The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

America’s been inundated recently with the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium” crime series.

At first the books filled shelves in every God-fearing bookstore across the nation, beckoning young and old to peek between the covers. First published in 2005, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) enraptured the Swedish folks until 2008’s English translation dubbed the work The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
You may be aware that all three books of the series were adapted to Swedish film (available on Netflix instant-watch), but you are probably exquisitely aware that the first of three American adaptations hit the screen last month, starring 007 Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomkvist and relatively unknown Rooney Mara (The Social Network) as professional hacker Lisbeth Salander.

In a vacuum, this film is okay. It is thrilling, violent, exciting, gripping, and extremely dark. Set on a bleak, cold island in Sweden, the scenery definitely echoes the chilling plot. Lisbeth is a great character; her tortured past is hinted at but in no way becomes the focus of the film, so her idiosyncracies and need for a state-mandated guardian merely add to her mysterious visage. Throughout the film the audience is never able to truly figure out what makes her tick, but the attempt is worthy and entertaining. Mikael’s character is a great juxtaposition to her cold, unhinged, yet strong demeanor: he is warmer, blander, and weaker, but still compelling and intelligent.

Comparing the two adaptations seems to prove most useful in this situation. I personally have still not picked up the novels, but from sitting through both movies, it strikes me that they are probably not well-written bastions of the genre. Common flaws between the films included drawn-out, confusing plotlines and a failure to engender empathy or interest in the fates of the main characters. I will say that both Lisbeth and Mikael were way more badass in the American version, while I felt in the Swedish film, Mikael was unsatifactorily wussy and ugly (and Lisbeth was harder to like). However, I was surprised how much the meat-and-potatoes plot differed between the versions; while the overall story remained comparable, the way the crimes were solved and how Mikael and Lisbeth’s stories overlapped were highly dissimilar (surprisingly, I think the American version is closer to the book).

Both the name-change and the differences between films serve to highlight what each audience wants from entertainment. As Americans, we are used to giant explosions, bad guys getting what’s deserved in the bloodiest way possible, and really cool motorcycles. I’m sure Sweden is not cut off from the rest of the universe entertainment-wise, but the militaristically-neutral country’s self-produced works may be milder for a reason.

Something else you’ve probably heard about the franchise is the intense violence. It is not reccommended for the squeamish, the prudish, the overtly moral. Lisbeth is a rough character overall, but a rape-scene near the beginning of the film really sets the tone of her arc. Hard-to-stomach in both versions, of course director David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) amps up the “horrible” for American audiences. Seeing the film with anyone you know is going to be awkward, but by gosh do not see it with your parents, church group, or elderly neighbors. The revenge Lisbeth enacts fits the crime, it’s milder for Swedes because the act is just a hair less basally disgusting, whereas in Fincher’s spin, the disturbingly horrific crime is met with a fittingly badass and exponentially more vindicating end.

Some of the darkness of the American film stems from full disclosure: the rape is shown through its duration, nauseating and awful, a cute cat meets an untimely racist outcome, pictures of the disturbing crimes are not veiled. This is not opposite to the Swedish film; director Niels Arden Oplev still uses these plot points but chooses to partially allow the aundience into the sick, twisted world of crime. Neither gets the balance completely correct.

Most interestingly, both films share the name of the English translation. However, I feel the original title encapsulates the story so much better. This movie is crawling with examples of misogynistic Nazis and the crimes they commit. Changing the title almost removes the art of it, it removes that gutturally disquieting air that audiences could attain from the very beginning, and worst of all, transforms it into another “crime film.” Thinking about the film from that perspective, it could have been an episode of CSI: Sweden.
This film is still worth seeing in theatres, as Fincher provides artful shots of jaw-dropping landscapes and troubled people. The story is interesting enough for the run-time, and despite some unspeakable acts of violence that are not really integral to the plot, some lulls in action where flipping through stacks of books still provides suspense, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a provocative trip to the theatre.