicuous when it leaves great chunks of the novel out but, the second two are very much reliant on these parts and it really shows by their absence in the movie versions.

So there you have it. When I wrote the reviews of the second one when it came out at the cinema, I was getting worried that the forthcoming US remake (think it’s released over here on December 26th?) would be a pale comparison to the original movies... but I was also hoping that the trilogy would be salvaged by a glorious last part... something which that third movie failed to deliver. Now I’ve kinda got my hopes pinned on the director of the US ones filming the novels properly and not making the same bad choices as the original versions. Time will tell I guess. One thing I will say though, is that Noomi Rapace who plays the titular character in the three original movies was absolutely tailor-made for the role... she’ll be a tough act to follow. Check back with me here at around the end of December and I’ll let you know what I think of her US counterpart.

Salander and Libel

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest

2009 (UK release 2010)

Sweden/Denmark/Germany

Directed by Daniel Alfredson

Screening at UK cinemas now

Just like my review of the last movie in the this series, this ones going to have loads of spoilers including stuff that’s in the books but not in the movies. Worse than that, I can tell you right off the bat that it’s probably going to come off as really angry and ranty. You have been warned!

On my review of the last movie right here I mentioned all the reasons why The Girl Who Played With Fire failed as an adaptation of its original source material... but also cut it some slack because I do, contrary to popular belief, realise the difference between a film and a novel and although the movie versions of the first two parts of Larrson’s Millenium Trilogy removed a lot of what was in there, I think the director’s of these two still managed to make coherent films which could be read as stand alone, de-boned cousins of their literary counterparts.

A lot of the good will I was extending in this though hinged on the director of the second movie at least continuing that trend in the third movie... and he’s lost me. No more Mr. Passively-watching-three-of-my-favourite-novels-of-recent-years-being-chewed-up-and-spat-out-in-a-shapeless-mess guy for me. This is where I draw that line in the sand and... oh screw that... this is where I pull down my pants, grope around the angry genitals inside and p*ss a line in the sand just to belabour the point.

So let's nail those heavy duty staples into this rickety coffin of a movie like Salander nails her half-brothers feet to the floor with an industrial stapler - there you go! That’s your first spoiler... YOU WERE WARNED!

1. Erica Berger is completely sidelined again. She doesn’t leave Millennium at the start and go to run a rival newspaper. She doesn’t land a fantastic and scandalous story while she’s there and have to return to Millennium to publish that story. She is not played as the cool and woman-with-a-kinky-past-in-control as she is in the books... she’s more of a weepy mother in this.

She does still get the threatening emails in the movie but... what the f@*%! Because she’s still working for Millennium in the movie... they’re not from an angry employee at the rival newspaper... they’re from the "secret cell" in the government who are trying to cover their tracks and bury the Salander story and all who are connected with it! Now tell me people... what secret organisation who send out silent killers and have been really good at staying under everyone’s radar for the last 40 years send one of their targets threatening emails? Duh!

2. Wow. Salander recovers from her head wound pretty quick! Since she’s in hospital for months and many months more in prison and then on trial... you’d think that pregnant belly on her lawyer (at least she’s still Blomkvist’s sister, thank goodness) would have expanded and released small child into the world by the end of the movie wouldn’t you? Like the second movie, the first three quarters of the novel (what, 300 - 400 pages) flash by in the first 20 minutes or so. Honestly... Noomi Rapace is an almost perfect Lisbeth Salander... but the way the material has been exploited doesn’t do this actress or her character any justice.

3. They keep on mentioning the step-brother. He’s hardly around for the first 98% of the book because the writer presumably wants you to forget about him until he pulls him out as a surprise at the end... here they keep constantly reminding you of him and show him terrorising and killing people.

4. The group of Salander Knights... Blomkvist, Palmierri and a few others who are looking out for her interests, even though she would never ask them to, are not even mentioned as a functioning unit. Bye-bye, heart of the male characters in the novel.

5. Blomkvist’s new girlfriend, the government agent who is an athletic woman with the build of a weight trainer is a slimmed down, barely present character in this movie! What the f%&*!

6. Blomkvist and Erika Berger’s relationship and the consequences thereof: Blomkvist and Berger sleep together a lot in the novels, even though Berger is married (again in the novels only it seems). Almost everyone is in an open relationship in the novels and everyone is cool and above board about it. Except Salander who catches her new, one and only love Blomkvist, arm in arm with Berger in the last pages of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. From that point on she hates him and wants nothing to do with him. Similarly, Blomkvist decides to stop leading that lifestyle in the third book when he hooks up with Figuerola, his muscle bound fitness babe!

Now bearing in mind that all these sexual politics were left out of the previous movie... In this third movie the relationship between Blomkvist and Berger is finally referenced... but because the audience don’t know about it unless they’ve read the books, it looks like they’re about to get together for the first time as a blossoming couple! Worse yet is the end scene from the novel where Blomkvist, after everything he’s done for Salander (which you don’t really get from the movie), finally knocks on her door and they say a few words together and become friends again, it reads as a positive resolution for the future of these two characters becoming allies again. But because you don’t know any of that past tension in the movies... the final scene in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, although it plays out pretty straight to the book, looks like Salander’s rejection of Blomkvist. By this point I’m pretty sure the movie audience has no idea what the heck is going on. It ends on a down-played fizzle as opposed to a sense of hope and closure. Great. Works lovely at the end of The Third Man but it screws up the way the movie works here!

So there you have it... one of the shoddier adaptations I’ve seen and not a patch on the original novel. I was so dissapointed in this one. I’m now half looking forward to seeing what the US remake does with this one just in case they decide they’re going to do them properly!

Until then... don’t bother seeing this movie. Go read the three books instead... at the very least they’ll arm you with the knowledge to at least be able to figure out what’s going on in most of the movies!