Different people come to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in different ways. Some of them (millions, in fact) first encountered it in book form, as the first volume of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling ‘Girl’ trilogy – but I’d barely even heard of the books two years ago when I popped in a DVD screener of the Swedish film version, directed by Niels Arden Oplev in 2009.
I didn’t really know what to expect as the film introduced our hero, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played in that version by Michael Nyqvist, now the villain in the new Mission: Impossible) – but, as Mikael was invited to a remote, icy island and invited to solve a mystery, I found myself getting hooked. His host, and prospective client, was an elderly industrialist, who laid out the facts of the case. 40 years ago, explained the old man, his teenage niece disappeared. It happened right here on the island, connected to the mainland by a single bridge. She didn’t leave; she didn’t swim across. She just … disappeared. I knew this was just pulp fiction, cheap suspense, the stuff of airport novels – but I couldn’t help it. The mystery hooked me, and kept me hooked throughout the film’s two and a half hours.
I mention this to explain why the new Hollywood version – also clocking in at two and a half hours, though apparently hewing closer to Larsson’s original – left me cold, despite being directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network) who’s a much bigger name than Niels Arden Oplev. Simply put, the mystery gets lost in this version. Instead, like the other two Swedish adaptations of Larsson’s trilogy (which I didn’t like), the film shifts the emphasis to the ‘Girl’ herself, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a 20-something computer hacker who’s “different”, as someone coyly puts it. She’s tattooed, pierced and bisexual. She’s also a Victim – a girl who wants to be loved, but has spent her life being abused and betrayed by men so she’s now declared war on them. In large ways and small, Lisbeth constantly acts as a reminder of women’s plight in a man’s world. An early scene finds her giving a report on Mikael’s private life (she’s been hired to do a background check by the old industrialist’s lawyer), her audience being a couple of middle-aged men. “Sometimes he performs cunnilingus,” she reports, straight-faced; “Not often enough, in my opinion.” The men shift in their chairs uncomfortably.
The plot’s much the same, of course; the industrialist still invites Mikael to his island, and asks him to find his niece. But the mystery is somehow less intriguing. “Someone in the family murdered Harriet,” says the old man (Christopher Plummer) flatly, whereas in the Swedish version she was inexplicably missing – a ghost, a question mark. Maybe it’s a question of emphasis. Fincher introduces Lisbeth much earlier, cross-cutting between her story and Mikael’s quest to find the missing girl. The most memorable part of that quest – the scene where he pieces together old newspaper photos to discover a lacuna, an unseen someone (or something) who frightened the girl a few hours before she disappeared – is now cross-cut with another memorable (but unrelated) scene, Lisbeth’s revenge on the man who rapes her. The effect is to dilute the whodunit, now just another strand in the endless war between men and women.
At least it’s a good-looking war. Right from the opening credits, coming on like a punk-Goth version of a James Bond intro – an echo reinforced by the fact that Mikael is played by Daniel Craig – Fincher piles on the visual flash and dash. But surely he must know how trashy this material is, with its exploitative wallow in sex and violence (a montage of brutalised women feels gratuitous, and there’s thinly-disguised relish when a cop warns Lisbeth that “what I’m about to show you” should be viewed on an empty stomach) and its wildly implausible plotting. The pivotal plot twist, Mikael’s daughter inadvertently breaking the code that’s the key to the mystery, scores high on the Yeah-Right Factor, and the climax can seem pretty silly if you’re not in the mood, the villain playing music (Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’!) while he tortures our hero, thereby allowing Lisbeth to sneak up behind him.
None of this mattered two years ago when I watched the Swedish version, because it embraced the pulpy plot and played, quite enjoyably, as a lurid mystery. Nazis? Sure, why not. Serial killer? Fine, bring him on. Fincher tries for something more – a propulsive cyber-thriller with a soulful feminist heroine – and ends up muddying the main narrative. Then again, maybe those encountering the plot for the first time will just accept it as a glorified McGuffin, guessing (correctly) that the film’s heart lies with its titular misfit. In the end, it all depends how you come to it.
DIRECTED BY David Fincher
STARRING Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer
US 2011 158 mins
