The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Forget kite runners and boy wizards, the new literary phenomenon is a waif-like hacker with multiple piercings and an elaborate tattoo. This is Lisbeth Salander, star of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which has shifted millions of copies since hitting bookstands mere months after the author’s untimely death.

As publishing sensations go, this has to be one of the more unlikely. The series’ first installment, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is marked by passages of graphic sexual violence and chill Scandinavian mystery. But it struck a nerve in Sweden and abroad, and as the sales figures racked up, this adaptation – the first of three films to be released this year – became inevitable.

Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist for the business magazine Millennium who has been successfully sued for libel by the subject of a recent exposé. Licking his wounds and readying himself for a prison sentence, Blomkvist accepts a job from ageing industrialist Henrik Vanger. Vanger has long been plagued by his niece’s unexplained disappearance from the family estate some 40 years previously; now he wants Blomkvist to solve the mystery.

Meanwhile, troubled Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) has been taken into state care, where she finds herself at the mercy of corrupt lawyer Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson). While trying to extricate herself from his clutches, Salander becomes intrigued by Blomkvist’s case. After hacking into his computer and realising that he’s working for the Vangers, Salander joins Blomkvist’s investigation, and the two slowly uncover the shocking secrets at the heart of this troubled family.

Fans of the book will no doubt be happy to note that Rapace is an inch-perfect embodiment of the novel’s Salander – possessing the physical vulnerability of a young girl, but with a fire in her eyes that hints at the well of pain and anger that the sequels will go on to explore. On the other hand, Nyqvist makes for an unlikely Blomkvist – he’s too ragged and pockmarked to play the ladies’ man convincingly – but perhaps because of that is a more accurate representation of Larsson himself, who always intended Blomkvist to personify the angels of his better nature.

But if the film is impressively faithful to the novel – acknowledging its more violent and disturbing elements – then it also shares its most treacherous faults. In particular, it damningly reflects Larsson’s puerile depiction of misogyny and abuse. The book’s original title, Men Who Hate Women, encapsulated the childlike tone of its psychological make-up, which has been carried over to the film. Lines such as “Why do female names always bring you to porn sites?” are enough to make Andrea Dworkin blush. And yet there was always a sense that Larsson protested too much. The scenes of rape and sexual violence in both film and book are as salacious as they are sensationalist.

Niels Arden Oplev’s rather mundane staging betrays the project’s roots as a Swedish TV serial, lacking the scope or imagination to fill the larger dimensions of the cinema screen. The effect is a diminution of the book’s giant reputation, which, on reflection, may not be such a bad thing.

Matt Bochenski

Anticipation:

Yet another adaptation marches towards the big screen.

Enjoyment:

Has all the ingredients of a solid mystery, but lacks the extra dimension of strong characters and convincing psychology.

In Retrospect:

Faithful to a fault.