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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A few thoughts on The Girl Who Played with Fire

2:53 PM / Cinema / No Comments

Whereas the first instalment of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, received a lavish, big-screen adaptation, its two follow-ups, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, were fast-tracked as low budget television movies and only received theatrical releases thanks to the unprecedented popularity of the novels throughout Europe. While the original cast was enticed back, Niels Arden Oplev vacated the director's chair, with Daniel Alfredson stepping up to the task of helming both this and the third and final film, and the result is a dramatically different stylistic approach. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO never managed to be truly exciting, but it was slick and classy. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH THE FIRE... well, as the saying goes, read on.

The plot once again focuses on the mismatched pair of unlikely amateur detectives from the first instalment, reclusive delinquent Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), and this time sees Salander accused of a brutal triple murder. Two of the victims are journalist Dag Svensson (Hans-Christian Thulin) and his girlfriend, who were working with Blomkvist on an exposé of the sex trade in Sweden, naming and shaming various supposed pillars of society. Svensson and Bergman were about to go public with their research, and numerous parties would have had a vested interest in silencing them. The police's suspicion falls squarely at the feet of Salander, however: her fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, and the third victim turns out to be her legal guardian, crooked solicitor Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson). (You may remember him tying up and raping Salander in the first instalment, and her getting her revenge by video-taping the attack and then returning to taser him and tattoo the words "I am a sadistic pig and a rapist" on his stomach.) Salander may have had reasonable grounds for wanting Bjurman dead, but the deaths of Svensson and Bergman don't fit. As far as Blomkvist is concerned, his one-time partner is innocent, and he is determined to prove it. Now if only he could track her down...

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was a complex novel, consisting of multiple plot strands, past and present, which were pared down quite impressively for the film version, while still retaining all the key beats. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE was even more complex, told through the eyes of a vast sea of characters (whereas its predecessor was limited to the perspectives of Blomkvist and Salander) and delving into a convoluted conspiracy that penetrates the highest echelons of Swedish society. Motivated by necessity, screenwriter Jonas Frykberg junks a lot of material in trimming the narrative to a running time of just over two hours, and unfortunately some of the most important stuff does end up on the cutting room floor. While Salander's Caribbean adventure, an enjoyable enough prologue to the novel but one which served no purpose whatsoever, is not missed, Larsson's biting social commentary has been stripped out almost completely and leaves a far more gaping hole. Many critics accused him of tub-thumping, and it's true that he wore his political beliefs and biases on his sleeve, but they gave the novel a certain weight which elevated it above many of its contemporaries. Here, Frykberg has retained the skeleton of the narrative but lost several of its nuances. It's particularly disappointing that the public hysteria surrounding the manhunt for Salander was excised, because in that area Larsson truly succeeded in skewering his targets.

What we're left with is a pacey if rather talky thriller that lacks the intellectual weight of its source material but is far less bogged down with minutiae. Whereas the first film was a slick widescreen epic, this one, shot on 16mm film using largely handheld camerawork, has an entirely different feel. Some have described it as cheap-looking, but I'm more inclined to feel that the "run-and-gun" style of photography makes it feel brisker and more kinetic, while the grubby-looking visuals seem rather appropriate given the subject matter. While THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was dark, it was largely inspired by the "locked room" mystery stories of Agatha Christie et al, and there was something rather civilised and respectable about it. With its subjects of people trafficking, institutionalised rape and forced prostitution, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE doesn't just benefit from a less grandiose visual style - it positively demands it. And that's not to say that there aren't any moments of style: Salander's covert visit to Miriam's hospital bed, with the foreground rendered a cold blue-grey and yellow light shining through the window, is particularly striking.

In terms of casting, Noomi Rapace is once again excellent as Salander and Michael Nyqvist does what he can with Blomkvist, who continues to be a rather dour and uninteresting protagonist. Peter Andersson is suitably slimy as Bjurman, and Johan Kylén manages to instil Inspector Bublanski with quiet gravitas. Bublanski is not a typical movie cop: in terms of his personality and approach to his job, he reminds me a lot of Claude Lebel in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL. By far the most interesting piece of casting, however, is that of Paolo Roberto, a professional boxer who ends up saving Salander's girlfriend, Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi), from a kidnap. Until his name appeared in the credits, I never realised that the character Larsson had written into his novel was an actual person. In Sweden, Paolo Roberto is something of a celebrity, and - get this! - he actually plays himself in the movie. Considering that his character essentially gets the crap kicked out of him and only manages to save himself and Miriam by the skin of his teeth, he must have a rather self-deprecating view of himself.

It's hard to put my finger on why, but THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE definitely FEELS like a TV movie rather than a theatrical production. Perhaps it's the overly dialogue-driven nature of the narrative (lengthy scenes unfold in which one will character simply sit and talk to another about events which occurred in the past, with no visual cues whatsoever) or the near complete lack of action (a car chase and a narrow escape from a burning barn aside). Or perhaps it's the fact that this is clearly the middle child in a trilogy, setting up a whole lot of strands that will hopefully be tied up in the third instalment, and therefore feeling less like a stand-alone event than a stepping stone in a lengthy serial. Either way this is not, as some have suggested, a pale shadow of the first film, though in any event I didn't think part one was as great as many claimed. Either way the ending, almost as open-ended as that of the novel, will doubtless disappoint some but left me eagerly anticipating THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST... 7/10

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