Well it’s not as good as the Swedish film. Is it? I don’t know I thought that I’d get that out the way first. Anyway this is a happy little tale about Sweden in the early twenty first century. How many themes are there in this film? There’s freedom of information, industrial espionage, cybercrime, incest, Nazism, the abuse of positions of care and power. These are all wrapped up in the central story of a large successful industrial family business. One their member, a 14 year old girl, went missing presumed murdered in 1966.
The head of the family hires a journalist to surreptitiously investigate her murder using the pretext of writing a book about the family. When he begins to uncover evidence of more murders and more missing girls he decides that he needs some help to uncover the truth. This is where he meets Lisbeth; the eponymous girl with the eponymous tattoo.
As with every Fincher film, including Alien3, the audience finds it easy to empathise with his characters. Maybe that’s because of some of the extreme situations they find themselves in. Lisbeth says at one point, ‘there will be blood’, that’s a conservative statement. I was reminded of Seven on a number of occasions.
The way nationality works in cinema as well these days makes for some curious assumptions about the audience’s perceptions as well. That’s not to say that these assumptions are not correct. Most of the actors in this film are British; apparently Britons make more believable Swedes than Americans. There are as well a variety of accents on display, ranging from Daniel Craig’s RP to various attempts at a Swedish accent. There is no mention of a chef though.
I was reminded of the Crow Road, What A Carve Up! and Festen, while watching this, which is no bad thing really. It is an impressive feat of storytelling by Stieg Larsson and Fincher, in the way that the plots and sub-plots are laid out. It does take a while for all the pieces to fall into place as well, along with all the pennies dropping. It’s all beautifully and intricately done.
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