#the girl with the dragon tattoo

Rooney Mara hasn’t smiled a day in her life since she was cast as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

“I want you to help me catch a killer of women”

Cold and calculated; two words that could be used to label American director David Fincher, the man who made two of the great films of the past ten years, in ZodiacandThe Social Network, and the man who made Fight Club, one of the best films of all time. His latest project, an adaptation of Steig Larsson’s best-selling novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, however, marks his first mis-step since 2008 – albeit a very slight one.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo follows Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist, as he investigates the murder of a Swedish businessman’s grand-niece with Lisbeth Salander, a prodigious computer hacker and investigator whose traumatic childhood has made her hostile to society. As the two investigate the murder, they stumble upon something far more sinister than they could have imagined.

If there’s a flaw in the film it’s in the character of Lisbeth Salander, a wildly exaggerated caricature of an outsider. Her black clothes, dramatic hairstyles, fuck you attitude and love for tattoos all make for a very stereotypical perception of what disillusioned youth looks like, and embodies everything that the middle aged middle class fear about young people. This is something that was unavoidable due to the heavy-handed nature of the character in Larsson’s novel, and is no reflection on Rooney Mara’s depiction of the character – she’s only doing what’s required and she does so very well – but Fincher seems to exaggerate it further, making Lisbeth wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “fuck you you fucking fuck”, for example. It’s unusually heavy-handed for Fincher, and something that occurs sporadically throughout the film. The rape scenes, for example, are unnecessary and gratuitous, and serve no other purpose than to hammer home what we already know - Lisbeth hates society as much as society hates her.

Still, it’s not all bad, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is far better than its flaws suggest. The mystery at its centre is always fascinating, and Fincher’s meticulous visual style works wonderfully when transposed to snowbound Sweden. Of course, there are certainly going to be comparisons to the Swedish original as it’s so fresh in the mind, and, admittedly, much of the film feels familiar, but Fincher’s film feels more streamlined that Niels Arden Oplev’s original, and is certainly a far more rewarding experience.

It stands as testament to Fincher that even when he’s off his game he can make something so great, and, even in spite of its many flaws, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is an elegant, ferocious film that only enhances David Fincher’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s best working directors.

Lisbeth Salander was born on March 30, 1978 to Agneta Sofia Salander and Alexander Zalachenko. From early childhood, Salander exhibited violent and vindictive behavior, often in retaliation to attacks against herself or loved ones. When she was twelve, her father beat her mother severely enough to cause brain damage; in response, Salander doused him in gasoline and set him on fire, scarring him for life but not killing him.

Later becoming a brilliant but antisocial hacker, Salander took the handle “Wasp.” She was hired by Milton Security to investigate disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist. This would kickstart a series of events which saw her working with Blomkvist to investigate a series of serial killings conducted between 1947 and 1967.

(The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2011)
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