The Sprout

Flick Flak: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Posted by archifCLICarchive from National - Published on 03/01/2012 at 17:53
1 comments » - Tagged as Movies

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Director: David Fincher
With: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara
18, 158mins

From the dramatic James Bond-style opening sequence, it’s clear that this adaptation of the massive novel is going to be more cinematic than the Swedish original.

Oil flows over women and tyres, computer cables wind around bodies, dragons and wasps emerge from black pools, all to the sounds of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, as recorded by Karen-O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (which is fantastic).

I always like to approach a remake with an open mind and not be judging it against the original, but having seen the Swedish one the night before, comparisons were inevitable. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay David Fincher’s version is that I soon forgot there was a Swedish original.

It is very much an adaptation of the book and not a remake of the film, and all credit to David Fincher and his writers for that. While key points of the story are obviously included, this film incorporates several elements that never made it into the original film. Incidentally, it is every bit as graphic and unpleasant as the Swedish film, and, while still not as sex-filled as the book, takes a fair stab at it. It is a sleazy, dark film, and brilliant with it.

Two things that you can almost guarantee from a David Fincher film are atmosphere and style, and TGWTDT delivers both by the bucket. In his own style Fincher shoots very quick scenes, in the belief that a scene should be designed to tell what it needs to with no hanging around. In a story this long, such an approach is much appreciated, and keeps what is a long film from ever getting boring.

After their work together on The Social Network - still my most-listened to soundtrack of the last few years - I was really looking forward to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross combining again to score TGWTDT. The music doesn’t disappoint; while it is less of a feature than it was in The Social Network, it still defines the atmosphere with plucking, twisting, sliding electronic sounds, and chilling bells. It’s still a soundtrack I’ll be downloading.

I was wondering if it’s unfair to compare the acting in the Swedish version to that of the new film; surely we cannot appreciate the talents of Noomi Rapace and her co-actors when all we get are subtitles. Anyway, the acting in this film is top-notch. Daniel Craig is well-suited to playing Mikael Blomkvist, capturing his bafflement at the situation he finds himself in nicely, and Christopher Plummer makes Henrik Vanger, the man who hires Mikael to find his niece’s killer, into more of a character than he ever was in the Swedish film.

Inevitably the focus would be on Rooney Mara, the eponymous lead, and whether she could match Noomi Rapace’s portrayal of Lisbeth Salander, a portrayal that has made her world famous. In short, she does. Mara’s Lisbeth is different to Rapace’s: she is a little chattier, a little cooler in how she operates, though she still has the head-down, shoulders-hunched gait. She isn’t better than Rapace, and I still think of her when I picture the character, but Mara in no way fails to make the character her own, and could well now go on to big things.

For once, this is a ‘remake’ (though it’s not really fair to describe it as such) that was worth making, and well worth watching. I think my DVD collection could end up with two versions of the same film one day.

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