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+ - True Grit finds the Coen Brothers, those mischievous delvers of American genre, working for the first time within the parameters of the classical Western, a form that they pursue in a curiously straightforward manner, by and large without their customary cocked eye. The Coens have never been deconstructionists, preferring to employ genre as a valid tool to explore their perennial thematic preoccupations. These, of course, include the random preposterousness of the cosmos, the failure of carefully constructed worldviews, the fundamental venality of humanity, and–when relief from such dire considerations is warranted–the glimmers of comfort that are nonetheless attainable from time to time, usually by means of a simple adjustment in outlook. One might expect these typical concerns to be highlighted in the Brothers’ adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel about a precocious fourteen-year-old girl searching for her father’s murderer in mid-nineteenth-century Indian Territory. However, the source material seems to have compelled to Coens to venture into fresh thematic terrain. While their trademark absurdism still rears its head in places, the film is foremost fixated on the problem of moral systems, and how they are developed, hardened, and revealed. True Grit is also, not coincidentally, the Coens’ most intently psychological film in years. While it never attains the searing cinematic greatness of their recent existential pictures (No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man), it possesses the undeniable appeal of a work made by two masters operating slightly outside their comfort zone.
B - Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 noir novel The Killer Inside Me is not an enjoyable film, at least as one usually applies the term to a movie-going experience. Nor is it without vexing structural flaws. And yet it is an undeniably fascinating work, an absorbing and unnervingly insistent portrayal of a murderous mind that joins the ranks of cult notables such as Mary Harron’s American Psycho and John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. However, the gaze of Winterbottom’s film reaches back to a more distant point. Specifically, to Psycho, whose particular cinematic genius the film cannibalizes and assimilates into its own strange approach. Working from a screenplay by director John Curran, Winterbottom maintains a literate awareness of Hitchcock’s seminal thriller throughout his film, without resorting to shameless appropriation or self-conscious homage. Thompson’s novel has made the jump to the screen before, in a 1976 Stacy Keach vehicle directed by Burt Kennedy. However, the new film does not carry the telltale odor of a flimsy remake, nor that of an adaptation overly beholden to its source material. This new take on The Killer Inside Me is insolent and distinctly cinematic. It ambles along a lurid, eccentric path on an unsettling mission: to convey both the hideous normalcy and incomprehensible disconnection of the psychopathic mind.
C- - [SPOILERS] I have to give screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self a point for hewing to the essential elements for an old-fashioned werewolf feature, particularly the now-slightly-subversive notion that the luckless protagonist must perish by the time the credits roll. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand entirely too early with respect to the progenitor lycanthrope, and as a result the whole enterprise runs out of steam long before the clunky, climactic werewolf-on-werewolf brawl. The Victorian-gothic production design is admittedly luscious, even downright bewitching at times, but this only contributes to The Wolfman’s disjointed tone. When the titular monster is nowhere to be seen, it’s an atmospheric B-movie, stuffed with faux-gravitas and lent a dollop of menace by Anthony Hopkins’ glowering, lip-licking presence. When the werewolf attacks, meanwhile, the film veers off into slasher-flick camp, clashing dreadfully with the chilly tone that dominates elsewhere. The film’s R rating is utterly unnecessary, other than to provide the beast with license to rend limbs, slash bowels, and devour a victim’s liver. The crowning disappointment is that while the film-makers capitalize on the evocative power of the classic Universal feature, they disregard the screamingly obvious role of the werewolf myth as a metaphor for the unrestrained id.
C - Let’s be honest, here. Desmond Davis’ 1981 swords-and-sandals-and-stop-motion fantasy epic Clash of the Titans is not a particularly good movie, and the affection that it engenders flows from nostalgia born of endless Saturday-afternoon telecasts on UHF stations in the decade after its release. To be sure, the original Clash introduced Gen-Xers (your truly included) to special effects master Ray Harryhausen’s unreal creations, and served as a gateway drug for the discovery of his earlier works, such as Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Today, stop-motion has essentially vanished from big-budget live-action films. (Although not from film altogether, thankfully, as it has recently given us wonderful features such as Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox.) Accordingly, French director Lois Leterrier’s remake of Clash can be properly regarded as neither a tribute nor a slap to Harryhausen’s creations, although it is rife with winking references to Davis’ film. This Clash is strictly a diversionary actioner for the era of computer-generated beasties, one that owes as much to the original Greek myths and post-Lord of the Rings blockbuster norms as it does to the 1981 film. Of course, the force that really sired this update is the almighty dollar, and its target audience is composed of money-flush adolescent boys who can’t be bothered to seek out the original Clash. So why bother? Well, because Leterrier, his reputation as a flashy hack notwithstanding, knows how to direct a thrilling action sequence. And because sometimes an old-school fantasy quest is just what the doctor ordered.
B- - With his reboot of the moribund Star Trek franchise, J. J. Abrams has chucked out the moralizing and paper-thin social allegory that characterized Gene Rodenberry’s original series and delivered something closer to a Buck Rogers-style swashbuckling space opera. Abrams is keenly aware that for Trekkies and casual viewers alike, the iconic characters are always what lent the series its endurance. His tactic is to transplant those characters into a rollicking adventure, while retaining the physics mumbo-jumbo and desperate gambits that have always been the franchise’s bread-and-butter. The film is also an arch variant on the “Getting the Team Together” formula, as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al. are slotted into place for their syndicated television destiny. Predictably, the elaborate, time-hopping plot is only sketchily conveyed, and without William Shatner’s hammy presence, it is shockingly evident (to this non-Trekkie) that James T. Kirk was always a bit of an asshole. Still, Star Trek is dazzling, giddy stuff, a complete re-purposing of a pop culture institution for distinctly old school cinematic thrills, complete with black holes, monstrous aliens, and doomsday weapons. If Abrams’ only goal was to render Starfleet officers as the badass successors of pirates and cowboys, then mission accomplished.
B - Director Nikita Mikhalkov has tackled a “re-imagining” of the archetypal Serious American Drama with verve, slashing up the most conspicuous aspects of Twelve Angry Men, particularly its claustrophobic narrative and staging under Sidney Lumet. While Mikhalkov’s 12 is far too graceless to stand at the same podium as Reginald Rose’s seminal legal fable, the new film is provocative in its use of expansive flashbacks and long, personal monologues from the jurors. Notably, 12 swaps Henry Fonda’s rational, persuasive Juror No. 8 for an anxious second-guesser, whose own experiences prohibit a rash decision about the defendant’s fate. One senses that Mikhalkov is both paying tribute to and riffing on Lumet’s palatable moralizing, not to mention the American judicial system so routinely fetishized in fiction. While the film takes its facile swipes at apathy and racism, it also poses more probing questions about the limits of speculation, culpability, and civic obligation. For these reasons, 12 is a worthy Russian response film to an iconic work of American drama, despite its often clumsy gestures towards humanizing grit. Never mind his silly flourishes and narrative dead-ends; Mikhalkov deserves praise for reconfiguring a lionized story within a new milieu, adding curiosities and complexity.