For this week’s foreign flick Dave suggested that we have a look at the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(2009). I think that’s a great idea because I’ve seen David Fincher’s version but not yet it’s Sweedish predecessor. I think it could be fun to compare the films for those who’ve watched both as well as compare to the book for whomever may have read it. For those of you feeling overly ambitious, you could check out the entire trilogy, I think it runs at about nine hours total. All three films can be found on Netflix. What are you waiting for?
I have this book in the corner of a room under my desk. On the floor.
Sean has asked more than once if he can have it to put with the other books. I tell him no, because that book doesn't deserve to be on the shelf next to our other beautiful books (such as Hitler's Daughter)! 100 pages of Swedish finance info dump! Fuck that! I don't care HOW GREAT everyone says it gets after that first hundred pages, no book that tells me about Swedish finance for a hundred pages can be good. Stupid book.
I haven't seen the movie.
I hope the movie removes all the red herrings and dead-end storylines I recall from the book. A streamlined version condensed into a movie may better suit this tale. Been meaning to check it out anyway...
I liked the Swedish version until I saw the Fincher remake. The American version is clearer plot-wise and moves at a more purposeful pace. And while I liked Rooney Mara fine as Lisbeth Salander in the US remake, Noomi Rapace was far and away the better version in the original, both in performance and odd sexiness. In fact, I found the casting much more believable in the original in terms of look (sorry, had a hard time buying Daniel Craig as a schlubby investigative reporter). The Swedish version's creep-factor also got under my skin better, maybe because it was more deliberately paced and you were forced to dwell more on the crimes. The rape scene is ugly and brutal in both versions (surprised that the American version went as far as it did).
Yeah I like the remake quite a lot, I'm a big David Fincher fan, but I would say I preferred the great performances of Michael Nyqvsitsst and Noomi Rapace, also there's only like 5 minutes of rape scenes in the Swedish version instead of the 20 minutes in the remake, so a bit more family friendly. They're good actors and the style of the original film is good, I really wouldn't bother with the sequels though just because the stories take a nosedive.
I am not a fan of all these remakes, why can't people just read the goddamn subtitles for fuck sake.
I have seen the original but I have a horrible headache and can't think too much at the moment so I will post a more productive comment later.
Yeah, the remake was okay, but Noomi Rapace just made that role a real person. I have this weird bee in my bonnet about how American films fuck up remakes just through their approach to how characters perform acts of violence to insulate them and keep them therefore sympathetic.
Noomi Rapace vs. Rooney Mara is a perfect example. Rapace was NEVER out of control, never blanked or went psycho when she exacted revenge, made decisions, reacted. Her Lisbeth had facets of violent behavior. Mara's Lisbeth had this lightswitch flip behind the eyes, where she seemed to sort of 'disconnect' and 'lose it' and do these violent acts, which I just don't like, it didn't fit the character. We can't still feel for a character that doesn't change to a monster but simply has monstrous facets?? Tuned me off the American version, that little built-in no mea culpa in Mara's performance.
Rapace was NEVER out of control, never blanked or went psycho when she exacted revenge, made decisions, reacted. Her Lisbeth had facets of violent behavior. Mara's Lisbeth had this lightswitch flip behind the eyes, where she seemed to sort of 'disconnect' and 'lose it' and do these violent acts, which I just don't like, it didn't fit the character...
I totally agree. Noomi's Lisbeth was already a bit of a bad seed and wasn't simply reacting to her rough circumstances in kind. Don't know which is truer to the book.
The US version had better production values I guess (though the Led Zepplin cover was pretty wack), but I liked the main actors in the Swedish version much better. I did like Joley Richardson in the remake.
I thought the climax with the bad guy was a little more tense in the remake.
@Manda: Very good points about the diffence in performance/quality by the leads.
This is one instance of the film being WAY better than the book. They stripped out all the incredibly mundane detail Larsson insisted on dumping into the book. Reading the book I was thinking "if I have to read about the specs of ONE MORE laptop, I'm going to SCREAM." The story was impossible to get into without a hell of a lot of effort -- the movie was interesting, looked really cool, and got to the meat of things without so much crap in the way. I wouldn't say it was an absolutely fantastic film, but man was it better than the book.
ETA: I haven't actually seen the Swedish film, so I have no idea how it compares.
@Manda. really well put.
I haven't read the books either, but I've seen both versions of the first film. I had very high expectations for Fincher's remake, not only is he a genius in his own right, but they got Reznor to touch his magic fingers to the soundtrack, and the combined result should have been awesome. It wasn't though. For me, the first problem was that it came out too pretty, or too polished, or too Hollywood. The base recipe for a Scandinavian production, especially in the crime/thriller genre, looks something like this: a lot of silences and dead spaces, a distinct lack of heroes, everything's bleak as fuck, nothing and no one is beautiful other than in a melancholy sort of way, everyone's working through some level of misery, and no ending is ever truly happy. The original tGwtDT is pretty much a textbook example of this concept, same goes for Let the Right One In, The Killing and The Bridge. While we devour all this like coffee, and have for as long as I can remember, it seems as if Scandinavian productions have only recently started to garner attention abroad, resulting in a number of remakes or "based on" tv shows and movies. I loved the US versions of The Bridge and The Killing, and I think a large factor behind the successful transition was that they took the concept, the character's and the basic storyline, and then worked it into a new context. Fincher's TGwtDT is just a polished version of the original where the characters speak in English and action is a little more important than dead spaces. And on that note, wtf is up with the accents? Do you guys think it added something to the film? I found it distracting.
Ooh, Let the Right One In as compared to its remake would be another example of the Americanized 'fracturing' of characters so the actual character isn't necessarily responsible for that side of themselves. In the original she didn't go through some extraordinary transformation, again, it was just another part of her. In the American remake she became something different.
the last two pieces of The Girl Who books are shit movies. Fincher won't have a hard time doing better. I did a rants blog post a year or so ago about all these movies and the issues, I've thought about this way too much.
I finally watched this last night. It's been a while, since it came out on DVD, that I've seen the American version, which I really enjoyed. That being said, I was only able to watch it once, so I didn't remember the story line, or a lot of the details of the characters and film. So I feel like I had as close to a clean slate to watch this movie as possible.
I've also not read the novels.
A couple things to start, I enjoyed the cinematography, though it doesn't hold a candle to Fincher's version. There seemed to be a lot of distinct similarities in location (The Vanger house, specifically) to the Fincher film, I wondered if they weren't shot on the same location. Am I just an ignorant American, is that city a real place the film crews may have both gone to shoot?
The music was also good, wasn't overly distracting, and set a nice atmosphere and tone.
I really enjoyed Rapace's portrayal of Lisbeth. I still haven't decided whether I liked her in Prometheus. She made a great Lisbeth, insofar as I understand the character without having read the books (so take that for what it's worth). I thought it was much more appropriate, or maybe just more personally appealing, that she was calculating, concious of her actions, and thoughtful. I agree with Manda that Rooney Mara's Lisbeth seemed much more aloof, and disconnected from some of her actions, which I really couldn't stand. I had zero empathy for her. I liked that Rapace's portrayal was seemingly constantly aware of herself and her situation, and seemed much more in control or at least capable and composed.
Maybe we could cross-thread and talk about strong female characters in film, in this instance, Rapace giving us a fine example, while Mara's (maybe Fincher's Americanized/Hollywoodized) Lisbeth is kind of weak, irresponsible for herself, and reacts more than the Rapace portrayal takes or initiates action.
I like Daniel Craig, a lot. From Layer Cake to Bond, I think he's a phenomenal actor, and like Clive Owen, has a rugged, masculine look that I think a lot of Hollywood actors lack now. They seem more human, more real to me, they're imperfections selling their humanity and character. That said, I enjoyed The Nyqvist portrayal immensely. I think, if I recall correctly, Craig has a swagger, kind of an arrogant I'm-smarter-than-you air to him in Fincher's movie, that Nyqvist didn't.
I don't remember, but it seemed to me like there were several sequential differences, most notably Lisbeths encounters with her guardian. Weren't they spread throughout the American movie? It made more sense, and served the story better, IMHO, to have done it the way the Swedish film did. I may have to re-watch the Fincher film, now, to see, but I liked the way the Swedish story flowed a lot better. I thought the characters progressed and evolved much better, and the pacing made more sense.
I don't remember the family link to Blomkvist in the Fincher film, was that there? Also, it seemed like there were more action sequences in the FIncher film, which is a Hollywood thing.
Overall, I can't say one was better than the other, but I really, thoroughly enjoyed the original. If you consider the remake is necessarily a product of Hollywood, it's a quality film, full of merit, but has glaring differences from it's predecessor. Without having read the novels, I can't say which is truer to the story, but as film goes, I wish I could have Fincher's film production, Swedish script, with Craig giving us Nyqvist's Blomqvist, and Rapace's Salander.
