Loving “The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas”

By mgschultz|Historical Studies, Movie Reviews|Be the first to comment!

Just before the holidays, director David Fincher dropped the much anticipated “feel bad movie of Christmas” on the American movie-going masses - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Having been a fan of the original Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, and having just finished reading the first book in the series, I was eager to sit in on the remake. It helped greatly that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were on board for the score, and that fans coming at the story’s dark subject matter from a sonic perspective got an early dump of those moody tracks more than a week ahead of the film’s release. Talk about ratcheting up the anticipation.

Much was also made of Rooney Mara’s delivery on the character of Lisbeth Salander, the infamous rape scene (done in true Fincher shock-fashion), and the film’s production – shot almost entirely on-location in the chill of Sweden. The week before release I relished the Charlie Rose interview with the entire cast. If you haven’t seen it, check it out below. They discuss the experience of playing the characters, adapting from the book, and surviving Fincher’s 100s of takes. Really great interview.

Throw in a great Tumblr site – Mouth Taped Shut - that was full of behind-the-scenes goodness, and a promo Hard-X DJ pre-party, and you have got the makings of a much-hyped transmedia phenomenon.

But those were only some of the reasons why yours-truly was in the theater first thing before the holiday weekend to devour Fincher’s take on this franchise. The truth is, as a student of 20th century European history and memory, I cannot get enough of the Millenium characters and the allegorical way in which Larsson took on so many relevant subjects worthy of critical, artistic rendition: the treatment of women and racial minorities in ultra-conservative, white, male-driven societies; the Marxist critique of the generational dynamics of wealth and their negative influences on the broader society; not to mention the very contemporary issue regarding the permissible boundaries of subversive action and dissent in the face of widespread and insurmountable financial and political corruption and unconstrained power.

Through the vehicles of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson was able to enamor and awaken readers from all over the world to some very entrenched and disturbing problems within Swedish society. Not the least of which was the premise that Sweden’s complicity with the atrocities of the Nazi-past were in no way merely about passive neutrality politics and the pressures of wartime. By Larsson’s standards, Swedish society is still to this day rife with a silent sympathy for the traditional, ultra-conservative, nationalist values that swept fascism into vogue across Europe in the 1930s-1940s. And those mentalities run deeper than politics. They are symptomatic of a hyper-male urge toward self-empowerment and self-perpetuation within the milieu of a Volk. In the aftermath of World War II, these demonized and repudiated urges were forced underneath the public discourse and driven down into the private sphere of home and family. Where they festered and turned in on themselves with destructive force. There is much here for the conscientious student of a Europe still wrestling with the ghosts of its pasts. Larsson provides his readers with a cautionary frame of sorts with which to hang a mirror up to their own societies.

Indeed, Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, strikes me as a brilliant allegory to expose this bitter truth about such insidious undercurrents, and the dangers of not confronting them head on. And Fincher was just the right director for such an allegory. Allegories have the challenge of finely-concealing their real message beneath layers of rich landscape facades and character symbolism. Much as Larsson buried the real moral of his story deep within a somewhat formulaic Swedish crime thriller, Fincher sucks you into the symptomatic horror of rape, incest, and sadistic murder through icy film tones (his films always have a distinctive color pallette), and moody organic synth music. We’re not meant to analyze but to feel the awfulness as we’re pulled through it sequence-by-sequence, and only later to string together the well-placed character dialogue and narration that can instruct us.

It wasn’t until my second sitting for TGWTDT (pulled back to the theater by the awesome visuals and score) that I caught some of screenwriter Steven Zaillian’s well-placed exchanges between the characters. Such as when Henrik (played by Christopher Plummer) is filling in Daniel Craig’s Blomkvist about the Vanger family line and wryly chuckles about his brother Richard joining the National Socialist Freedom League and how “Isn’t it fascinating that fascists always ride in on that word freedom?” Later, Zaillian has Blomkvist courageously questioning Harald, the resident anti-Semite. As Blomkvist rummages through Harald’s photo collection, which happens to be full of blatant Nazi complicity, he comments on Harald’s audacity to hold on to such material over the years–urging guilt. Harald scoffs it off and proudly replies “I’m the most honest one of them all.” Blomkvist returns to clarify, “…of the family?” to which Harald replies, “…of Sweden.”   Finally, towards the end of the film while Martin has Blomkvist strung up in his torture chamber, he gloats about the girl he had caged up in the dungeon while they enjoyed dinner upstairs during one of the earlier scenes. Blomkvist has the empathy to ask of her name, and Martin, annoyed, mutters that she was nothing more than “just another immigrant whore.”

Fincher is one of the great rebel filmmakers of our time. I would not be at all surprised if he had the audacity to intentionally subvert the film’s potential to be a widespread hit right out of the gates. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, with all of its dark and disturbing elements, was strangely timed to open the week of Christmas. Not surprisingly, attendance was underwhelming. In a country that would prefer to dumb itself down with popcorn hits like Mission Impossible IV: Ghost Protocol, and mask its own complex subconscious loathing toward family by huddling down into holiday nostalgia, why should we be surprised? Is Fincher holding the mirror up in challenge to our own society, daring us to take the time out to allow our inner psyches to be made a little uncomfortable with timely truths about (perhaps all-too familiar) undercurrents?

Fincher’s remake is indeed an uncomfortable film. But it is also an artful piece of relevant and critical work. The best films always are.