Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures
Rooney Mara (left) and Daniel Craig star in David Fincher's Hollywood remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
"Violence against women increases — CDC study: 1 in 4 beaten, 1 in 5 raped."
That headline appeared last week on the front page of The Commercial Appeal. As alarming as it was, it may not have shocked devotees of Stieg Larsson's phenomenally successful international best-seller, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," and its two sequels.
The title "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was invented for the English-language market. In its native Sweden, the first novel appeared in 2005 under a name that translates as "Men Who Hate Women." That title gives a more accurate representation of the novel's themes, and of the motivation of its outcast avenger heroine, Lisbeth Salander, certainly one of the most indelible and significant popular-fiction characters of the new millennium. (Larsson's novels are collectively known as the "Millennium Trilogy.")
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first film in Columbia Pictures' three-picture adaptation of Stieg Larsson's literary blockbuster The Millennium Trilogy. Directed by ...
Rating: R for brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, and language
Length: 160 minutes
Released: December 21, 2011 Nationwide
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright, Stellan Skarsgård
Director: David Fincher
Writer: Steven Zaillian
Salander was portrayed wonderfully by Noomi Rapace (currently onscreen in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows") in the Larsson film adaptations from Sweden, each of which played here last year at the Malco Ridgeway Four. Now the black-garbed tech-savant is back, as fascinating, antisocial, confident and vulnerable as ever, in the slight person of actress Rooney Mara, in director David Fincher's expensive and exemplary English-langague remake.
The new "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" signals its status as a major studio release with its extreme length (158 minutes) as well as its unassailable technical polish and posh production values. (This may be the best-looking film yet to be shot on a relatively inexpensive Red digital camera.) The gloss doesn't hide the gruesomeness, however: In its bid to be the first major-studio R-rated "mainstream" franchise, "Girl" is unflinching in its intermittent depiction of sexual exploitation and brutality.
Fincher has dealt with clever and sadistic serial killers before, in "Seven" (1999) and the film that may be his masterpiece, "Zodiac" (2007), so his interest in the darkness that offers a psychological counterpoint to the chilly white of his current film's frozen Swedish setting is nothing new. But "Girl" also reflects the director's fascination with mysterious cliques and closed societies, as seen in "Fight Club" (1999) and "The Social Network" (2010). "The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club," Brad Pitt said in the former film; in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," populated with unrepentant aging Nazis and active perverts, many people do not want to talk about anything. The silence not only denies the wartime collaborations of the past but enables the atrocities and abuses of the present. It is no coincidence that Larsson's protagonists are experts in getting people — and machines — to talk, to give up information: Salander is a computer hacker, while Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a crusading investigative journalist. (As played by Craig, Blomkvist is all quickness and impatient efficiency, whether rifling files or pouring a scotch.)
Scripted by Steven Zaillian ("Moneyball," "Gangs of New York"), "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" begins with parallel storylines. It opens just as Blomkvist, star muckraker for progressive Millennium magazine, has lost a libel case brought against him by a billionaire financier. Humiliated and almost broke, Blomkvist agrees to accept an assignment from Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), head of the wealthy old family that "built modern Sweden." Many of the Vangers occupy a small island north of Stockholm that would not be out of place in a Nordic fairy tale; they represent "the most disturbing collection of people that you will ever meet," says Henrik, who describes individual family members as "detestable," "loathsome" and merely "unpleasant."
Blomkvist's cover for his relocation to the island is that he is writing Henrik's memoir. In reality, however, "You would be solving a mystery," Henrik tells the reporter: the mystery of the disappearance of Henrik's niece, Harriet, more than 40 years earlier.
This traditional mystery set-up is intercut with scenes that introduce us to the wary, skillful and ill-abused Lisbeth, who typically is accompanied on the soundtrack by a menacing electronic crackling and hum. The score is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch (Oscar-winners for "The Social Network"), whose music here is as stealthy as the fetishistic James Bond-meets-H.R. Giger opening credits are kitschy. (The black and oily images suggest Marilyn Manson more than Reznor's band, Nine Inch Nails.)
Eventually hired as Blomkvist's research assistant, Lisbeth is a 23-year-old "mentally incompetent" ward of the state and genius computer hacker whose punk-rock garb, pierced face, extreme haircuts and bleached Bowie eyebrows represent a sort of armor, to discourage the attentions of conventional male society. Even so, Lisbeth is not nonsexual or anti-sex; she just wants to control her own sexuality, which is a large part of her appeal. (The movie contains a surprising amount of consensual bedroom activity, in addition to its sexual violence.)
The most harrowing part of the film is a tense early subplot involving Lisbeth's relationship with her newly assigned state guardian (Yorick van Wageningen), who eventually comes to rue the criminal "pig" behavior that matches his (stereotypically) corpulent appearance. This arguably sensationalistic scenario represents our introduction to Lisbeth's role as an aggressive avenging angel for generations of mistreated and dehumanized women -- the victims of social as well as personal abuse.
Lisbeth also is emotionally sensitive, however — a trait that makes her more acceptable for a mass audience that likely has some overlap with "Twilight" and other more conventional best-sellers and pop-cultural phenomena. Late in the film, in reference to Blomkvist, Lisbeth states: "I made a friend." This simple acknowledgement is the most touching moment in the movie, and Mara beautifully conveys Lisbeth's insecurity as well as her toughness; but because the role requires Lisbeth to be brusque and almost autistically inexpressive, Mara has been all but ignored in the "Best Actress" category of the various year-end critics' polls.
Moviemakers once were cavalier in their disregard and disrespect for their source material. In today's era of Comic-Con and Twitter, however, they are almost submissively aware of the potential power of an angry and mobilized fanbase. To remain somewhat true to the book and to lay the groundwork for its sequels, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" continues for a half-hour beyond the solution of its central crime. (Unfortunately, the identity of the perpetrator is all too obvious, given the paucity of suspects.) This fidelity perhaps explains why the film seems more meticulous than personal, despite a few eccentric moments, as when Enya's "Orinoco Flow" is played during a torture scene. (A comment on the banality of evil, perhaps?)
Even so, this "Girl" is not only superior to the Swedish original but a model of admirable movie engineering and impeccable craftsmanship. Fincher arranges a dismembered cat to suggest a swastika and works hard to keep warm colors off the screen, but he doesn't show off with elaborate camera moves or bravura long takes. His control is almost invisible, yet it's gripping. He tells the story, and reminds us why murder mysteries and investigative procedurals — useful parables about the certainty of death that have pretty much migrated to television — can be especially compelling in a darkened theater.
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