The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a novel written by Swedish writer and journalist, Steig Larsson. Being the first in a series of books (later named the Millennium series), Larsson planned to write a total of ten books, yet his sudden death in 2004 meant he was only able to write three, but the posthumous publishing of his first story resulted in it becoming an international success and led to others like David Lagercrantz and (as of recently) Karin Smirnoff expanding upon his idea further. Its popularity led to its own Swedish-language film version being released in 2009, with its subsequent sequel books (The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) releasing their own films in the same year respectively. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nygvist) is sentenced to three months in prison for losing a libel case against a billionaire financier whom he defrauded within a news article with what he later discovered was falsified information. Before he serves out his time, he is approached by Henrik Vanger (played by Sven-Bertil Taube), the patriarch of the wealthy Vanger family, who asks him to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished off the face of the earth forty years ago without a trace. Suspecting that someone within his family was responsible (especially due to some being extreme supporters of the Nazi regime), he hopes Michael can be the one to finally give him some answers. Though at first seeing no elaborate reasoning behind her disappearance, Michael eventually finds clues left by Harriet that goes down a rabbit hole of other murders that seem to have been enacted by the same individual. After receiving help from freelance surveillance agent and hacker, Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace) who was tracking things behind the scenes, the two start to unfold this mystery, discover more dark secrets about this disturbed Vanger family, and finally reach a conclusion on what really happened to Harriet. Being a critical and commercial success, this film adaptation appears to carry both the good and the bad that came with the original source material, resulting in an engaging and well-acted picture, but one that can also get a little overwhelmed at times, and be very forceful with its needlessly graphic content.

Considering how quickly this film was created (only four years after the books were even published) along with its rapid follow ups and even subsequent different versions (with a mini-series featuring the same cast released in 2010 along with an English-language 2011 version directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara), it shows that people did have solid faith in this book, but the story actually wasn’t too popular outside of Sweden. While many within the country praised it, American critics weren’t impressed with its manner of writing, its ugly and nihilistic look on humanity, and its blatant showcase of physical and even sexual violence. Despite this, the draw it had on some people means that it must still have a pull that allows people to overlook some of those glaring faults, and when inspecting this film, some of those elements become clear. The actual mystery and basis for the story isn’t too bad, with the crime thriller aspect blended with this component of a conspiracy murder from within this influential yet cryptic family making it feel psychologically gothic in the best way possible. The directing by Niels Arden Oplev is also fairly well done, being paced in a way that doesn’t make the end results entirely easy to expect, and the way it presents these grisly murders and abhorrent behaviour is not pushed to an exploitative degree, grounding the story in enough of an oppressive mood that it feels gritty, yet not unpleasant (at least not this portion of the story). However, the film and the original novel in question isn’t necessarily one that appropriately handles difficult-to-discuss topics and that comes from being pretty straightforward and not very nuanced. There are attributes in this story that are interesting, like the exposure of silent Nazism still festering within Swedish society and the violence against women in all regards be it physical, emotional, psychological or tragically sexual, but it doesn’t really present these ideas in a manner that allows for dissection and just kind of spells out the obvious (the original title in Swedish is Män som hatar kvinnor, which is literally ’Men Who Hate Women’, it’s not that subtle), which could be stated for the entire story in general. The script for the film by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg isn’t too complicated, maps out the information for the mystery fine enough but isn’t very good at delivering the results (the answers to certain questions are so obvious that it’s unbelievable that it was left unsolved for almost half a decade) and the final conclusion to how the true threat is found, doesn’t feel satisfactory or even that surprising because the film gave no true hints into who it could be or why it would be them. The film is also needlessly harsh and brutal with its portrayal of violence and especially its sexual content, with aggressive moments that don’t need to be as harsh as they are, and a deeply uncomfortable rape scene that adds next to nothing in the overall story and just feels like a moment meant for shock tactics.

The acting for the film is pretty solid all around, with every performer managing to portray that hopeless and even weary feeling that seems to mask over this entire film, but the writing for most of them can feel a little flat, which is sadly very apparent for the two leads. While the idea of these two people individually working on the case before meeting up halfway through to complete it together is a solid idea, neither role really benefits from being around the other as they share no chemistry either as a duo or as a romantic pairing (despite the film desperately trying to pretend like they are). It becomes clear that while both have decent elements on their own, they feel a little flat compared to what they could’ve been if they were fleshed out a bit more and the weird sexual tension between the two was thrown out. Michael Nygvist is pretty good as Mikael and carries the film solidly enough, but the role isn’t that engaging as there are no real stakes to him being involved with this mystery, so he kind of just feels like a blank slate inserted into a story to act as the surrogate for the book’s first-person perspective. With that said, the character of Lisbeth feels like she should be the character of focus as she’s the one with at least a sense of unique personality and backstory (she’s literally what the title is based on), but even her role is pretty poorly handled. She feels secondary in the film overall and only acts as support to Mikael (despite the fact that the roles really should’ve been flipped), the character is made overly mysterious and is so vague on her backstory that it makes the character feel underwritten, the scene in which she is heavily brutalized, raped and subsequently gets revenge on her attacker afterwards is so pointless to the overall plot that it could’ve been removed entirely (it was only added into the original book due to a trauma the writer experienced in his youth) and despite Noomi Rapace having a great look and doing a nice job commanding the reserved and broken-down nature of the character, she doesn’t come across as strongly as she could’ve. The supporting cast aren’t anything that special from a character standpoint, but some of the acting makes them work just enough. Sven-Bertil Taube brings a comforting elderly quality to the character of Henrik, there’s a police inspector whose been working on the case since it opened played by Björn Granath whose fairly memorable for his limited screen time, and people like Marika Lagercrantz, Ingvar Hirdwall, Ewa Fröling, Gunnel Lindblom and Gösta Bredefeldt do good with the little screen time they have.

The film has a dreary and washed-out look to it, with the various tones of blue and grey lighting mixed with the steely white and old-fashioned production design by Niels Sejer being frequently showcased, but instead of looking drab and ugly like you’d expect given that tone of color, the film actually works with this look quite well. It not only matches the tone and vibe the story is trying to convey and makes everything feel heavy, morose and suspicious, but it’s also presented through decent cinematography by Eric Kress that, while not anything phenomenal, gives the film a clean and dramatic edge that takes an otherwise fairly cheap movie of only $13 million, and makes it feel pretty cinematic. It does get uncomfortable in regard to the more graphic content as it is portrayed without much censoring or even real restraint (especially from the acting which is also disturbingly effective), but outside of that one choice moment, the rest of the graphic content at least feels like it serves a purpose and is filmed in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative. It has a slightly glossy feel to some of the visuals which makes it feel pretty high-end, but for the most part, the movie is played relatively realistically so these moments feel more uncomfortable because of it (even if some of them go a little too far). The editing by Anne Østerud at first looks a little choppy and not very put-together during the opening act, as several scenes feel like they just stop at abrupt points and don’t really stop on the right moments, but as the film keeps going, that element does go away, and it is handled much more effectively and more traditionally. The musical score by Jacob Growth is effectively thrilling and has all the usual components you’d expect from a dramatic score for a crime-thriller, but has just enough of a unique voice to not just be background noise

The franchise that was birthed from this one story and the media frenzy that spawned from this one author is impressive, especially considering that it seems a little niche outside of its native country. It’s understandable as there are elements to this story that feel a little under-cooked and not always the most complex and thought-provoking, but from a base level in terms of engagement and concept, the story has its merits, and they do come across when watching this film. It would have been nice if it didn’t needlessly force in a disgusting human act for the pure sake of compartmentalizing a repressed regret harboured by the author, but when that component is pushed aside (which is extremely hard to do, mind you), you can see the appeal of this series and how with the right handling, it could’ve created such a long-standing series. It does still suffer from a decent but paper-thin story, mainly generic characters, and a poorly handled dynamic between the leads, but with solid direction, pretty great acting and a clean enough presentation, this mystery is one worth sticking your nose into.