Dragon Tattoos - a Lisbeth Salander ReWatch Post

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009, Niels Arden Oplev (Flatliners) -- Amazon
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011, David Fincher (The Killer) -- Amazon

From cozy to the bleak mysteries that the cold Scandinavian countries are known for...

I never wrote about either. The first was pre-blog and I haven't rewatched in recent memory, and the second... if Kent wrote about his cinema viewing in 2012, I would assumed I would have seen it at the same time, or not long after. Don't know why I didn't write about it.

Anywayz, rewatches as excuses to not entirely focus on a new movie. Most often rewatches are also excuses to not have to write, because not-writing requires an excuse instead of just making a choice, but when neither of the movies have been originally written about, then I any excuse would inexcusable.

Note, I just decided to do this as a double post, having only just finished watching the first. The second is yet to come.

...

All done.

Sometimes I sit down with a movie and almost immediately, I notice what I [want to get] get from movies, what I enjoy, what makes me wiggle into my seat, settling down for some good viewing. Its not something I can easily vocalize (it makes one wonder why you are writing about things, if you state you are not adept at "writing about things") but I know it when I see it.

The movies are based on Swedish novelist Stieg Larrson's books, which were published posthumously.

The movie opens with the end of the trial of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist, John Wick; Daniel Craig, Knives Out) for libel; he has lost. He had been pursuing a story of a corporate mogul with ties to arms sales when the juicy evidence he had unravelled, proven to have been false. He knows he was setup, provided easily fact-checked but too juicy to ignore details on the CEO, but he cannot prove it, and it has brought about his own downfall instead of the company head's. It is also damaging the reputation of the magazine he works for, the same magazine his girlfriend works at as editor. Their relationship is an affair. Blomkvist will be fined a sum of money that will empty his bank accounts, and he will spend six months in jail -- but he is given 3 months to get his affairs in order, and likely time to mount an appeal.

What I liked about this opening was about how much was packed into so very little time. There are so many details we are not led by the nose to see, we just get to collect them from what is presented. Blomkvist is more than a bit arrogant, having seen himself as an untouchable crusader, but he is also flawed -- sleeping with his married editor while still being friends with her husband is... odd. Mikael is not exactly a handsome man, an already divorced man, a bit aloof from even his family. Even at Xmas dinner, he steps away to take a phone call, much to their annoyance.

The call is from a handler of one of Sweden's most storied companies -- the Vanger corporation. Their family patriarch Henrik wants to hire Mikael to investigate a delicate matter, something he knows the journalist is good at. Its not quite a murder case, but it could be. In the 1960s, Henrik's favourite niece disappeared, and after a fruitless search, was assumed murdered & disposed of. But Henrik has been receiving a piece of art (pressed flowers) each birthday, something she did before she she disappeared. He believes her murderer is taunting him, and wants it sorted out before he becomes too old to do anything about it. He has vetted Blomkvist, using an investigation company the handler for Vanger has hired, one that makes use of a punk hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace, Prometheus; Rooney Mara, Her).

Lisbeth's story is very counter culture. She's all black leather, tattooed, dyed black hair, piercings, pissed-off-at-the-world attitude and socially unrepentant. She has good reasons to be. She's a ward of the state, basically a young adult who the country believes needs supervision, because of a horrible horrible past. She had a case worker, someone she cared for and who had a lenient hand in dealing with her, but the man had a stroke and now she has been assigned someone new, someone who immediately bulldozes past all boundaries. This man is a horrible human being who works such cases to manipulate & abuse vulnerable young women.

The movie begins with just a Venn diagram connecting the two main characters, but eventually Mikael brings Lisbeth actively into the investigation. She's not exactly the trusting kind, but is intrigued why this very vanilla, and also much older, man is keen on her assisting. Primarily its because she has computer skills he doesn't, but also because Vanger's handler said she is one of the best researchers he has seen, and Mikael needs someone to do the researching grunt work, especially when he finds details that lead to a series of murders, of young women, going back to the 50s. The movie ends with the two very tied together, emotionally & sexually, and invested in each other.

The general story stays the same between the two movies. I haven't read the novel so I cannot say where one or the other may diverge away from, or closer to, the original source material, but in general I like the way the original Swedish movie plays out these details. The original just seems .. less polished, and I like that here. Fincher's always seems so detached, so unemotional, except when it decides to do Lisbeth dirty, by having her fall for Mikael, become vulnerable, and get her feelings tread upon. The story always brought the two together, sexually, but Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth is where the detachment should lie -- when she sleeps with Mikael, it is for sex, for release, and ... well, just a bit of manipulation on her part. She knows what older men want, and uses it. Rooney Mara's version seeks a further connection beyond the story in the movie, and has her feelings hurt.

Then again, both movies really do her dirty, but definitely by cutting close to details from the book. Lisbeth's case worker rapes her; multiple times, the next more violent than the last. I am sure the novel, which was called "Men Who Hate Women", was unflinching about the rapes, as it is said, Laarson used the books to work through an incident in his own life, where he did not step up and stop of the rape of a woman named Lisbeth, but its been more than a decade since we decided, we don't need to rape women fictionally to find some catharsis in our male lives. These scenes are brutal and hard to watch. And to be honest, don't contribute much to the story beyond giving more weight to how horrible Lisbeth's life is, how easy it is for men to abuse women, and how she takes care of these things herself. She doesn't need no fucking white knight, and in many ways, is definitely Mikael's saviour. Just the scenes where she responds to the violence, compared to him being winged by a gun shot, show the strength in her.

I do like these stories, but its a bit exhausting how the "uncover the serial killer" genre so desperately relies upon the abuse of young women. And the even more tiring "displaying of the kill" aspect just leaves me, especially in this world today where misogyny is having a rise to power again, a little despondent. 

Maybe that's why I need my cozy who-dunnits. Or maybe I just need to find a genre where people dying isn't key?

Why did one of the Fincher posters have to be so fucking sexual, with Daniel Craig standing behind Mara's nude body, an arm wrapped about? Fucking edgelord poster designers....