As it is, I go to the cinema (US ‘go to the movies’ – I like to make sure any American readers who have landed here don’t get confused) less than once in a blue moon. The last time was about ten years ago, perhaps longer, with my ageing stepmother, since dead (as in ‘passed’) to see Les Misérables, and we left early. She didn’t like it and I had become rather bored so I wasn’t too upset to be leaving early.
NB The cast of the 1985 West End version of Les Misérables referred to it as ‘The Glums’ which is a reasonably funny gibe if you have to have heard of Take It From Here, a BBC Light Programme – this was several centuries ago, remember, when life was still in black and white – half-hour comedy written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden and starring Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and June Whitfield. If you haven’t, of course, you will have no idea why and will certainly not chuckle.
Yes, I know that I am ‘missing out’ on special effects that can supposedly only be appreciated on a big, silver screen, but to that I say simply ho-hum. I’m not much into special effects anyway and I’m more the boring sort who is impressed by great direction, a great script and great acting.
If you need special effects to get those bums on seats and wnat folk creaming themselves with delight in those seats, maybe you and I belong to different clubs.
So while everyone was for a while raving about how great The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was, I had no idea why and made repeated mental notes to watch it.
Then finally, a few nights ago, I got around to watching it and, well . . .
I am here writing about the David Fincher English version of 2011 of Swedish author Stieg Larrson’s mystery
thriller of the same name, that was published (posthumously, I gather) in 2006 and filmed in Swedish three years later. According to Uncle Wiki, Fincher’s version made ‘$233 million against a $90 million production budget’ which, let’s be candid, is all that interests the money men and women in Tinseltown.
That is certainly not to claim the directors like Fincher and his producer Scott Rudin are also philistine’s and patently they are not.
I am here writing about the David Fincher English version of 2011 of Swedish author Stieg Larrson’s mystery
That is certainly not to claim the directors like Fincher and his producer Scott Rudin are also philistine’s and patently they are not.
But when it comes to financial clout – where to film, who to hire and so on – I suggest that giving their advice and stating their preferences is as much financial clout they have.
Yes, there’s the ultimate sanction of slinging their hook as and when, but such a nuclear option must be used with caution and sparingly.
By chance, a little earlier I was reading (in the Observer, worthy to a fault, sadly) of the British director Tony Kaye who like the Scott brothers Ridley and Tony, Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Luyne arrived at Hollywood director through the London ad agency network, scored a hit with American History X starring Edward Norton, but then went on to fuck himself in Hollywood by falling out with the moneymen, complaining that Norton had been allowed to edit the film.
He demanded his name as director be removed from the credits and when that was refused, insisted he be listed as ‘Humpty Dumpty’. That didn’t work, either, and nor, apart from four piddly projects, did Kay in Hollywood, either.
Fincher’s take is impressively and expensively filmed and holds our interests well, but – there’s often a but, isn’t there? You see, for this viewer, the questions and doubts arrived rather soon after the final scene. And those questions not so slowly evolved into nit-picking which itself then became quite substantial gripes.
First off, for all its attendant flim-flam, Fincher’s film is conventional to a fault. That in itself is not a bad thing but of late we film fans have become rather spoiled by films which don’t just go that extra mile but often reach well beyond convention. A good example might be Identity which ostensively follows a conventional track but then twists that to become something far more interesting and entertaining.
I have not read Larrson’s novel, but I assume the essential ‘plots’ of the book and the films are the same: a talented journalist and joint owner of a current affairs magazine – aren’t hacks in films always talented? – who has just lost a libel case and loads of money is hired by the head of a very rich family to investigate the inexplicable disappearance forty years earlier of one of his grand.
That family, owners of an industrial conglomerate, is based on an island in the far north of Sweden where the hack moves temporarily to try to track down the lass. And that family is screwy to a fault, one or two having long-standing fascist connections and hating each other. Incest also plays a part in their dealings.
Now it is time to bring in the ‘girl with the dragon tattoo’ herself after whom, arguably misleadingly it have to say, the novel and films are named: this lass is, apparently – and this is a crucial plot point – a computer and electronic genius but also something of an oddball.
At 23 years old, she is still a ‘ward of the state’ and at one point explains that she had tried to kill her father when she was 12 and is still deemed to live too much of a rackety life to be allowed control of her own affairs.
At first her presence in the film seems to be optional, redundant even, but eventually she is teamed up with said journo to ’solve the mystery of the disappearing teen’. And they do solve the mystery, via an unsavoury anal rape scene which is not quite gratuitous but is knocking on that particular door.
Towards the end of the film as we approach, with lead feet in my view, the ‘denouement’ we are given a ‘torture’ scene (which shows no ‘torture’ as such though the rape scene did graphically show an anal rape) and which might well have come from a 007 Bond movie.
She enter the investigative hacks life after she is initially hired by the rich family’s lawyer to look into his background to establish whether he can be hired or not.
Finally, it is all wrapped up thought the film ends on an odd and sad note where the dragon tattoo lass, screwy and all, has it seems rather lost her heart to the journo but doesn’t know he is already partnered up with a fellow hack.
When I all ended and before I began my wondering ‘why this, why that’, I occurred to me that the whole shooting match might well have been undertaken as a limited television or streaming series: why make a film which is ultimately so lamely – my word – conventional.
Then the nit-picking started: in no particular order, what relevance did the fascist leanings of one or two of the family have? Just how did our dragon tattoo lass gain all her excellence investigative research, computer and electronic?
Why did the family want journo laddie to be sussed out first anyway? Why did – I won’t say who – take a potshot at journo laddie but miss? Why did, presumably the same bod, kill a stray cat that had befriended said journo? To try to scare him off? Too many characters make a brief, fleeting and, at first, seemingly relevant appearance but there then forgotten.
These and rather a lot of other loose ends are lazy shortcuts might well work in a piece of written fiction but in film form demand more attention and care that here we don’t get.
At the end of the day we get a lot of surface, but ratehr less substance than we might expect. So there you have it: depending on your ‘club’ you might think Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is fabulous. I didn’t.
By chance, a little earlier I was reading (in the Observer, worthy to a fault, sadly) of the British director Tony Kaye who like the Scott brothers Ridley and Tony, Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Luyne arrived at Hollywood director through the London ad agency network, scored a hit with American History X starring Edward Norton, but then went on to fuck himself in Hollywood by falling out with the moneymen, complaining that Norton had been allowed to edit the film.
He demanded his name as director be removed from the credits and when that was refused, insisted he be listed as ‘Humpty Dumpty’. That didn’t work, either, and nor, apart from four piddly projects, did Kay in Hollywood, either.
Fincher’s take is impressively and expensively filmed and holds our interests well, but – there’s often a but, isn’t there? You see, for this viewer, the questions and doubts arrived rather soon after the final scene. And those questions not so slowly evolved into nit-picking which itself then became quite substantial gripes.
First off, for all its attendant flim-flam, Fincher’s film is conventional to a fault. That in itself is not a bad thing but of late we film fans have become rather spoiled by films which don’t just go that extra mile but often reach well beyond convention. A good example might be Identity which ostensively follows a conventional track but then twists that to become something far more interesting and entertaining.
I have not read Larrson’s novel, but I assume the essential ‘plots’ of the book and the films are the same: a talented journalist and joint owner of a current affairs magazine – aren’t hacks in films always talented? – who has just lost a libel case and loads of money is hired by the head of a very rich family to investigate the inexplicable disappearance forty years earlier of one of his grand.
That family, owners of an industrial conglomerate, is based on an island in the far north of Sweden where the hack moves temporarily to try to track down the lass. And that family is screwy to a fault, one or two having long-standing fascist connections and hating each other. Incest also plays a part in their dealings.
Now it is time to bring in the ‘girl with the dragon tattoo’ herself after whom, arguably misleadingly it have to say, the novel and films are named: this lass is, apparently – and this is a crucial plot point – a computer and electronic genius but also something of an oddball.
At 23 years old, she is still a ‘ward of the state’ and at one point explains that she had tried to kill her father when she was 12 and is still deemed to live too much of a rackety life to be allowed control of her own affairs.
At first her presence in the film seems to be optional, redundant even, but eventually she is teamed up with said journo to ’solve the mystery of the disappearing teen’. And they do solve the mystery, via an unsavoury anal rape scene which is not quite gratuitous but is knocking on that particular door.
Towards the end of the film as we approach, with lead feet in my view, the ‘denouement’ we are given a ‘torture’ scene (which shows no ‘torture’ as such though the rape scene did graphically show an anal rape) and which might well have come from a 007 Bond movie.
She enter the investigative hacks life after she is initially hired by the rich family’s lawyer to look into his background to establish whether he can be hired or not.
Finally, it is all wrapped up thought the film ends on an odd and sad note where the dragon tattoo lass, screwy and all, has it seems rather lost her heart to the journo but doesn’t know he is already partnered up with a fellow hack.
When I all ended and before I began my wondering ‘why this, why that’, I occurred to me that the whole shooting match might well have been undertaken as a limited television or streaming series: why make a film which is ultimately so lamely – my word – conventional.
Then the nit-picking started: in no particular order, what relevance did the fascist leanings of one or two of the family have? Just how did our dragon tattoo lass gain all her excellence investigative research, computer and electronic?
Why did the family want journo laddie to be sussed out first anyway? Why did – I won’t say who – take a potshot at journo laddie but miss? Why did, presumably the same bod, kill a stray cat that had befriended said journo? To try to scare him off? Too many characters make a brief, fleeting and, at first, seemingly relevant appearance but there then forgotten.
These and rather a lot of other loose ends are lazy shortcuts might well work in a piece of written fiction but in film form demand more attention and care that here we don’t get.
At the end of the day we get a lot of surface, but ratehr less substance than we might expect. So there you have it: depending on your ‘club’ you might think Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is fabulous. I didn’t.
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