The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009, Sweden)

There are some sick, sick puppies in Sweden. There’s a lot to admire in Niels Arden Oplev’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s book (which I have not read) – slick plotting, strong acting, and generally captivating filmmaking – but in service of what? Anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander (an excellent Noomi Rapace) seems to be followed by trauma wherever she goes. If I’d led a life like hers, I’d be behind bars of one sort or another by the time I hit 24. And while there’s a lot to like about Lisbeth and her journalistic partner-in-crime, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), the film seems almost to revel more in the actions of the depraved who surround them. And while there is certainly some sort of message of redemption to be gleaned here, I’m not sure if it’s communicated strongly enough to answer to some of the more grisly aspects of the story. You might feel somewhat like cheering when Lisbeth takes revenge on an attacker, but does this scene really balance out the prolonged ones that precede it?

I think the key different between The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the films of, say, Michael Haneke (I’m thinking specifically of Funny Games here), is that Dragon Tattoo seems to be much more interested in the cinema of entertainment and less in the investigation of why we sometimes find nasty things to be entertaining. And while I can admire the craftsmanship of Dragon Tattoo, I find myself more interested in the two sequels for whether they continue this particular depiction of women and violence than I am in their respective stories. (And speaking of sequels, what of the pending American remake, purportedly to be helmed by David Fincher? Does Hollywood’s persistent xenophobia extend to remaking a Swedish film with whiter actors? But I digress.) I’m not heartened by what I see in Dragon Tattoo. It may not espouse the hard-core misanthropy of a director like Haneke, or even the Coen Brothers (not to mention Gaspar Noe), but it also uses its violence as window dressing. It’s the kind of movie that I could imagine Haneke pointing at and saying, “see?”