Good English Adaptation of Larsson by Fincher. Review on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Movie

Now, I am talking about the English version of the movie(2011) by the American director David Fincher, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. I watched it at night, with cold and heavy snow still around outside which somehow linked well with the atmosphere in the movie. This is a very good adaptation of the novel. The movie is quite long, a little more than 2.30 hours, and that was necessary to do justice to the threads of the story as well as to creation of the atmosphere of suspense, terror and mystery about a crime committed 40 years ago, in 1966. Lisbeth Salander is a name known well in the world of books. To adapt the acclaimed book into a movie, even when a movie adaptation in Swedish is already there,  must have been a somewhat risky task for David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian but they have created a very viewable movie. And I think “Män som hatar kvinnor”(Men who Hate Women), the title of the Swedish movie version was not a good choice for the title, rather too obvious in some ways. Fincher sticks to The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.

Race, religion, rivalry, sex, depravity, violence, corruption, enterprise, guts  and some amount of romance,  all go into the story of a disappearance/murder 40 years ago of Harriet, a young Swedish girl of the illustrious Granger family to investigate which freshly is called Mikael Blomkvist(Daniel Craig), a journalist who accepts this private and peculiar assignment as a means to avenge himself and defeat his enemies. Lisbeth Salander(Rooney Mara) is the girl with the dragon tattoo, a sharp, peculiar, reclusive girl  with a photographic memory, astounding computer skills and extraordinary capacities to unethically do the ethical job assigned or which she thinks is right.  She ends up becoming Blomkvist’s assistant and together, they outwit and overpower their enemies and extract out of what was thought ‘the water under the bridge’ the truth, exposing not just one crime but many, exposing the criminal and, as for what happened to Harriet …well, watch the movie. There is a little twist in the tail even if you’ve read the novel.

One requirement of the movie then becomes that the actors do not overdo it. Thankfully, Daniel Craig has not let the James Bond persona even touch him. Those expecting otherwise will be disappointed. Finch has got the actors do just the right job, and Craig and Rooney Mara  never overplay it. Craig presents well the mental energy of Blomkvist, Mara, an expressed and cutting one, both physically and mentally. The solid and methodical energy of Blomkvist is matched and complemented by the crazier and yet, systematic energy and fury of Salander. Rooney Mara, after *The Social Network, * has taken great pains to transform herself into Salander, from getting rings and tattoo in her body, weird hairstyle,  losing weight to getting the physical and psychological responses of Lisbeth Salander right.  Only, when Salander asks Blomkvist  “May I kill him?” it sounds a bit out of character, in contrast to her fierce individuality and decision making, though, perhaps what the director wanted to have established by then was Salander’s emotional attachment with and acceptance of Blomkvist as a more mature person.

If you’ve not read the Larsson novel, and intend to, I would suggest you to read the novel before watching the movie: if you do it the other way round, you may find reading the novel tedious at times. The novel has to be enjoyed as a book; things like the growth of the characters, the bleakness of Hedestad, the drudgery of the detailed and painstaking research are interesting when you are reading the novel. But if the movie is seen first, your familiarity with the speed and cuts of the movie are like the fastfood, which will not let you relish the patient wait for the cooking of a full-fledged meal. The scope of the movie doesn’t allow you to relish these nor the buildup in various interactions and incidents and through minor characters.  Also, by reading the novel before, you will find the defiant and violent acts of Salander in the movie more acceptable, though a bit disappointed at the cuts in the movie about her past etc. But the element of the sensational is very much there in the movie. The balance between showing the raciness of a whodunit, the chase to catch the criminal from 40 years ago and the painstaking efforts  that go with it, the hiccups and obstacles has been done well in this David Fincher movie. Even when Blomkvist and his investigation run parallel with the story of Salander, the director and scriptwriter have done a great job to do it with the right balance. In the book, naturally, there is more scope for elaborate treatment of both, with Salander coming more alive as a character. In this movie, the focus is more on the whodunit thing, the mystery. If the novel is more of a thriller, the movie is solely so.

David Fincher’s direction, camerawork and narrative technique are somewhat the same as in his previous movies like ‘Fight Club’. You can see some speedy cuts, short duration shots in the first ten minutes of the movie itself, trying to make sense of things if you don’t know the story. The camera cuts off brightness and color and deals more with black, white and grey. Fincher loves to keep it dark and gritty. The bleakness of the Swedish island where Blomkvist is cooped up has been captured well. As is the feel of  Sweden with its cold, its cosy bars, offices, lonely apartments….The atmosphere is of a brooding, hiding evil but you won’t get a chance to yawn. There is often cross cutting and parallel editing, which brings out well simultaneous actions and the drama. There was one scene however, where I felt Fincher made a small mistake: Salander throws an instrument to the bound and gagged Bjurman for him to cut himself out. How does she expect him in his situation to reach out for the instrument and extricate himself?

There is quite some sex in the movie. If you take kids to the movie, you will have to tell them to close their eyes at least five times during the movie.  Rooney Mara has a nice body and she looks ravishing when she goes out to swindle money out from the accounts of Wannerstrom’s accounts. But the scenes of sexual abuse and rape are not very pleasant though they are well done.

The editing of the movie is superb, without which it would be very loose or concentrating on other things, resulting in a different experience, probably not such a good one. Blomkvist and the buildup to his situation and the later consequences of his predicament are cut down quite a bit, so also, his love story with Cecilia Vanger(totally cut off) and even with  Erika Berger. Salander’s story, her past and her experiences have also been cut down quite a bit. Many interactions and movements around Headstead have been trimmed off too.

Salander really comes alive in the novel. However, the Swedish film is able to show Salander more as a damaged person. In the American version by Fincher, Rooney Mara as Salander is shown having capacity for and turning more towards acceptance and emotions. Her troublesome history is abbreviated and she in the present is made central to the movie.

David Fincher has done justice to Larsson. I hope he will do well in the adaptations of the other two novels of the trilogy too. But I think, this one would be the best. Just as *The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo *was the best novel of the trilogy.