The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from www.freefall-productions.com)

2009 / Sweden / 152 minutes

“What has happened to you? How did you turn out this way? You know everything about me. I don’t know shit about you. Not a damn thing.”

Director: Niels Arden Oplev / Screenplay: Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterbeg, based on the novel by Steig Larsson / Director of Photography: Eric Kress / Music: Jacob Groth / Production: Soren Staermose for Yellow Bird Films / Cast: Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Peter Haber (Martin Vanger), Peter Andersson (Nils Bjurman), David Dencik (Janne Dahlman), Sven-Bertil Taube (Henrik Vanger).

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), publisher of Sweden’s independent Millennium magazine, is hired by Henrik Venger (Sven-Bertil Taube), patriarch of the wealthy Vanger family, to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished in the 1960’s. Having just lost a libel case (and looking at a prison sentence) after being set up by a corrupt businessman, Blomkvist accepts the job and moves into a cottage on the Vanger estate.

   Henrik believes that Harriet was murdered by a member of his family, as all of his brothers were Nazis (although only one of them is still alive). The case proves much more complex though and Blomkvist soon becomes frustrated with it until he starts getting help from the mysterious Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a young cyber security specialist and expert hacker Henrik previously employed to background check him.

   The product of an extremely abusive childhood, Lisbeth is an introverted but aggressive social misfit, as highly intelligent as she is socially awkward. After escaping her corrupt “Legal Guardian”, Lisbeth joins Blomkvist on the Vanger estate to help with the investigation and her unique skills soon uncover several details he missed, leading them both to the discovery of some even darker secrets among the family members.

   Based on the acclaimed novel by Steig Larsson, Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first of three films adapting Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Although Daniel Alfredson took over as director for The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (both also 2009), all three parts were filmed together over a massive eighteen month schedule.

   Whilst the sequels (both the books and the films) would focus much more on Lisbeth with her back-story becoming closely intertwined with the main plots, this first pairing of her and Blomkvist sees the two of them on an investigation unrelated to themselves for the only time. As great as Rapace is (she remains the definitive Lisbeth- later portrayals haven’t even got close), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the only film in the series to list the late Nyqvist before her in the credits.

   This is because the story is much more about Blomkvist on the first case. Larsson (who, like Nyqvist, died tragically young) secretly wrote the books at night and they were all published posthumously but he was well known in Sweden for his antifascist activism and for his day job editing Expo, the real version of Millennium magazine. And while Larsson put much more of himself into the character of Blomkvist, his diet of coffee, cigarettes and junk food was given to Lisbeth.

   Accurately following the novel with only minor changes (Blomkvist serves his three month prison sentence before, rather than after, the Vanger investigation in the book), the film is much more concerned with the cause of crusading, principled independent journalism than the sequels and serves as a fitting tribute to Larrson’s real life and work.

    Whilst the middle part is probably the strongest of the trilogy in both forms (as well as being where the English language titles come from), it would make little sense if approached as a starting point, which is why the first film beat it to inclusion in this book. However, most viewers will be turning out for the now legendary title character and Rapace’s Lisbeth properly comes into her own in The Girl Who Played with Fire.

   Rapace would quickly start getting big Hollywood offers immediately following the trilogy’s international release and after impressively learning to act in English almost as quickly, took the lead role in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus in 2012. David Fincher’s English language adaptation of the first novel appeared in 2011 and whilst not bad, it’s pretty forgettable compared to this intriguing, shocking and much more authentic version.