THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: MOVIE REVIEW

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Cast:Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd, JoelyRichardson, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen Director:David FincherRuntime:158 min. Verdict:A case could be made that this is Mr. Fincher’s most ambitious film. Genre:Thriller, Drama
(Note: If you haven’t seen the Swedish film,or haven’t read the books, there might be some spoilers here. In fact, thereare. So yeah, be warned. I would suggest watching the film and maybe thenreturning.)
                It’s only right that Mr. Fincherstages the narrative’s most significant moment around a door, subtly hinting atthe dynamics at play here in The GirlWith The Dragon Tattoo. I am essentially a monkey when it comes to using anyediting software, not that I have ventured beyond Windows Moviemaker, and Iwould be much obliged if someone were to make something of a video review thatconcentrates around the doors here. Or the windows and the panes. Or the walls.Maybe even the tables. Or maybe all of them. I have a hunch that little videomight very well capture the essence of Mr. Fincher’s film. There is someremarkable leverage drawn from these spatial dividers almost tempting me to gofor my usual framegrab-play. Michel Blomkvist (Mr. Craig) knocks on LisbethSalander’s door (Ms. Mara), and the little girl is startled. She cautiously,and maybe even nervously, opens it, just a wee bit, and Michel, in a display ofa behavior that is at once both paternal (patronizing) and masculine(self-righteous), pulls the door open wide and walks in. Little Lisbeth, whohas had to put up with men invading her space (every which way), is startledand jumps back. For a movie that has been adapted from a book that was titled The Men Who Hate Women (a little harsh,I’ve to say), this pivotal moment, where the multiple narratives join eachother, just about says everything. I’m not sure if my categorization ofMichel’s behavior is bang on, but dear reader, I hope you get the drift. Andhe’s the “clean” guy.                 Now, that’s a point for later.What draws our attention upfront is the amount of action that is staged arounddoors and windows, with characters walking in and walking out or resting on thejambs, or using the separation as a means of protecting their privacy. Michelwalks out of a building only to walk into a horde of reporters, walks away fromthem, walks into a café only to find the news channel flashing his legalproblems, and he walks out, and walks into his office only to find all the newsreporters staring at him. We think this guy’s privacy is more or less screwed,and just about the time Michel expresses his desire to go home and crawl underthe duvet for a week the film quite amusingly intercuts to Dirch Frodeexamining a file containing a detailed background check on Michel done byLisbeth Salander (Ms. Mara), who, in her turn, knows a whole lot more thanwhat’s inside the report. I mean, like bank statements and sexual inclinations.So yeah, the invasion of Michel’s privacy is complete, and barely nine minutesinto the narrative Mr. Fincher quite neatly sets up not merely the dominanttheme but what would be the dominant technique to help read it. And he usesthis moment, through Lisbeth’s coiled body (there’s some intercutting here aswell, between her walk to the office and the conference room waiting for her),and through orienting the composition around her and allowing her the privilegeto sketch her own private space, to establishher and her privacy, which I guess is pretty wicked. I mean, people sitting acrosslong tables protecting themselves over the corpse of another man’s privacy doesmake you chuckle, no?                 Mr. Fincher does have a lot onhis plate to narrate, and it pays to be precise and economic drawing upon somany elements – textual, sub-textual, and extra-textual – and depositing themlayer by layer making a film so immense I still have no idea how to structuremy piece here. I’m like an ant chewing the bark of a tree, or something to thateffect. So what I would do is continue in this direction, maybe for a paragraphor two, who knows maybe even more, and see if it can lead me inside. Michel,running away from his legal problems in Stockholm,finds some sort of reprieve in the case of an old man’s murdered granddaughter.The old man is Henrik Vanger (Mr. Plummer), and the granddaughter was Harriet(Ms. Moa Garpendal), and in one brilliant crosscut that also serves as Sovietmontage, Mr. Fincher links Lisbeth leaving and closing the door behind andHarriet sitting under the sun who turns and looks at us, linking not merely thetwo little girls but probably the past and the present. I suspect, the latterlinkage finds a lot more weight in Mr. Stieg Larsson’s novels (I haven’t readthem), considering he was so concerned about Right Wing extremism in Swedishsociety. As for Mr. Fincher, he takes these concerns as a given, and builds hisfilm upon them. Now back to Harriet and Lisbeth, and look at them below andtell me they don’t resemble, especially with their missing eyebrows.
                  We shall come back to thislink-up later, but for now, let us stick with Michel. He accepts Henrik’sproposal to look into the mystery and try and solve it, but not before Henrikpromising him to give some sort of smoking gun on billionaire Hans-ErikWennerström (Mr. Ulf Friberg), the guy who has caused his recent legalmisfortunes. Michel takes some time away from his magazine, leaving it and itseditor-in-chief Erika Berger (Ms. Robin Wright) to fight Wennerström alone, anda certain tension is created here. Not merely the gender thing – Erika andMichel are extra-marital lovers – but the nagging thought that the present isbeing ignored to salivate over the past, and it assumes its full form duringthe film’s bleakest hour – while Lisbeth is being brutally raped by her legalguardian provided by the state, we cut to Michel mulling over the informationabout Harriet and listening to an iPod. I mean, yeah I know, what I’m sayingprobably doesn’t make much sense, but the tension here is more of a moralargument, a theoretical/ cinematic exercise that primarily causes uneasinessbecause of this narrative world, a world where crosscuts (agent of irony) arepossible, and where the very same crosscutting provides us the necessary comfortthat Lisbeth is on her way to save him when Michel is the one hanging by hisneck trying to make the most of his final breaths. And maybe, just maybe, afleeting shot of the cat wanting to get inside and escape from the chillingcold, and Michel too busy in the past to let it in, is some sort of argument inmy favor. Never mind.                  But then, that’s by no means theonly thing happening during that moment. For the first time within the film,the accessibility of technology tosolve a problem comes to the fore. Up until then Michel is just anotherhelpless agent in Mr. Fincher’s canon, like Mills or Somerset or Toschi or Mulanax or Graysmith,rummaging through diaries and police files, running around chewing the endlessbark while having only the faintest of ideas, much like me. And once again, andcontrary to the Swedish film where Lisbeth’s revenge on her rapist mostlyserves the purpose of, well, contextual gratification, Mr. Fincher causes analmost glorious crosscut from Lisbeth’s tattoo on her guardian, to Michel meetinghis daughter Pernilla (Ms. Josefin Asplund), and in a way tell us and Michel aboutthe nature of the mystery that’s being dealt with here. And also, somewherebehind, hints at an uncomfortable thought, linking the two little girls –Pernilla and Lisbeth – that makes the sex between Michel and Lisbeth that muchweirder. As opposed to the adolescent nature of the Swedish film, where Ms.Noomi Rapace’s was something of a superwoman, Mr. Fincher and Ms. Mara renderthe character a tender coconut, a vulnerable little creature in the disguise ofa punk, sort of like the grown-up version of Mathilda (Leon). And in case I haven’t yet made it obvious, there’s a flavorof duality in the proceedings – Lisbeth and Michel, Lisbeth and Harriet,Lisbeth and Pernilla, Martin and Gottfried, Martin and Lisbeth’s father, thepast and the present. And then, the most important of all – the exteriorand the interior, spaces which are no way limited to the four walls. Henriktakes Michel out in the chilling snow and gives him a lowdown on who liveswhere on the island, which mostly contains meaningless information butprimarily serves to highlight how almost all of the characters within the filmare essentially alone. Peering through with those doors and windows, and mostimportantly crosscutting with the aid of the exterior shots of the variousresidential places here (causing a smooth transition and lending some seriousthematic weight) , Mr. Fincher almost sort of defines his characters throughtheir places, and the size and nature of their “private chambers”. Wemeet Henrik Vanger, and in spite of his huge mansion, the old man belongs tothat dark room where those flowers hang, and he lets Michel in.
Wemeet Inspector Morell, and Mr. Fincher takes great care in choreographing theconversation so as to frame him in his private space when he describes apoliceman’s obsession with a “missing-girl case” (another example ofself-righteous behavior in a patriarchal society?). 
Wemeet the cops, and they lead Lisbeth into separate rooms to give the detailedinformation she seeks.  
  Wemeet Anita in her office, although we’re never let inside her home. In a way,even her exterior is guarded.
Andthe woman in the picture, who pulls the honeymoon album from a separate room.
Yeah, enough with these frame-grab shenanigans.The thing is, there’s Lisbeth, and there’s Henrik, and there’re all thosefamily members living alone behind those stonewalls, protecting their lives,much like us. Right from Harald (who, late in the film, leads Michel into hisroom) to Cecilia to Inspector Morell to Gunnar to Anita to the cat. Everybodyin here seems to have their own private chambers, and that these people allowus access is a reflection of both the humanity at the heart of the film and itspolitical stance. In return, Mr. Fincher not once crosses the boundary, alwaysrespecting the person’s private space (his cinema is probably the opposite ofvoyeurism). There’s Martin with his glass walls, the obvious plot decoy, whosupports the presence of the protagonist/detective the most, who has a homeseemingly built out of glass as if he has nothing to hide, but which is builtlike an intricate maze having no apparent orientation (especially when Michelsneaks into it), and whose chilly interiors bring to mind Patrick Bateman’sabode, and whose private chamber situated “vertically” rather thanhorizontally, is not a cliché but a symbolic device, suggestive of whatever thenovel’s title wanted to convey. That soft sound of the wind, during the dinnerconversation with Martin and his lover, and the little confusion of its sourceis a lovely little touch, both as a piece of clue and as an indication of thearchitecture.   Which brings us to the issue of the big lurid(supposedly) scene, and the absolute invasion of Lisbeth’s private space.Trevor Link, in a rather wonderful essay here, interpretsthe film as salvation of digital cinema, a stance I might want to argueagainst, considering that digital cinema itself involves making meaning out ofmeaningless binaries, which in turn makes it the savior. But Trevor’s argumentsure does contain some weight in a Fincher film, considering he passes montageas packets of data, which together create the implied meaning. Especially in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, whereLisbeth wanting to track down possible victims from the police files comesacross this information. You might want to read the where-clause of the SQLquery above (‘rape’, ‘decapitation’ etc.), and the report column of the resultset.   Itis from this flat meaninglessness that the film hopes to escape from, a film wherethe damning evidence is the most primary weapon, and here, in the InformationAge, digital technology sort of becomes the Deus Ex Machina. She walks (hacks)into Bjurman’s private chamber wanting to implicate him using digital means,not anticipating the ensuing behavior at all. Lisbeth thus becomes the film’sprincipal agent (she would later help in incriminating the film’s othervillains as well), the central symbolic figure representing both technology andinnocence within the film, and her rape doesn’t merely serve as a cue forwhat’s to come, but also as symbolic of the actions committed by its sexualpredators. Allow me to explain. Mr. Fincher, curiously, follows (not immediately)the rape scene with a sequence of Erika in Michel’s cottage, walking into thebedroom while he’s sitting over the sofa mulling over the Vangers’ decision toinvest in his troubled magazine, and she calls him to bed, her silhouette in his room. Now look, how the film both sets up the film’sprimary dramatic thread as manifested by this space, and plays with it. Here’sLisbeth and Michel on their opening night (of the investigation) together.  And here’sthem later on, Lisbeth practically forcing herself upon him, and Michel in turngrabbing the opportunity with at least his left hand. Here’s a man who is in anextra-marital affair that has wrecked his marriage, and is now enjoying thissupposed one-night stand after a tryst with danger, much like James Bond (famouslydescribed as a sexist misogynist dinosaur).What’s happening here? Is Mr. Fincher merelyreplicating the gender-blah from the novel/Swedish-film? Not really. On thecontrary, throughout the film he is establishing Lisbeth’s child-like innocencein an increasingly grey-ish world. When her first guardian Holger Palmgrensuffers a stroke and is hospitalized, she sits outside like a faithful dog. Heranorexic withdrawn body language suggests she is perennially on the defensive,and Michel’s apparent “cleanliness” is a virtue she is easily attracted towardsand falls for. His presence causes her to hope, look forward to Christmas, andmaybe even smile and open up a little bit. He, in his turn, exhibits the sortof behavior described in the opening paragraph, explicitly conveyed in a momentwhere he runs his arm around Lisbeth to access the keyboard. She mistakes hisone-night stand for perennial love, and when the film’s final moment finds herlittle hope blown to pieces, it is a heartbreaking loss of innocence. In manyways, Lisbeth’s equation with Michel represents what Stephen Meyers’ with MikeMorris was misunderstood to be. Oh yeah, I believe Michel and Mikeare riding the same boat, although Michel is merely gray – a probable victim ofhis gender and not actively unscrupulous.                       So yeah, as opposed to general descriptions of Mr. Fincher’s film beingimpassive, or even lurid, it is extremely sensitive and tender, and respectful.In this day and age of Wikileaks and News International Phone Hacking scandaland DSK, it identifies with Lisbeth Salander, salvaging her character from thejuvenile blandness of the Swedish film and making her vulnerability so palpablewe know her better than anybody within the film. And as she rides awaydisappearing into the city, we cannot help but wonder about the wildernesssurrounding the film, the wilderness with which Mr. Fincher opens thenarrative, the geographical expanse where a girl can be maimed and buried, andwhere Lisbeth can throw her wig without worrying about somebody finding it. Isthat a reference to the vast expanse of information which Toschi and Graysmithlost themselves in? The wilderness of the past surrounding the present? Sometimes William Faulkner's "The past is never dead, it's not even past" feels so true. TheBible might be scanned and made an e-Book, or the photos could be scanned andzoomed in to extract the last pixel, but then there still remains a hell of alot to our world that lives beyond 1s and 0s.