REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011): Dir. David Fincher. Written by: Steven Zaillian. Based on the novel by Stieg Larsson. Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen and Joely Richardson. Rated R (Language, sex and graphic violence including rape). Running time: 158 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel following the 2009 European box office hit, is a lean, brutal thriller both highly stylized and remarkably economical.

After a brief prologue the film kicks off with a blistering cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who also scored the film) and featuring a wailing Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vocals. The movie builds off this initial burst of energy and proceeds to rocket down its dark, twisted path at a breakneck speed.

I should admit I had a strong familiarity with the plot prior to seeing the film, having only just recently watched the earlier Swedish version directed by Niels Arden Oplev. Considering the popularity of the source material, I imagine many others will have an even more intimate knowledge of this labyrinthine mystery than I. Still, I was surprised to find how involving the film was in spite of this, thanks in no small part to Mr. Fincher’s impeccable craftsmanship and Steven Zaillian’s lean, efficient script.

Information is doled out quickly and in the fewest words possible (and there is quite a lot of information to take in) but though the film is briskly paced, it is never hurried. I imagine Mr. Fincher and his editors, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, pared every scene down to its absolute essentials, which says something about the wealth of strong material here because the movie clocks in at 158 minutes.

Our navigator through this icy, depraved Sweden is Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a journalist for Millennium magazine who has been convicted of libeling a wealthy businessman, Hans-Erik Wennerström (Ulf Friberg). Blomkvist’s evidence, which accused Wennerström of financial and moral corruption, turned out to have been falsified, leading Blomkvist to believe he was the fall guy in an elaborate set-up. The damages from the lawsuit cost him his life savings and the controversy forces him to take a temporary leave of absence from the magazine, of which he is also a co-owner.

Amidst the fallout of the lawsuit, Blomkvist receives an invitation to meet with Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), an aging businessman who lives on the island, Hedestad. Henrik wants to hire Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet (Moa Garpendal), who he believes was murdered by a member of the Vanger family, all of whom live on the island, nearly forty years ago.

Blomkvist is understandably apprehensive but the price is right and once he begins his investigation it is clear he thrives on this sort of thing. Daniel Craig’s Blomkvist is a hard-edged and determined reporter and Mr. Fincher highlights the obsessive nature of investigative journalism. This makes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo something of a spiritual successor to Zodiac, Mr. Fincher’s 2007 film about reporters and police who sought the identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer for years.

No less obsessive is Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a computer hacker hired first by Henrik Vanger to do a background check on Blomkvist, then by Blomkvist to assist in his investigation for Henrik. Salander is an enigmatic figure; there is reference to a history of violence in her childhood and she proves herself more than capable of violence in the present but mostly her anger simmers under a stolid and beautiful face of Ms. Mara.

Because of her past, Salander is a ward of the state and must answer to a legal guardian in charge of her finances. The latest of these guardians is a despicable man (Yorick Van Wageningen) whose readiness to abuse his influence over her reveals unspeakable levels of depravity. (Some spoilers from here to the end of the paragraph.) The rape scenes are difficult to watch and Mr. Fincher does little to make them more palatable. He is careful though not to push the material into gratuitous exploitation, which is admirable since the story uses these scenes less to confront the seriousness of rape than to set the decidedly dark tone of Steig Larsson’s wicked world.

Even when the images onscreen are tough to watch, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is gorgeous to look at. Over his past few films, Mr. Fincher has perfected an impressive visual style and technical mastery. Shooting digitally allows him unparalleled control over every shot. Notice how his use of color saturation can cast a gloom over even the sunniest day or how striking and clear a scene taking place in near total darkness looks.

Mr. Fincher has a close team of people he works with, which results in an exceptionally focused film. New additions to that team are Mr. Reznor and Mr. Ross whose score for Mr. Fincher’s previous effort, The Social Network, won them an Oscar last year. Their music is versatile to Mr. Fincher’s needs; chugging guitars and synthesizers drive the action forward while Blomkvist and Salander investigate the case, and ambient noise ratchets up the tension in ways a traditional musical score could not have.

I have a few minor grievances regarding some of Mr. Fincher’s stylistic choices but I appreciate that he is a director willing to take risks. (In particular, the ironic use of a pop song in one of the film’s climactic scenes feels out of step with the rest of the film’s style.) I also take issue with the development of Blomkvist and Salander’s relationship but perhaps this is a point more for Mr. Larsson than Mr. Fincher.

These gripes are little more than nitpicking, however, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an exceptional modern film noir that arguably bests the previous (and very good) Swedish adaptation. The Sweden of Stieg Larsson’s story is not a terribly enticing vacation spot but for two-and-a-half hours David Fincher makes it a pretty thrilling place to be.

- Steve Avigliano, 12/29/11

Awards, Lists & Prestige: A Look at the Year-End Awards Craze and the Top 10 of 2010

Now mid-January, we find ourselves in the thick of movie awards season. The critics have published their Best of the Year lists, and just about every other weekend you can catch a glimpse of the Hollywood elite sipping on drinks and wearing their designers’ finest on any number of award broadcasts. But what are we supposed to take away from this frenzy? What does winning Best Picture mean? Or topping a Top 10 list? The cynic in me is tempted to dismiss it all. “There’s no way to determine an objective best film in a given year,” he says. And he’d be right to say so.

On the other hand, the realist in me (a close cousin to the cynic) understands that, for better or worse, the end of the year hubbub that builds up to the Academy Awards is an unavoidable part of the movie industry, so there’s no sense in bemoaning its existence. Despite what one might think seeing the annual onslaught of big-budget blockbuster hopefuls each summer, studios aren’t solely interested in box office receipts. Those glittering statuettes – whatever shape they may be – offer a chance to accumulate that other type of wealth (the non-monetary kind): prestige. The fight for prestige is not limited to studios either. Who wouldn’t want those three wondrous words (“Academy Award Winner”) attached to their name in trailers for the rest of their career?

The problem is that the winners are not always deserving of their new titles. Often, the Oscars generate a lot of (ultimately fleeting) enthusiasm around undeserving films and so the list of Best Picture winners becomes riddled with forgotten movies that, in their year, were deemed the best of the best. The Academy Awards are also painfully predictable. Nominations have yet to be announced, but I can already confidently say that The Social Network will win Best Picture.

Hold on a moment, though. The cynic in me is taking control again. Sure, the Academy Awards are a fallible cultural game that cannot accurately predict which films will be remembered 10, 20, or 50 years later, but they’re hardly worthless. They help to highlight movies that the general public might not have paid attention to otherwise.

A few weeks back, for example, I saw The King’s Speech at my local theater. The movie had been getting a lot of critical attention and the Oscar prognosticators had begun to beat their drums, so I was excited to see it. I wasn’t the only one either. The movie played to a sold-out theater and ended up being a crowd-pleaser. Exiting the theater around me as the credits rolled were excited moviegoers chatting about their favorite parts. Oscar buzz led us into the theater, but the film’s humor and heart sent us home, wanting to recommend it to a friend. The film overcame the daunting expectations that are placed on an Award Winning Film and was able to sway the many subjective opinions in its audience.

Which leads me to critics’ lists. Like the Academy Awards, they do not offer a definitive statement of the year’s best films, but instead provide insight into a critic’s personal tastes. Seeing which critics chose which films as their favorites says something that the blinding glitz and glamour of the red carpet cannot. Of course, a critic’s list can be just as susceptible to end-of-the-year hype as an awards show. In my own experience, I often look back at my choices for the year’s best and scratch my head. In 2007, I wrote that Juno was the year’s best, with No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Zodiac all taking a backseat to that cutesy-quirky romantic comedy. Three years later, Juno is still a funny movie, but each of those other films has appreciated better, rewarding multiple viewings in a way that Juno’s one-liners cannot.

Predicting which films will be remembered years from now can be a tricky thing. So with that limitation in mind, I craft my Top 10 of 2010 list. There were no movies this year that I found truly great in the four-star sense of the word (last year I saw at least four: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man and Up in the Air), but there were still some very fine movies that may yet become great in time.

The numbered order is subjective almost to the point of arbitrariness, but when organizing the list, I kept in mind the following: To what degree was the film a wholly satisfying experience? How have these films appreciated in the short time since I left the theater (or ejected the DVD as the case may be)? Organizing the list in this way led to some surprising results for me, but I think the list is an honest one. What follows are the ten films that most affected me in their various ways.

10) True Grit

Of course a Coen Bros. western would be heavier on talking than shooting. The prolific writer/directors seem to be able to take their style in just about any direction they please, and their adaptation of the novel that also inspired the 1969 classic is a witty and often violent trip out West. Add a grumbling, drunken Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role and the promising young talent of Hailee Steinfeld and you have a very entertaining film.

9) The King’s Speech

Sometimes the best historical dramas are the ones with the narrowest focus. The King’s Speech centers on King George VI’s stammer in the burgeoning years of the Radio Age. This may not sound like much of a subject for a drama, but the story is a surprisingly touching and inspirational one. Colin Firth as the titular King and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist are thrill to watch play off each other too.

8) The Kids Are All Right

No other movie I saw this year has as keen an understanding of how people interact as The Kids Are All Right. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as lesbian mothers who struggle with their children’s desire to connect with their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). This is wonderful comedy that occasionally flirts with melodrama but even then remains an honest a depiction of family dynamics. That the family is an unconventional one dampens none of its universality.

7) A Prophet

This fascinating French film follows a young man’s years in prison as he navigates the multicultural politics of organized crime on the inside. Though only a handful of scenes take place outside the prison walls, the film is as expansive and grand as a crime epic. Absorbing from beginning to end.

6) The Ghost Writer

A political thriller about a biographer (Ewan McGregor) who agrees to write the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) after Lang’s former ghost writer mysteriously committed suicide. Director Roman Polanski hasn’t lost any of his knack for crafting great thrillers, and this one is one of the most rich and involving mysteries in recent years. It has a phenomenal ending too.

5) The Social Network

How much is fact and how much was made up? Does it matter? Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin take the story of Facebook’s creation and turn it into the stuff of Greek drama. Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as the borderline misanthropic Mark Zuckerberg and is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Often dark, sometimes funny, and always engrossing.

4) Inception

Christopher Nolan is a marvelous craftsman and he outdoes himself here. He builds, then solves his own puzzle, playing by the rules he invents for himself. The result is one of the most dazzling and inventive action movies since The Matrix. Like that earlier film, Inception toys with metaphysical ideas just long enough to hold you over until the action scenes, all of which are exceptional.

3) 127 Hours

Only Danny Boyle could take the true story of Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a rock crevice for over five days, and turn it into one of the most entertaining movies of the year. Despite the seeming physical limitations of Ralston’s story, Boyle’s film is a kinetic and exhilarating ride. 127 Hours has all the tension of an action movie and its protagonist doesn’t even move for most of the film. Credit must also be given to James Franco for carrying the film in a career-best performance.

2) Black Swan

The best horror movie in years. Darren Aronofsky’s tour de force about a ballerina losing her mind is an eerie, paranoid thriller with top-shelf performances from Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel. There are a number of twists and turns along the way, but the movie wisely does not trap itself into any one version of reality. The movie exists within Nina’s mind, so the question of what is or isn’t real is irrelevant. To her, everything is real, and I’m only all too happy to get caught up in her surreal nightmare.

1) Toy Story 3

Each of the previous Toy Story movies followed a basic formula: The toys leave the house, have an adventure, and eventually find their way home. In between, we’re treated to some exceptionally clever gags and top-notch animation. The third film delivers all of this plus a pitch-perfect, heart-breaking coda. Rarely does a sequel work as hard as Toy Story 3 to thematically unite its predecessors, but Pixar rises to the occasion and ends a wonderful series in a wholly satisfying way. Not even the unnecessary 3D could bring this movie down.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/17/11

REVIEW: The Social Network

The Social Network (2010): Dir. David Fincher. Written by Aaron Sorkin based off the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer and Max Minghella. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language). Running time: 121 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

In the opening scene of The Social Network, Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) explains to his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) how gaining membership into one of the school’s prestigious final clubs will inevitably lead to a better life. The parties are great. You meet rich, influential people. You even have a better chance of one day becoming the President of the United States. When he gets into one, he promises, he’ll bring her along for the ride. After his girlfriend stands up, insulted, and breaks up with him on the spot, Zuckerberg seems surprised. She assures him though that the break-up is not because he’s a nerd, but because he’s an egotistical jerk.

Similarly, the story that follows, which dramatizes the creation of the now multi-billion dollar social networking website Facebook, is not about computers but rather the personalities behind them. Zuckerberg’s problems do not come from writing endless lines of programming, which he could do in his sleep, but from his interactions with other people.

The film begins with Zuckerberg’s first seed of an idea. Following the bitter breakup, he seeks revenge on the girls of Harvard by drunkenly creating Face Mash, a site that allows students to rank pictures of female students. Heavy traffic on the site causes Harvard’s network to crash and Zuckerberg finds himself invoking the ire of both school administrators and the female student body. The site’s initial success, however, draws the attention of fellow computer programmers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) who want to recruit Zuckerberg to help create a social networking site exclusive to Harvard called ConnectU. Almost as soon as he accepts their offer, he begins work on a site of his own with help from his roommate and best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who has the money to finance the project.

Zuckerberg’s partnership with Saverin begins to sour, however, when Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of the file-sharing network Napster, enters the picture. Parker, who has accrued millions of dollars through his involvement in several web companies, lives life like a rock star. He knows a thing or two about getting rich quick in the Internet Age and even more about how to spend the subsequent wealth. Seduced by Parker’s life of luxury, Zuckerberg moves out to Silicon Valley and begins to gradually cut Saverin out of the site’s development. We know the end result of Zuckerberg’s actions through scenes of two separate lawsuits against him: the disgruntled ConnectU founders who claim Zuckerberg stole their idea and the betrayed Saverin who feels his friend has robbed him of his fair share of the company.

The scenes of the hearings might have been dull in lesser hands, but screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing) transforms them into engrossing drama. He manages to make dialogue about computer programming and copyright laws (and there’s a lot of both) easily understood, and keeps his focus on the characters. Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg is a thoroughly unlikable individual but Sorkin’s script allows the performance to become a character study. Eisenberg had already proven himself capable of creating likable personas in comedies such as Adventureland and Zombieland, but he broadens his range here. Though he spends much of the film sitting and typing behind a desktop, he develops a subtle and fascinating character.

The rest of the cast is filled out with talented young actors. Andrew Garfield, who was recently tapped to be the new Spider-Man, makes Saverin the most relatable face in the film, and Armie Hammer steals a number of scenes talking to himself as the buff crew team twins who seek financial retribution. Justin Timberlake is well (and perhaps ironically) cast as the young man who effectively ruined the music industry. Some questioned Timberlake’s acting potential a few years back, but he’s wonderful here as the cocky hotshot, giving Parker a layer of vulnerability late in the film.

Holding the film’s many excellent parts together is the emerging style of director David Fincher. Fincher’s underrated Zodiac was one of the decade’s best and though his follow-up, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was less exceptional it still bore the mark of a talented director. As with those films (and earlier works such as Seven and Fight Club), Fincher’s style uses muted colors and claustrophobic angles to bring a dark edge to the material. In Fincher’s hands, Zuckerberg’s success story is filled with images of isolation and detachment. There are also a few stylistic flourishes that you can’t help but just sit back and enjoy. One sequence involving the Winklevoss twins’ close loss at crew match is a virtuosic moment of style that also showcases the exceptional work of editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall.

Fincher and Sorkin craft a story with themes of betrayal and victory worthy of a Greek tragedy, but while the film succeeds in broader terms, it falls just short of making a definitive statement about life in the Internet Age. Fincher presents honest and cynical portrayals of young entrepreneurs who want to get rich quick with the Next Big Idea, but the film never quite confronts the moral implications of what sites like Facebook introduce into the culture. The full disclosure and lack of privacy that are necessarily a part of social networking are occasionally brought up but the film never truly deals with them.

As it is, The Social Network is a fascinating portrait of the world’s youngest billionaire and what he did to get there. There is some debate regarding the film’s accuracy – which is reasonable considering Saverin was a consultant for the source material and no doubt had a biased take on the events – but this comes with the territory of a fictionalized account of real life events. The film is ultimately not about who did what and when, but rather why they did it. The who and what involve computers and a lot of dates and facts, while the why opens up a world of motivations that include sex, friendship, fame and prestige. Factually, this is murky territory to be sure, but it makes for an engrossing human story.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/6/10