The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Apple

I’ve seen people reading this book everywhere.  With its distinctive cover color and striking black font, it really stands out on the train, in a restaurant, or at a waterpark.  So of course, after Orion my review partner watched it without me, I had to watch it as well and post my review first before he got around to doing his.

I have to say that I was surprised by this movie.  When I saw that it got a pretty high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I was surprised.  When I saw that Ebert liked it, I was surprised again.  So here goes nothing.

Everyone has said this, but I’m going to say it again.  The actress who plays Lisbeth is great.  She had this way of saying “Yes,” with a tone that made it sound like “Duh,” which was just sweet.  If I had to pick one character, I would say that this is definitely her story; it is about her development as a person.  I suppose that the books are named after her, but we don’t see too much of her until quite far along in the movie.  (For a while, I worried that this would turn out like “Kafka on the Shore.”)

One of the major driving factors, after the actors, was the story.  Of course, since all of this is from the book, I have to credit the author for the majority of the cleverness in developing the mystery.  The slow, patient development of the digging reminds me of a scientific discovery – the story is all there, but it is up to the person’s persistence to be able to keep going, and to put the pieces together.  From Sherlock Holmes to Nancy Drew, who doesn’t love a good detective story?  There is something so satisfying about watching a story unfold, in the way that you don’t expect it to be.  And it is especially satisfying when it is as well done as it is here.

The only thing that I had trouble with in the movie was the relationship between Lisbeth and Mikael.  Somehow, it just didn’t work for me.  But however unusual it was, I thought it was cute that there were still scenes that appeared remarkably ordinary – Mikael cooks Lisbeth breakfast in the morning.  Also, the movie was a bit too long or slow – by maybe around 45 minutes?  Did anyone else get that feeling?

I think it’s pretty clear by now, but I’m such a sucker for nice parallels.  And this movie was full of them – from physical details (handcuffs) to character similarities (don’t want to spoil the movie) to themes of reconciliation.

As a side note – I feel like I say this a lot – but the movie was really very brutal.  I had to watch the movie on mute at times; at other times I covered up all but the subtitles.  In a theatre, I would have looked away.

Sometimes, I wish I had more of an official training in film analysis.  I feel like I write reviews about moves as if they were books – I am not trained to notice choices that I know movie teams must make: lighting, colors, placement.  One thing that was interesting was the way computer screens and photographs were often on the screen; I imagine these in the text of a book as blocks of emails in a different font.  And that haunting photo of Hariet that returned again and again – what a great photo.

Overall – 4/5, for good acting and clever, well executed plotline details.

Best regards,

Apple; https://wafflemovies.wordpress.com