Thursday, January 26, 2012

Movie Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Tattoos Penetrate Skin, Provoke Discussion


      David Fincher is a maestro of mood. His darkly probing psychical lens, marked by lurid curiosity, depicts menace in the shadows of decrepit dealings, corruption on the fringes of institutional hierarchy, and dishonesty in the despicable terrain of a broken land, whose violent lifeblood, objectified by lascivious miscreants, runs amok of both order and reason.
      Violence is evil's predominant currency. Fincher accepts this axiom with unrelenting sophistication. His intricately woven tapestry of anomie hangs on modalities of darkness. Dastardly men, like Lisbeth's lawyer and guardian Nils Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), harbor a penchant for gratuity; their vulgar antipathy permeates obscene misogynistic depths. Fincher, borrowing from Larsson's world view, paints these transgressions as pandemic tattoos of injustice endemic to a culture riddled by angst. This gloomy canvas is fundamental Fincher, prevalent in his most celebrated criminal portraits. Both Seven and Zodiac, thrilling masterpieces of anguish, embody this chilly, disquieting spirit of inhumanity with equal force.
      The central plot pivots on the mystery of a decades-old murder case involving the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Her powerful uncle suspects familial malfeasance. Daniel Craig plays Millennium magazine journalist Mikael Blomvkist, an impassioned crusader of truth, who's hired by Harriet's uncle, retired industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer). Blomvkist, on a mission to ferret out truth by any means necessary, acclimates to a cabin on the Henrik estate, a palatial stretch of land encompassing the Vanger's island of isolation. Rooney Mara plays idiosyncratic computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, a ferocious tactician whose cunning expertise proves instrumental to the murder investigation. I will spare provocative plot details and state only generically: As complications ensue from all corners of hell, tensions mount, leading ultimately, to a Salander-Blomvkist collaboration that hinges, unsurprisingly, on a harrowing discovery of truth.
      Fincher's adaptation underlies certain impersonal manner. It may, perhaps, be an intentional stylistic flourish, consistent with Larsson's explicit examination of violence (I cannot verify because I have not read the books). In terms of an engrossing cinematic experience and manipulation of mood, Fincher's detached depiction signals tonal finesse essential, I contend, for a story about an angel dressed in vengeance. What Dragon Tattoo lacks in zeitgeist politics, it makes up for in atmospheric theatrics. But, like The Social Network, Tattoo places enormous emphasis on mood, conscience, psychology, and drive. These motifs, after all, are pillars of human tragedy.


      Fincher's most glaring oversight is an entrenched reliance upon a script written by the otherwise shrewdly competent Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York, Moneyball). To borrow a phrase from one of my All-Time favorite films Cool Hand Luke, "what we've got here is failure to communicate" succinctly. Dragon Tattoo is narratively dense. Fincher, perhaps in deference to Stieg Larsson's exhaustive work, eschews economy, in order to, I would argue disparagingly, conform to the principled authenticity of Larsson's Millennium Series. The end result is a narrative depressed by exposition, grounded by dogged procedural formality. The final act, AFTER the final act, teeters along tediously, revealing, perhaps as a faithful allusion to the evolving trilogy, trinkets of triviality. They are, prima facie, inconsequential narrative details.
      The highlight of Dragon Tattoo, beyond Fincher's exacting style, is the exceptional acting tour de force blazed, with stunning versatility and nuance, by the fierce buxom of dour delight (perfect oxymoron!), Rooney Mara. Mara inhabits a hostile vixen with brutal efficiency. Spurned by a broken bureaucracy and misogynistic culture, Lisbeth Salander soars, by tepid Hollywood standards, to impenetrable dramatic heights, exposing uncommon conviction wrought from sordid dysfunction. Mara's gift for subtle expression mirrors the quiet, steady resolve of Salander. And, in an improbable-but-slowly-believable turn, Ms. "All I Do Is Kick-Amazing-Ass" Salander, forges a rapport with Bond, James Bond, in, by any rote measure, a deliberately Un-Bond performance; incidentally, the stone-cold face of cool Daniel Craig strikes me as a less charming and charismatic version of Steve, the "King of Cool" McQueen. Rounding out Fincher's synergistic cast is a formidable array of big screen talents including Christopher "You've Earned, At The Tender Age of 103, The License To Bang My Future Wife" Plummer, Stellan "You''ll Always Be Professor Lambeau To Me" Skarsgard, and the beautiful and confident, Joely "I Loved You In The Patriot" Richardson. 


      Art embodies mood and emotion. Fincher, a relentless purveyor of bleak emotionality, examines the heart of misogyny and malfeasance, undressing motives, bound by amoral decadence, organically. What elevates his direction from a color by number exercise in pathology is his expert team; cinematic specialists, who, effortlessly it appears, make everything look and sound cool. The duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, versatile instrumentalists behind last year's' brilliant score for The Social Network, evoke a chilly mood penetrated by tense, antagonistic notes. And Jeff Cronenweth's (Fight Club, The Social Network) cinematography is a towering achievement of appearance, a cinematographer who understands the inherent rhythm of the movie image; static and perfunctory are two tones Cronenweth's never guilty of invoking. 
      Nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Rooney Mara); Best Cinematography (Jeff Cronenweth); Best Film Editing (Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter); Best Sound Editing (Ren Klyce); and Best Sound Mixing (David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce, and Bo Persson), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a resounding achievement of atmosphere and mood. It deserves only one disclaimer: You may not like what you see and hear, but you will, at the very least, appreciate their exquisite aesthetic composition.

8.5 out of 10

10 comments:

  1. Exquisite review, Matty - and very fair - giving the film the kudos it is due, but not shying away from pointing out where it could have been shored up a bit. Top marks from this corner!

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    1. Thanks, Craig!

      I think, foremost of any quote-unquote critical analysis, it's incumbent upon the reviewer to elucidate positive AND negative qualities particularly for a film, like Dragon Tattoo, that has been well received. Key is to distinguish between subjective and objective; it's not easy to determine, with any degree of impartiality, which aspects of the film resonate universally. Therein lies the rub...and the fun :)

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  2. I thought the ending where she goes to the Swiss bank was all a bit corny and like from a different story altogether. The same scene is in the original Swedish movie (and I assume the book) but at least they ended the movie with that, so Lispeth ends in a strong controlling position, whereas the Fincher ending (which was quite protracted) ended with her much more pathetic and sad.

    mood

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    1. I agree emphatically with your take on the ending. It came across disingenuously, as if Fincher was desperately striving to close the first foray (of the eventual trilogy) on a artificially dramatic, ambiguous note. I didn't buy it. Glad you agreed. And "protracted" was the perfect way to describe it!

      Thanks for the comment.

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  3. I may liked it a bit tiny more than you did, but I fully agree with your AMAZING review. I thought Fincher's love for the story was written all over the film, and it showed. And his ability to create a specific mood and atmosphere is impressive!

    I'm a bit angry at the silly members of the Academy, who didn't nominate it for best film. Also no Fassbender for Shame, Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin and Tintin for Best Animation??? Is it just me, or the Oscars are getting seriously messed up??

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    1. It's fair to say you enjoyed it a tad more than I, but the fact is we both left the theater impressed. Fincher cultivates mood and atmosphere with tremendous effectiveness. The end result was a visceral jolt, the type of reaction I love to embrace because I find myself ruminating on the film long after the end credits roll.

      Haha! You're not the only one, pal. The Academy has rendered me speechless with its egregious omission of Drive. Where is the love for Refn and Gosling? Totally discredits the "honorary" proceedings. But, because I love film so much, I'll be glued to my TV come Oscar Sunday. I'll be rooting ardently for Malick and Scorsese :)

      Thanks for the endorsement!

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  4. I did not venture out to the theaters to see this one, but I have seen the original Danish version. Your warning of not liking what you see is fair, as it was an excellent film but very difficult to watch.

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    1. Thanks for comment, Alex.

      I have not seen the original, but from what I've read, Fincher's version does embrace Larsson's novel enthusiastically (as did the Swedish version). That probably intimates a strong sense of compatibility between the two versions.

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  5. I'm a huge fan of both Zodiac and Se7en so I am keen on seeing this film. I'm currently reading the books and am waiting to see this and the Swedish films as I don't want to cloud my impression of the novels. I know they are different animals, but that's the way I roll.

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    1. Zodiac and Seven are superb. We've talked at length about our incontrovertible love for both on Twitter, so I won't bore you with redundancy. But, since you enjoyed both films (which exude that Fincher-esque aura of impenetrable darkness), I suspect you will thoroughly enjoy this film.

      Please let me know what you think once you've finished the novels and watched the films. I'm always keen to read your luminous interpretation.

      Thanks, Mel!

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