By: Kelsey Rupp
Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is asked by Swedish aristocrat and retired CEO of Vanger Corporation, Henrick Vanger, to investigate the forty year old disappearance and probable murder, of his grandniece, Harriet. Mikael enlists the help of a young computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), to assist him in the investigation. The two discover that Harriet was tracking a serial killer of women and find it necessary to solve several cold cases in order to discover the truth about Harriet. What results is a revelation of the serious faults and sicknesses of the Vanger family, with few exceptions. Nazis, sadists, drunkards, rapists, and murderers round out the dysfunctional family tree, with Harriet’s father, Gottfried Vanger, and brother, Martin Vanger being the most detestable of all. Ultimately, the Vanger family functions as a microcosm displaying the corruption of Swedish moral society, a problem too large for Mikael and Lisbeth to challenge effectively on their own. The film is based on the novel by late Swedish author/journalist Stieg Larsson. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” originally titled “Men Who Hate Women,” is the first novel in what has come to be known as the “Millennium Trilogy.” In 2009, a Swedish version (directed by Niels Arden Oplev and staring Noomi Rapace) of the novel was released and quickly became a cult classic. To date, the movie adaption of the first novel remains the most watched Swedish film of all time.
Mr. Fincher’s rendition, without a doubt, belongs to Lisbeth, and Ms. Mara. Mr. Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist is a hardworking and believable idekick, but a bit of a buffoon, writing career-wrecking articles from an anonymous tip, scratching his head and muttering to himself as he searches his computer for files. Lisbeth, far more compelling and fascinating than cinema’s typical heroine or superhero, has lived such a hellish life that she attempts to transform herself into something inorganic. Little is revealed of this twenty-three year old ward of the state’s past. She is a spidery shadow, moving efficiently, definitively, and with great skill. She is freakishly Goth, doesn’t make eye contact, and answers questions with data without revealing anything of herself. Lisbeth is also brilliant. No encryption or electronic security measure is beyond her hacking skill. She’s certainly angry but fascinating to watch as she attempts to controls herself and keep her anger at bay. Lisbeth has a damaged soul. She builds no bridges with the audience and is quick to decimate the connection she makes with Mikael at the first sign of betrayal. Though Mikael and Lisbeth are assigned to solve a murder mystery, Lisbeth remains a mystery herself. Most importantly, she is realistic, a genuine possibility, and her skills are only a slight stretching of reality. Critical in the film is the struggle for the soul and identity of Sweden itself. Gottfried Vanger and his Nazi brothers belong to Old Sweden; Martin Vanger, to the New. Gottfried connected his murders to religion; raping, disemboweling, torturing, and murdering Jewish women. Some were prostitutes, some were mystics, others were just unlucky, but they were women who “must be put to death.” Martin disapproved of his father’ method, scattering his victims across Sweden like trophies. Instead, Martin disassociate his conquests from religion, selecting “just another girl, just another immigrant whore” who wouldn’t be missed.
Martin satisfies his sickness is the quiet solitude of his basement. He politely and easily invites the women into his home, knowing that “the fear of offending is stronger than the fear of pain.” The tension between Old Sweden and New is decipherable down to decorating schemes. Martin built his home from glass; his rooms with white walls and white carpeting are sparsely decorated, save for the uncluttered, occasional stain- less steel necessity. Everything but the set of black kitchen knives are kept in drawers, out of sight, and on the walls in every room are white canvases splattered with black paint. By contrast, when Mikael enters the home of Martin’s uncle, he finds a cluttered mess: books stacked, papers scattered, photographs everywhere for anyone who cares to see. The aging uncle points himself out to Mikael in the photographs framed on the wall and proudly names the prominent Nazis standing next to him. “I’m not a recluse,” the uncle tells Mikael, “they just don’t visit. Hide the past like they do? [...] I am the most honest of all of them.”
“Your family?” Mikael asks. “Sweden.” Martin doesn’t point himself out as death, as the hungry black splatter spreading across the canvas, expanding, as it always does before violence, its depth unaccountably limitless. He doesn’t point himself out, but Martin hangs a portrait all the same. New Sweden’s conscious effort to conceal truth, forget history, and ignore violence, particularly against women, is evident throughout the film. When Martin’s glass sliding doors are cracked open, the wind is sucked into his home, sounding eerily like a woman screaming. Lisbeth’s own screams are muffled and unheeded, once when elevator doors close after she leaves her predatory guardian, and covered again by the sound of the metro breaking as she fights off a man attempting to rob her. It seems that in the New Sweden, the modern, industrialized, atheist, renowned welfare state, the cries from victims of true injustice are diluted.
But exposing polite Swedish society as a cheap veneer implies responsibility. At the beginning of the terribly graphic and upsetting rape scene, Lisbeth struggles against her court-appointed guardian and the bedroom door slams shut in the scuffle. The camera stays focused on that door, but moves backwards, down the hall. So long as that door remains closed we can claim not to know what is happening behind it. So long as Lisbeth is gagged we can claim not to hear her cries for help. We don’t ask questions for fear of offending or interfering where we don’t belong. We ignore our sense of pity, the thought that she could be us. Lisbeth certainly recognizes herself in the women she investigates. Harriet, an ingénue belonging to one of Sweden’s most aristocratic families, and Lisbeth, a ward of state since she was twelve years old, face the same challenges and are victims of the same violence, despite living decades apart with different social statuses. The same is true for the women whose murders Mikael and Lisbeth solve. All these women, including Harriet and Lisbeth, are put through a hellish existence capable of burning anyone of any background and temperament. Martin described the moment when his victims’ eyes died of hope as what he relished most, the women’s feelings of complete helplessness and the realization that they would eventually be forgotten. Gottfried and Martin chose women who they thought were disposable, but they also chose Harriet,and she wasn’t forgotten.
Forty years after her disappearance her story unearths the stories of others. They are all victims and are, in essence, the same woman, in the same position, suffering the same hell and, eventually, all are named and remembered. Mr. Fincher might not plan for his viewer to leave the theater with a sick optimism, but works of art, of which “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is the most brutal and dark kind, are rather complicated creatures. Mr. Fincher goes to great pains to connect the women in hopes that his viewers identify the struggles of one as the struggles of all. But the same can be said for their eventual fate: recognition. If one woman is remembered, like Harriet, then all are remembered. The crimes Harriet, Mikael, and Lisbeth investigate are solved, the murderers are identified, and the women are returned to their humanity. Thus, if the struggles of one are the struggles of all then so are the successes. And that means there is hope. Perhaps Sweden isn’t quite as “godforsaken,” after all.
