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Sunday, January 1, 2012

Salander vs. Salander: some thoughts on David Fincher's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO remake

4:30 PM / Cinema / Reviews / 16 Comments

CAUTION: Massive spoilers ahead. You have been warned.

MÄN SOM HATAR KVINNOR

DIRECTOR: Niels Arden Oplev; SCREENPLAY: Rasmus Heisterberg & Nikolaj Arcel; COMPOSER: Jacob Groth; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Eric Kress, DFF; EDITOR: Anne Østeurd; PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Niels Sejer; CAST: Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Sven-Bertil Taube (Henrik Vanger), Peter Haber (Martin Vanger), Peter Andersson (Nils Bjurman), Marika Lagercrantz (Cecilia Vanger), Ingvar Hirdwall (Dirch Frode), Björn Granath (Gustav Morell), Eva Fröling (Harriet Vanger), Michalis Koutsogiannakis (Dragan Armanski); RELEASED: February 27, 2009 (Denmark and Sweden)

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

DIRECTOR: David Fincher; SCREENPLAY: Steven Zaillian; COMPOSERS: Tent Reznor, Atticus Ross; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jeff Cronenweth, ASC; EDITORS: Kirk Baxter, ACE, Angus Wall, ACE; PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Donald Graham Burt; CAST: Daniel Craig (Mikael Blomkvist), Rooney Mara (Lisbeth Salander), Robin Wright (Erika Berger), Christopher Plummer (Henrik Vanger), Stellan Skarsgård (Martin Vanger), Yorick van Wageningen (Nils Bjurman), Geraldine James (Cecilia Vanger), Steven Berkoff (Dirch Frode), Donald Sumpter (Gustav Morell), Joely Richardson (Harriet Vanger), Goran Visnjic (Dragan Armanski); RELEASED: December 20, 2011 (USA)

The other day, I went to see David Fincher's version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO with some degree of trepidation. I'm uncomfortable with the notion of remakes at the best of times, particularly when the original version is (a) only a couple of years old and (b) already of a very high standard. I'd far rather see a filmmaker, particularly one of Fincher's calibre, either tackling new material or at least revisiting an idea that was either flawed to begin with or can be tackled in such a way as to bring something new to the table. All the evidence suggested that this was not going to happen here. True, the material, with its dark themes and general sense of misanthropy, seemed tailor made for Fincher, but then there was already something decidedly Fincher-esque about the original Swedish adaptation, with director Nils Arden Oplev citing Fincher's SE7EN as one of his strongest influences. Similarly, the Swedish version was so true to Stieg Larsson's original novel that, by opting for a similarly faithful approach, Steven Zaillian's script for the American version was destined to mirror Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel's adaptation almost by default.

In the end, Fincher's adaptation more or less conformed to all my expectations about it. The short version: it's a decent enough film in its own right, and if it was the only version that existed, I might be inclined to view it more favourably. The fact of the matter, though, is that this is NOT the only version that exists. I know certain viewers have chosen to indulge in a form of wilful ignorance by deliberately avoiding the Swedish version, while others have come up with all manner of reasons why comparing the two is a no-no, but the fact of the matter is that I can't unsee the Swedish version, and nor do I see any reason why I should want to. Like it or not, the Swedish verison came along first, and as such any subsequent version needs to do something radically different in order to make its existence seem worthwhile.

And the simple fact is that the Fincher version does no such thing. There is no real reason for it to exist, beyond the obvious money-making considerations and a desire to appease those who can't bring themselves to watch (gasp!) a foreign film, let alone one with subtitles. It's a long way from being as pointless as the American remake of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, which did little more than shift the action to the US and translate the dialogue into English, but that's merely damning the film with faint praise. That's not to say that there aren't individual moments that improve on the Swedish version: in particular, I like Joely Richardson's turn as Anita/Harriet Vanger (even if she is far too young to be playing a character who was supposedly an 18-year-old 40 years ago), and the "what happened to Harriet?" mystery is resolved considerably more elegantly than it was in the Swedish version (both variants help streamline, in their own ways, what was a decidedly muddled situation in the novel). Similarly, I think Zaillian made the right decision to omit Blomkvist's prison sentence, which always felt like little more than a distraction in both the book and the Swedish film. The Fincher version also makes considerably more of Salander's previous guardian, Holger Palmgren, who was entirely absent from the theatrical version of the Swedish film and only briefly glimpsed in the extended TV version. But none of these small improvements elevate the material enough to come even close to justify doing it all over again.

This is particularly true in view of the fact that they don't even shift the location: despite this being an American remake, the action still takes place in Sweden, using the same locations as the Swedish film (as described in the novel). Most of the main players are English or American, and there's something a little farcical about watching a bunch of English and American actors wandering around Sweden speaking English with put-on Swedish accents... with the notable exception of Daniel Craig, who for some inexplicable reason retains his normal speaking voice and therefore seems out of place. This is probably going to sound sacreligious, but I honestly think I would have been more open to the idea of a remake if they'd done something drastic like moved the action to, say, America. It would have given the material a different flavour, and the themes of corporate corruption, institutionalised misogyny and a nation's refusal to come to terms with its chequered past (not to mention the more generalised debates about free will and "nature versus nurture") are universal enough that it could have worked. Instead, by remaining in Sweden, the film almost seems to be keeping the uncomfortable questions it raises at arm's length: it implicitly gives the impression that these problems are exclusively Swedish, thereby making what the story says about us as a society somehow more palatable.

LISBETH SALANDER

Take one look at them and there's no doubt about it: stick them in a room together and Noomi Rapace's Salander would knock seven shades out of Rooney Mara's Salander. Rapace's version of the character is a smouldering, battle-hardened warrior, while Mara's is a fragile, child-like waif whose face, complete with bleached eyebrows, bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Ralph Fiennes in the HARRY POTTER films. Both are, I feel, legitimate interpretations of the character, and there can be little doubt that VISUALLY, Mara more closely resembles the Lisbeth of the books, frequently mistaken for a child and using her unassuming appearance as her most potent weapon. Rapace, on the other hand, looks both older and far tougher - not the sort of person most would assume they could take advantage of.

In terms of performance, though, there's no contest: Rapace mops the floor with Mara. The greatest strength of Rapace's acting lies in her ability to communicate paragraphs with a look here and an arch of her eyebrow there. Mara is far more reliant on make-up and costume design to convey the character, giving a considerably more one-note performance and coming across more as an angst-ridden teenager than someone truly destroyed through years of systematic abuse. It's not by any stretch of the imagination a bad performance - in fact, it's a very good one and I'd go as far as to say that it's considerably better than what I expected from the star of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake - but it's limited by Zaillian's desire to keep the character a closed book. I read an interview a couple of weeks ago in which he explained that he wasn't interest in giving the character a back-story - as far as he was concerned, only what could be conveyed about the character in the present tense mattered. It's certainly true that the Fincher version makes the relationship that develops between Salander and Blomkvist more tender than that of the Swedish version, but at the same time there's something altogether more human about Rapace's take on the character. Her performance just seems more natural and less affected. With Mara, I'm more aware of her acting, and of the fact that I'm watching a conventionally pretty girl made up to look like Voldemort's little sister.

MIKAEL BLOMKVIST

Whereas Rapace gives the better performance as Salander despite Mara's Salander being physically truer to the novels, the situation is to a certain extent reversed for Blomkvist. It's hardly a secret that Blomkvist, the tireless crusader for justice and publisher of a small left-wing magazine, is a stand-in for Stieg Larsson (albeit a somewhat sexed-up stand-in who appears to be irresistible to women), and the casting in the Swedish version of Michael Nyqvist, who bears something of a physical resemblance to the author, helps underscore this. Whereas Nyqvist easily convinces as a middle-aged journalist who smokes too much and doesn't get enough exercise (again, completely true to the book), Craig not only carries the baggage of being the incumbent James Bond but is far more of a conventional Hollywood leading man, meaning that he never fully convinces as the character as written. Apart from occasionally dangling a pair of spectacles from one ear, he comes across as too slick and unflappable - but that's presumably what Fincher was going for when he cast Craig in the role. Nyqvist's Blomkvist came across as scruffy and slightly clumsy - a bit of a schlub and the more relatable of the two. However Craig, for my money, gives the more nuanced performance. That's not to say Nyqvist was bad, but despite looking the part, there was always something slightly bland about his take on the character, who rarely seemed to react to events with the sort of intensity you would expect under the circumstances. It is, like everything else in this review, a purely personal reaction, and the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that what Craig brings to the table is actually superior. The trouble is that Nyqvist's Blomkvist is instantly likeable (which I assume was the way the character was meant to be depicted) whereas Craig's is rather cold and aloof, a slick operator who you don't really relate to... and given that we see the vile Vanger family and the oddball (understatementof the century) Salander through his eyes, I'm inclined to think that relatability is a fairly important quality for this character to have.

THE REST OF THE CAST

Elsewhere, it's swings and roundabouts as far as the casting goes. Christopher Plummer's Henrik Vanger lacks the frailty of Sven-Bertil Taube in the original, and as a result the emotional intensity surrounding Harriet's disappearance feels lacking (their eventual reunion also feels like a damp squib in comparison with that of the original). Conversely, Joely Richardson makes far more of an impression as Harriet than Ewa Fröing in the original, although that has a lot to do with the increased amount of screen time she is afforded. Michalis Koutsogiannakis is far closer to how I imagined Armanski when reading the books than Goran Visnjic in the new version; ditto Lena Endre versus Robin Wright as Erika Berger. I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite between Peter Haber and Stellan Skarsgård as Martin Vanger - they're somewhat similar in appearance and both give powerful, understated performances. That said, Martin's confrontation with Blomqvist is botched quite spectacularly in the Fincher version, revealing Martin's guilt far too soon and then completely fudging the central message (namely the notion of a collective Stockholm syndrome, mirroring Larsson's view of society's relationship with those it victimises) during the scene in his torture chamber.

PICTURE AND SOUND

The Swedish version was shot in Super35 for under $10 million (some sources put the figure closer to $7 million). The American remake was shot using the Red Epic and Red One MX digital cameras for $100 million. As such, there were always going to be major differences between the two from a visual standpoint, although the fact that, as previously mentioned, the Swedish film already owed something of a debt to Fincher's distinctive visual style narrowed the gap somewhat. As an unabashed film purist who has yet to see a digitally photographed movie I truly love the look of - and has been underwhelmed by the visual side of all Fincher's prior digital productions - it was probably always a foregone conclusion that I'd end up preferring the look of the Swedish film, but what really surprises me is how little of the 10-fold budgetary increase appears to have made its way on to the screen. (There's little in the plot - ostensibly a traditional Agatha Christie "locked room" scenario - that calls for a massive budget anyway.) There are isolated moments that impress from a visual standpoint - a shot of Salander watching a burning car is particularly striking in terms of both its composition and colour palette - but overall the look of the remake is nothing special, characterised by the usual slick digital video aesthetic and suffering from Fincher's overuse of the "urine filter", something that has plagued his work ever since he moved to digital after PANIC ROOM. The cinematography in the Swedish version, courtesy of Eric Kress, has a more neutral aesthetic, going for understated where Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (who also shot THE SOCIAL NETWORK and FIGHT CLUB) tend to go for obvious. (Case in point: most of the outdoor scenes have a heavy blue tint, presumably to hammer home how cold it is. The Swedish film was able to convey that with a natural colour palette.)

As far as the music is concerned, I can't remember anything specific from the Fincher version except the god-awful screeching during the opening titles, if indeed that counts as music. Meanwhile, I have the central theme from the Swedish version deeply rooted in my brain. In the original, the music is of a traditional orchestral variety, working in tandem with the visuals and dialogue to evoke a mood. In contrast, the remake has Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's sonic wallpaper fighting with the dialogue, frequently (and especially in the first 45 minutes, I found) overpowering it and rendering Daniel Craig's mumbling nigh on incomprehensible. People raved about this duo's work on Fincher's previous film, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, when I couldn't see what the fuss was about, and I predict the same will be true of their contribution to this film. As one reviewer put it, more succinctly than I ever could, "How can a director who's worked with proper musical composers like Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal and David Shire possibly have signed off on this ambient soundscape of droning and plinky-plonk noises?"

So yeah, aesthetically speaking, the Swedish film comes out on top for me, despite having been made for buttons compared with Fincher's remake. Others can and will disagree: I've seen plenty of comments in various places that describe the Swedish version as looking like a TV movie, to which the only response I can muster is "Did we watch the same film?" If anything, it's the Fincher version, with its flat, grain-free appearance, that reminds me of television.

THE ADAPTATION

As previously mentioned, both adaptations stick pretty closely to the source material, although of course, given that Larsson's novel is a veritable doorstop, some streamlining was always going to be necessary. It probably helps that a lot of Larsson's description is ultimately redundant - he has a tendency to describe in minute detail what a character is eating and how the room in which he is eating is decorated. (He is also, to borrow an observation made by a critic whose name I've forgotten, the only author I can think of who will tell you the dimensions of a room BEFORE seeing fit to mention that there is a mutilated body lying in the middle of it.)

It's not really a case of one version being substantially more faithful than the other: each makes slightly different decisions as to what to include and what to leave out, without ever straying from the path laid out by the author. Both omit much of the background to the Wennerstrom case (in the novel, much of the first chapter details Blomkvist's fateful meeting with an old friend who passed on the information later used to entrap him) and nearly all of the admittedly tedious back-story of the Vanger clan. Both also greatly pare down Salander's back-story, although more of it remains in the Swedish version than the American. The Swedish version omits Blomkvist's daughter, who in the novel and the remake is the one who identifies the list of names and numbers as Bible references, as well as Blomkvist's trip to London to meet Anita Vanger. On the other hand, the remake jetisons Blomkvist's trip to Australia, where he finally locates Harriet Vanger, as well as the character of Janne Dahlman (whose role as Wennerstrom's mole within Millennium is admittedly sidelined in the Swedish theatrical cut but reinstated for the extended TV version), while the role of Blomkvist's colleagues Christer Malm and Malin Erikson is reduced to that of non-speaking extras.

I think it's tempting to allow oneself to become tied up in knots trying to chart and critique every deviation from the novel, but of course a screenwriter's first duty is not to slavishly retain every minor plot element but rather to tell a compelling story within the constraints of a different medium. And in that regard, both Heisterberg/Arcel and Zaillian do a fine job. Both versions are, for the most part, recognisably Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and in each case the alterations and omissions, while often very different, are sensible. The Fincher version drags more in the first half than its Swedish counterpart, but once Salander and Blomkvist cross paths things heat up nicely, as indeed they did in the novel. On the other hand, Heisterberg/Arcel had the good sense to greatly simplify and compress events following Martin Vanger's death (in the novel, the action continues for a good 100 pages or so, despite the mystery having ostensibly been solved already), whereas Zaillian allows the film to continue to meander along for another half-hour or so, resulting in a flabby final act that becomes sidetracked by the specific details of Salander's embezzlement of Wennerstrom.

There is, however, one moment that I find unforgiveable: the moment when Salander asks Blomkvist for permission to kill Martin, which is so spectacularly out of character for both Salander and Blomkvist that it makes me wonder if Zaillian truly understood either of them. Salander would never ask Blomkvist for permission to do anything, and Blomkvist would never condone her doing it, let alone give her the go-ahead: both the book and the original film contain a lengthy discussion between the two characters after the fact in which they set out their radically different world views.

CONCLUSION

I suppose what it all comes down to is whether the fact that the remake is closer to the book in terms of certain details really matters. Does the fact that Mara looks more like Salander as described in the book actually matter in the face of Rapace's superior performance? Does having Blomkvist's daughter rather than Salander decipher the Bible references amount to a hill of beans? I'm inclined to think not. I've made it clear that I think the American version is, on the whole, the inferior film. However, the fact is that, even if the two had been neck in neck, that still wouldn't, in my mind, have been sufficient justification to make the same movie twice, let alone with so little time having passed between the two iterations. When it comes down to it, Fincher is far too good a director to be wasting his time treading ground that's already been covered. Here's hoping his next film (and it doesn't look like it will be THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, given the combination of the DRAGON TATTOO remake's failure to set the box office on fire* and his supposed "creative differences" with Columbia Pictures) will be more worthwhile.

* The film is currently being beaten at the box office by SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS, starring Noomi Rapace, and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, featuring Michael Nyqvist. There's irony for you.

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