My pal Andrew Klavan surprised me with his review of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and not just because everything was spelled correctly. What caught me off guard was his description of the Swedish mystery/thriller as a “bucket-load of socialist-feminist tripe and propaganda” that takes place in “one big leftist fantasy world.” Klavan’s 100% correct but believe or not, I saw the movie just a few months ago and missed all that. For reasons that make perfect sense, I’m well aware that most everyone pictures me at screenings with notebook in hand and pen at the ready to record and raise hell over anything political. But that’s just not the case.
Like any true-blue movie fan, as the lights dim my silent prayer is offered up to the mighty movie gods asking them to bring the awesome, and if that prayer’s answered, if the filmmakers know what they’re doing, my getting too lost in their world to take notice of socialist-feminist tripe is quite possible. What will pop my radar are moments of bad storytelling, especially when those moments arrive in the form of ham-handed political messaging.
Propagandist junk like the bug-eyed Colonel who lets the Iraqi prisoner bleed to death in “The Hurt Locker,” is a good example. Another is the jelly beans director Phillip Noyce placed on the President’s desk in “A Clear and Present Danger.” Gee, ya think the Prez will end up being corrupt? That kind of off-story and unnecessary stupidity jolts me out of a movie and pisses me off both as a film lover and an American.
After reading Klavan’s take on “Tattoo” I gave it another look, this time on DVD, and have to say that once again the story was so consuming that the politics washed right over me. Same goes for my pretty wife, who’s to the right of me and yet loved the film so much that we dashed out to a theatre to see the sequel, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” the very next day. I bought her popcorn, she let me hold her hand. It was nice.
“Tattoo” and “Fire” are the first and second cinematic parts of what’s known as The Millenium Trilogy. The final chapter, “The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet’s Nest,” is set for a U.S. release sometime later this year. The trilogy is based on series of best-selling mystery novels written by Swedish author Stiegg Larrson but released posthumously after his premature death of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50. Larrson was a hardcore leftist who worked on behalf of the Communist Workers League and edited a Swedish Marxist journal. Incredibly, he wrote the trilogy, which has sold over 27 million copies, in his spare time to relax.
All three films star the extraordinary Noomi Pace as the aforementioned girl, Lisbeth, a pierced, tattooed, emotionally troubled, bisexual twenty-something who committed a terrible crime as a child and – when we first meet her — is forced to report to a court-assigned guardian. She’s also a genius who makes her living as a computer hacker, gathering information for corporate clients who may not appreciate her goth attire and truculence, but can’t argue with her results. It’s this savant-like talent that eventually involves her in Mikael Blomvist’s (Michael Nyqvist) dark, sordid murder mystery in “Tattoo.” And it’s the prickly dance of a cautious attraction, mutual respect, and his frequently rebuffed offers to come to the rescue of someone so fiercely independent that forms the heart and soul of their story.
Like his creator, Blomvist is a crusading socialist reporter. There’s nothing elitist or sanctimonious about him, though, and Nyqvist is remarkable at conveying his character’s inner loneliness without a word of exposition. With his quiet, watchful demeanor, working class looks, darkly vulnerable eyes and a leather jacket that’s a size or two too small for him, Blomvist always appears a little out of place in the world and his longing to protect a girl who won’t allow anyone to protect her adds a permanent thread of poignancy to his character.
We’re introduced to Blomvist in “Tattoo” as he’s being sentenced to a few months in prison for defaming one of those nasty capitalists. With a few months to kill before his sentence begins, Blomvist agrees to look into the forty year-old disappearance of a young woman on behalf of her Uncle, who’s now in his eighties and desperate to know the truth before he dies. The old man suspects the guilty party is a member of his own clan, the wealthy, powerful, secretive, and very dysfunctional Vanger family – whose lineage not only reaches to the highest positions of political and corporate power, but there’s a few Nazis to boot. The mystery takes a delicious turn when Lisbeth enters the scene and uses her unique gift for research to break the case open in a way no one expects.
Michael Nyqvist
Because she’s five-foot nothing, maybe 80 pounds soaking wet, and the world in which she inhabits is littered with cruel and evil men, Lisbeth is frequently a target for the worst kind of physical and sexual abuse. What we love about her, however, is that she doesn’t take it. If Charles Bronson were a sexually confused girl, he’d be Lisbeth. While Larsson is obviously using this theme to make a man-hating statement (the novel’s original title was “Men Who Hate Women”), almost by accident his agenda gets lost as we watch Lisbeth, time and again, strike back at her oppressors in that balls-out vigilante way that so pleases we right-wingers it frequently brings tears to our eyes.
The real star of “Tattoo” is a perfectly structured story where one scene logically builds upon the next. Both the mystery and the characters are meticulously layered and revealed in a way that – subtitles or not – pulls you in with a gravitational force no American thriller has achieved since… well, I can’t remember when.
Though still involving and entertaining, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor. The mystery gets a little convoluted, though it does wrap up in a way that makes you wish part three was out NOW. What will make part two worth your while are the two central performances and those exquisitely satisfying moments of grrrl-power vigilantism.
When I’m criticized as an ideologue who dismisses or unfairly judges something based only on its politics, because that’s so untrue, it does bother me – well, at least until I remember that it’s not my fault today’s left-wing filmmakers are such pathetic, heavy-handed hacks you’d have to be an intellectually dishonest hack of a critic yourself to say anything nice about their work.
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