Culture Blues

The Instant Movie Club: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Every week, your friends at Culture Blues get together to watch a movie from their Netflix Instant queue. Then, they get out a bunch of documents and talk about it. This is The Instant Movie Club.

This week, we’ll be discussing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish film adaptation of the Swedish mystery bestseller. The below discussion contains spoilers.

Next Week: The Chaser. Roger Ebert described this movie as an "expert serial-killer film from South Korea and a poster child for what a well-made thriller looked like in the classic days." So, it must be good, right?

Spoilers Below!

Jeremiah: First it was Angels & Demons, and now for the second time in three weeks, the IMC is discussing an overly long adaptation of a cypto-thriller bestseller that makes the masses feel smart. Fortunately, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isn’t nearly as flaccid and interminable as Ron Howard’s take on Dan Brown, but these two films do make for a good comparison because of their differences as well as their similarities.

First of all, the detective work and mystery solving on display here is way better than in A&D. While Tom Hanks was on a glorified scavenger hunt, Mikael and Lisbeth in TGWTDT solve a decades old crime (in somewhat believable fashion) by tirelessly examining photographs and poring over records. They use some actual problem solving skills while Hanks relies on esoteric knowledge of things no one cares about.

The story of TGWTDT, once it’s all revealed, also has a big leg up on that of A&D. Ron Howard hides behind the importance and spectacle of a new pope being chosen, while Niels Arden Oplev never reaches to make his story more grand than it needs to be. The Vanger group doesn’t have much effect on the story. This is really about a series of murders by some legitimately scary people and the toll it took on those affected.

TGWTDT also has the distinction of making at least one great change to the book’s story. Whereas A&D seemed to only remove things that could have made the movie better (such as the Assassin getting tossed off a building!), TGWTDT added the scene in which Lisbeth watches Martin die while making no attempt to help him. In the book, he just dies instantly due to the crash. This is one of the best moments in the movie and it also very nicely sets up what happens in the sequel (I haven’t read these books, this is all based on Wikipedia).

Despite all of that, TGWTDT isn’t a great movie at all. Digging into records is good detective work but it doesn’t make for a thrilling viewing experience. Seriously, how many times did we see someone looking at something, and how many times were we going to have to stare at those stupid photographs? Much like A&D, it seems to have been adapted by people unwilling or incapable of turning it into a truly engrossing movie. It’s all very dry with Noomi Rapace’s performance as Lisbeth being the one thing that really stands out.

I like that the people behind this film went whole hog with it. We don’t need to see Lisbeth’s early adventures in vigilantism (at least not in such detail), but it’s a better movie because it’s in there. And I like that the story is still a little messy in the end, that the big case they solved isn’t the one they set out to solve, and that the case they did set out to solve is basically solved long before the end when our two detectives realize how close and similar looking Harriet and Anita were. Still, it’s impossible for me to shake the feeling that TGWTDT is an average story told in workmanlike fashion.

Hey, why don't you look at those pictures one more time!

Jason: (Jadakiss voice): I NEED IT FROM THE TOP!! AHA!!!

<gets a phone call from the intern>

Oh - I guess Jeremiah already went first. Dammit.

Anyway... as I sat down to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I just assumed that the title was referring to the girl who went missing. Obviously it was not, and in hindsight (and only in hindsight), did I realize that this movie is mostly about Lisbeth.

What I liked about TGWTDT is that it wasn't as formulaic as a typical whodunit. We never get too invested in the suspects, so we never really have a hunch as to who it could be (and thus are saved from lame "gotcha!" plot tricks). I guess there is the one right at the end when we are lead to believe that the killer was Harald, but that doesn't last long and, to my intense excitement, finally gives us a look at Harald in all his glory as a reclusive lunatic. Seriously, how awesome is that guy's house?

Now back to Lisbeth. In the moment, we have no choice but to feel bad for this girl. She Phoenixed her way out of a pysch ward to become a successful hacker who can fend off a group of drunk Swedish dudes. What's not endearing about that?

When we look back, is she truly a victim though? In less than 3 hours she:

• Sets her pops on fire (mind you, that is some cold shit to do to someone)
• Schemes up a plan to blackmail her P.O. Then, after that doesn't go so well, she returns the favor by sodomizing (with that being a generous description for what she actually did) and defiling him
• Watches as Martin Vanger burns alive
• Exposes Hans-Erik Wennerström in such a manner that he subsequently offs himself (was it really a suicide?)
• THEN steals his money

Hardly a saint.

This is not to say that I was pissed off by this epiphany. In fact, I'm happy that the movie made me consider that she might actually be a bad person (something that Mikael considers as well).

The only thing that actually pissed me off about TGWTDT was the ending and the notion that a few million bucks and a blond wig makes everything okay for our dark knight.

Dude's gonna be so sorry.

Jeff: To repurpose a favorite phrase from one of our IMC commenters: not enough rape.

Just kidding! The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo had plenty of rape!

I hate to nitpick plot points when discussing a movie, but that's exactly what I'm about to do.  The events of TGWTDT (this abbreviation needs an abbreviation) are all based on the assumption made by old man Vanger that his disappeared surrogate daughter Harriet was murdered, and didn't just run away. There's no physical evidence of a crime, no body, no suspects other than all of Vanger's creepy-ass family who just naturally seem like the types to murder a teenager. Oh, but for the last 30 years Vanger's been receiving sentimental birthday gifts from abroad. He interprets these as taunting from Harriet's killer. Dude - why? Why do you think that way? And with 30 years to kill and a massive nazi fortune at your disposal, didn't it ever occur to you to try to track down the source of these gifts? As the foundation for a mystery, this is flimsy. It bothered me. Why doesn't it ever occur to master investigative journalist Mikael that he might be solving the murder of a live girl?

That aside, I didn't find TGWTDT to be a particularly objectionable experience. The mystery is pretty rote and, as Jeremiah mentioned, the "investigating" scenes quickly become tedious, but it’s a far cry from the pretentious boredom of Angels & Demons. I suppose that’s faint praise. Frankly, for an adaptation of a well-regarded mystery novel, I thought TGWTDT was pretty soft on actual mystery elements. Granted, there’s a lot of time spent shuffling papers and looking at old photographs, which is probably what an actual missing persons investigation is like (read: boring). I’d have preferred more time spent fleshing out the Vanger weirdos, dredging up some family secrets – generally, Mikael interacting with something besides a photo archive.

What saves TGWTDT from absolute mediocrity is Noomi Rapace’s performance as Lisbeth. She’s really the only interesting thing going here. I don’t think we’re ever meant to think of her as a “bad” person – that’s far too simplistic. She’s a vigilante that preaches personal responsibility and an eye-for-an-eye (butt-for-a-butt?) idea of justice. She’s also an emotionally damaged, highly fragile creature. It’s a great performance of a fully-realized character. Despite being pretty lukewarm on TGWTDT, finding out what happens to Lisbeth next is enough to make me want to see the other two Millennium films.

Ah! I've been grazed!

Ben: It’s amazing what expectations can do to a viewing experience. Metacritic had this at a 76, which to me is pretty incredible for a movie adapted from a mystery novel. I had literally been told by someone “this is like Se7en, but better.” I recommended that we view this movie for the IMC because I hadn’t really heard anything bad about it. But as my colleagues touched on, this film is far from great.

The “investigation scenes” are boring, but I will say for the record that I was glad that they depicted actual computer programs and operating systems. One of my cinematic pet peeves (I have hundreds by now) is an overly simplistic view of technology. This complaint and defense is in some ways a microcosm of my viewing experience. I kept finding things that the movie was technically doing right, but it didn’t add much to the film. I don’t really have any problem with old man Vanger’s assumption that Harriet is dead. I agree with Jeff that it seems somewhat illogical, but I guess I’m desensitized to these leaps of faith in film. My biggest problem with TGWTDT is in some ways the film’s strength. There is a legitimately unsettling atmosphere here, something that always kept me involved in the film. But as Jeff said, I wanted to explore this more. I liked the world that we were in, I just wanted to take control of the camera myself and go somewhere else within that world.

Noomi Rapace’s performance as Lisbeth is really astonishing to me, and at times threatens to overshadow the story she’s in. This is really saying something, cause it’s a pretty fucked up story. David Fincher is re-making this film (it is in pre-production right now), which I think is a mistake for many reasons, but one of them being it’s going to be hard to get anyone to duplicate what Rapace achieved here.

If I had heard nothing about this movie before seeing it, I’d probably be saying that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. But as I type this, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed. I enjoyed this movie at times, but it became glaringly obvious as it went on that the source material was a mystery novel, and I really hate mystery novels. I’d like to see Neils Arden Oplov’s work when he’s not adapting something that others already have an expectation for.

Badass

So, what's the verdict, folks? Is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo better or worse than Se7en? Just kidding, it's obviously worse. But is it as generic as we thought? Is there anything worthwhile beyond Noomi Rapace's performance? Is the title too long? Let us hear it in the comments below.

Next week: The Chaser