2001 (USA)
Director: David Fincher
Viewed: December 19, 2011
Format: Digital Theatrical Project (Wehrenberg Ronnies 20)
An argument can be made that David Fincher’s adaptation of Steig Larsson’s phenomenally popular pulp whodunit, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is an exercise in style over substance. Certainly, the film’s opening credit sequence lends credence to this position: Yeah Yeah Yeahs vocalist Karen O growls out a cover of Led Zepellin’s “Immigrant Song” as oily black liquid oozes over human figures that are embraced and penetrated by writhing computer cables. It’s jarringly reminiscent of a James Bond opening, and perhaps a sly inter-textual joke at that, given that leading man Daniel Craig is serving as the current 007. The rest of the film is only moderately less brash.
However, such aggressive styling proves to be a tick-mark in the film’s favor, at least when one considers it alongside both the source material and Niel’s Arden Oplev’s comparatively flat, mirthless 2009 Swedish film adaptation. Under Oplev’s hand, Larsson’s grim tale of buried family secrets and socialist democracy gone freakishly awry was many things—workmanlike, satisfactory, disposable—but stylish it was not. The most valuable card up the sleeve of the 2009 film was Noomi Rapace, who embodied waifish, wounded hacker-sleuth Lisbeth Salander with eerie precision and a curious kind of dark magnetism.
Fincher’s take doesn’t add any appreciable depth to Larsson’s tale, and in this respect it is remarkably similar to the Swedish film. Screenwriter Steve Zallian wisely excises the Scandinavian politics and finance that dominated hefty stretches of the novel. Such components are arguable crucial for understanding the wider context of Larrson’s story, but what is digestible on the page is probably unworkable in a film. Zallian also trims and tweaks the narrative in other ways, mostly to make the story a little smoother and more symmetrical. From a thematic perspective, however, the new film is unsophisticated, offering little beyond the visceral appeal of an unsolved mystery, seat-squirming tension, and a streak of white-hot pseudo-feminist rage.
Insofar as this is the extent of what any version of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could offer, David Fincher’s film is an unquestionably handsome and persuasive realization of the tale. It’s visually striking, crisply conveyed, and blessed with a lucid, seductive aesthetic and mood, which is more than one can say of most murder mysteries. Rooney Mara—slinky and wide-eyed beneath ghostly eyebrows—conveys her own variation of Lisbeth, more shrinking, awkward, and defensive than Rapace’s portrayal, but also more fearsome and razor-edged when provoked. Beyond Mara and Craig the film features a cast of familiar faces—Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, and Robin Wright among them—as well as Swedish stars and long-lost character actors (Julian Sands!), all of whom acquit themselves well enough. (Perhaps the film’s only formal blunder is the vaguely accented English dialog, which is distracting given the explicit decision to retain the Swedish setting.)
The real stars here, however, are the craftsmen behind the film, a team of returning Fincher collaborators who manage to render a stomach-churning tale of rape, murder, and revenge as something deliriously attractive. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth bestows a familiar yellowish “greasy-gothic” look to most of the interior spaces, but elsewhere a chilly gray dominates, and appropriately so. The adroit editing from Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall—who have now cut the director’s past four films—keeps things humming along with enviable vigor and clarity, a necessary asset in a story so laden with exposition. Just as essential is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which effectively evokes an atmosphere of pure wrongness by layering plucked-out, discordant melodies over ambient droning and buzzing. These various visual and aural elements coalesce (perhaps “curdle” is a better term) into an atmosphere that is oppressive, gnawing, and eminently fitting for the tale. And therein lies the primary appeal of The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo: As a lurid, shallow thriller steeped in hideous beauty.
B - Now here’s a wholly unexpected and welcome shock, if a grim one. Beneath the fiendishly straightforward premise of Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried, beneath even the nasty thrill of the claustrophobic agonies inflicted on its hapless protagonist (and the audience) via its 6′x3′x2′ setting, lies one of the best films yet made about the Iraq War, second only to the Armando Iannucci’s black comic masterstroke, In the Loop. If one expects any word to describe a 95-minute film set entirely inside a coffin and featuring a single on-screen actor, it would be “simple. However, the remarkable thing about Cortés’ high-concept tale is that, although it succeeds spectacularly well strictly as a white-knuckle thriller about an unthinkable situation, it possesses a richness of subtext that permits examination from manifold angles. Turn it this way and you can see a stark allegory for America’s seven-year embroilment in the Middle East. Flip it that way and you might discover a miserable, sweat-stained absurdism, one part Kafka and one part Coen brothers. Nonetheless, such is Cortés’ commitment to Buried’s elemental parameters and its triumph as a merciless vice of tension, that the film never has time for sermonizing or surreal digression.
The Killer Inside Me
B - Antichrist is an aggressively unpleasant film, but that’s not the same thing as a bad film. In fact, the latest effort from Lars von Trier, the noted asshole and self-appointed ambassador of pretentious European film-making, is the most intriguing work from the director I’ve yet seen. I have never understood the contempt his films often arouse, but my prior experience with von Trier has been admittedly underwhelming. Antichrist, however, proves to be audacious and original. The film is suffused with unforgettable images, seemingly plucked out of a bad dream and given a rotten, mythic life on the screen. Von Trier has achieved a fresh alchemy, blending his essential cynicism with intellectually engrossing themes and a new-found instinct for terror. While a bothersome lack of emotional heft prevents it from succeeding as a genuine work of horror, Antichrist is nonetheless harrowing, provocative stuff. It seems ordained to lurk in the cellar of cinema for years to come, it noisome bellows drawing attention to our unexamined assumptions about remorse, sex, and especially gender. You are forewarned: von Trier has summoned forth an ugly, ugly beast, and staring it down is not enjoyable in the least, but there is something nonetheless compelling in its scabrous eyes.
A - It is 1987, and in a dingy dormitory room, a pair of Romanian women prepare for a trip of some kind. Who will feed the goldfish while we are gone? Where is the hair dryer? Should I bring my class notes so I can study? The genius of Christian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is evident in these first few opening minutes. The scenes reveal something about the character of each of these women, Gabita and Otilia, but the portrait is not yet complete. Much more will come to light, about their strengths and flaws, about the casual menace of life in Communist Romania, and about what exactly they are planning. This is a remarkable film about how people achieve illicit aims in a world that is alternately indiscriminate and cruel. This is a film about abortion, and it is the first great movie of 2008.