The Last Station

Written at the time of the film's release right at Oscar-time. Subsequently, Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for The Blind Side and Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for Crazy Heart.

 

"War and Peace with Mr. and Mrs. Tolstoy"

“All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

First line of "Anna Karenina"

One of the last of the Oscar nominated films has finally arrived in the area, that being Michael Hoffman's film of The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini,* subtitled "A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year." It tells the story of the last turbulent year in Lev Tolstoy's life** (the author is played by Christopher Plummer, nominated for Best Supporting Actor—Plummer's first nomination) when he was being pulled in two different directions: by his own ideology of anti-materialism—and his desire to create a communistic society around himself that included donating the rights of his work to the Russian people—and the conflicting desires of his family to leave the rights to his family guaranteeing an inheritance to his wife (Helen Mirren, nominated for Best Actress) and children.

It culminates in the story behind a famous photograph—Tolstoy, a Russian hero, had his life very well-documented***—of a forlorn scene as Mrs. Tolstoy, the Countess Sofya—strains to see through the window of the train station where her estranged husband lay dying.

It begins with the arrival of Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) to the Telyatinki commune, where the young student has been chosen by Tolstoy's acolytes to serve, officially as Tolstoy's secretary, and unofficially as a go-between (and spy) between them and the Countess Sofya in their effort to change the writer's will and pass the rights to the masses. She is having none of it, despising her husband's followers ("No wonder I'm so lonely! I'm surrounded by morons!"), especially Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti)—"a sycophant and a pervert"—whose desire it is to set Tolstoy up as a visionary for the communist ideology—as interpreted through his own vision, of course.

Bulgakov is a total naif, desirable to both sides: familiar with Tolstoy's work and philosophy to appeal to the Tolstoyans, and young and innocent to the others. For Tolstoy, he's a boon—a young man with ideas that don't sound like echoes of his own. At their first meeting, Tolstoy is delighted with Bulgakov and wants to know about his writings; Bulgakov is overcome: "You are Lev Tolstoy and you ask me about my work?" That's part of the appeal. During a walk through the fields the author confesses he's not a very good Tolstoyan and confesses a cherished memory of a past love affair. "You mustn't torture yourself so!" stammers Bulgakov. "Torture!" Plummer as Tolstoy roars. "You are a virgin!"Not for long.

Bulgakov attracts the attention of Masha (Kerry Condon), who is only too eager to help Bulgakov break the commune's celibacy edict. She's a character created by Parini to serve as a love interest, but it has the effect of turning the story a bit into "Tolstoy in Love." It distracts a bit, but gives Bulgakov a romantic's eye towards the conflicts within the group and as he is pushed and pulled between the two telegraphs his intentions. She does serve a purpose besides love scenes.

Hoffman (Restoration, Soapdish, 1999's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream,) keeps things light and sun-splashed throughout, simulating natural light as much as possible, showcasing the performances of the principles over overt directorial flourishes for the most part. And the performances are the reason to see the film—Mirren has a fine time with the manic possibilities of her role, and Plummer exudes warmth as the elderly Tolstoy with maybe a little too much twinkle in his eyes—there are pictures of the man at that age where the eyes are pretty flinty.

The screenplay makes the most of the elderly author swaying from one loyalty to the other, weakening his health and resolve. Although Mirren may not win for her performance—too much competition from Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock—Christopher Plummer might pull an upset win garnering an Oscar representing his body of work (which has only increased of late).

* Parini worked on an early screenplay of the novel with Anthony Quinn, and the film is dedicated to him.

** It's "Lev" in the movie, as in Russia. "Leo" is an Anglicized version of the name.

*** One of the joys of the film is to see some of the silent footage of Tolstoy and his family played next to the closing credits.

Beginners

Written at the time of the film's release...

Is "For Real" "The Opposite of Free?"

Nobody "knows" anything. We stumble through life, individually, doing the best we can or will. Millions have preceded us. Millions (hopefully) will follow us, but we're all blazing a trail, learning as we go. We are all Beginners, and only cable news pundits and politicians act like they have the answers. Liars.

The life of Oliver (Ewan McGregor, lightly scruffy) is much like that of director Mike Mills*—graphic designer, cartoonist, sweetly depressed, mother dead, father (Christopher Plummer) comes out of the closet afterwards at the age of 75, and remains gay in both senses of the term, until his death of cancer a few years later. It takes awhile for Oliver to process—the movie takes place mostly in flashback so the movie does make him live a bit in the past. And self-analysis is very much a priority for him, perhaps too much. He can inventory what things were like at the time of all the events of his life. Take him to a costume party, naturally, he goes as Freud. Walk into his home, you get the Grand Tour...even the Jack Russell terrier, Arthur, that he inherits from his Dad gets one. It's all part of the dialog he has with the dog (who looks at him and thinks—via sub-titles—"I only have a vocabulary of 150 words.  I can't talk."), and becomes a constantly needy companion. He now looks at his present through a prism of the past, but, as with driving a car, you can't go forward very well if you're only looking through the rear-view mirror.

At that previously mentioned costume party (Freud, remember...with dog in tow), he meets Anna, played by dark-eyed blond Mélanie Laurent (who also can't talk—laryngitis). meets her cute, and they develop a relationship that's friendly, warm...and quiet. But, his melancholy keeps getting in the way, and they go through stages of happy/sad/happy/sad, all of which is confusing to the dog (who keeps asking "Are we married yet?")

It's nice. It's sweet. It's puzzling. Beginners is about growing up and learning, and taking chances despite all that. It's about coming out of grief and the shadow of your parents (and your own origins) and moving forward. Personally, I found myself identifying with the dog. Beginners is a fine little wallow, but I really wanted to go for a walk.

* Director of Thumbsucker and C'mon, C'mon, married partner of Miranda July, whose film Me and You and Everyone We Know some hail as a masterpiece and I find frustratingly precious, although I'm looking forward to seeing her new one.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Written at the time of the film's release...

 

And...at the time Avatar had come out and marching towards becoming the "#1 Box Office Champion of All Time." I was underwhelmed by it—there's a link to my review buried down there if you even care. On the other hand, nobody was going to see this film, which, as you can tell if you read it, I found a shame. One can advocate, but people are going to see what they want—it's their money, after all—and it's all a part of the free market (or as some would label it, "cancel culture"—the Supreme Court seems to think what you do with your money is free speech, even if you're paying for it). But, just as I quixotically advocated for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, I would also urge people to see the wonderful Everything Everywhere All at Once, which, in a multi-plex of less imaginative offerings has far more bright ideas and film-making brio than the rest of the offerings in said multi-plex combined.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, This World is Full of Wonderment for Those with Eyes to See it."  

 

One must consider the momentum of publicity when one talks about James Cameron's Avatar. The tsunami of NewsCorps force-fed publicity and societal group-think has done its job on the populace and the majority are of one mind. At this point, I've heard too many smart people saying that nobody will ever make movies the same way again, that it's ground-breaking, and (okay) the story isn't much, but the visuals are so spectacular it compensates for the stunning more-of-the-sameness of the blah-blah-blah.

 

You don't know what you're missing. There is more imagination, thought and, gosh, genuine wit going on in the "mirror" sequences of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus than in anything in Avatar. Hell, even the non-CGI "live" sequences are amazing to look at.

But...nobody's lining up to see Imaginarium. And that's a shame. For, if you want a fantasy film brimming with ideas, some of them quite provocative, it is this one, directed by that most snake-bit of directors, Terry Gilliam. It has been abundantly documented ad nauseum the tragic story of this film: how star Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming, and how a corps of Ledger-Gilliam supporters—Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell—stepped up to play the visages of Ledger in the "Imaginarium" sequences (actually it seems perfectly natural the way Gilliam does it), but what isn't reported is that Gilliam was hit by a bus and broke his back during the filming.* Despite these alarming developments that would halt anyone other than a crazy "Monty Python" alum, the film is rich in detail, bursting with context, and doesn't have that "scrimping" footage-stretching feel that so many films-in-trouble give off.

It's basically a fairy-story set in our world (or a delirium dream, not sure) where Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is an immortal, who, with his rag-tag theater troupe—assistant Percey (Verne Troyer), barker Anton (Andrew Garfield) and daughter Valentina (model Lily Cole, whose alarming face is that of an alabaster porcelain doll)—travels in an out-sized Bergman-crossed-with-Joad horse-drawn wagon/convertible stage, enticing marks to enter his "Imaginarium," a mirror that sucks the hapless into Parnassus' bizarre mind-scapes, where they either live...or die. Parnassus, you see, has made a deal with the Devil. Inhabiting the old man's mind, as he does most of ours, is Mr. Nick (Tom Waits...of course), who has his own lures to the impure of heart. Enter one of Nick's speak-easy's or one-night-stand motels that stick out like sore toad-stools in the landscape and BOOM! the Devil takes your soul. And the bottom line of the Devil's deal is a certain number of souls before Valentina's sweet 16th birthday ("The age of consent" she trills) or her day of freedom becomes her day of imprisonment, as the Devil claims her for her own. A situation as Grimm...and familiar...as can be.

But Gilliam's Devil is in the details. The little band are aided in their quest by an amnesiac named Tony (Heath Ledger) whom they save and who, in turn, tries to save them, but whose past comes back to haunt and threaten them. Ledger is at his quick-silver best here, his accent wavering through several dialects, his eyes darting (all qualities picked up by his capable alter-ego's), for Tony is a chameleon, a huckster, the trickster of Myth—which Gilliam uses to savage satiric effect—and is a devil of his own, capable of destroying what he seeks to save. The battle between Good and Evil, Duty and Temptation turns complicated, and Parnassus must bargain again, at great sacrifice, to save that which he loves most, whether it's wished for or no.

The Devil's in the details for the look of the film, too. The "real-world" that the "Imaginarium" wagon trundles through is our world, but it's a world of extremes: back-alley garbage-lands with trash-fires that litter the scene (where the rag-tag group seems to fit most) and vast temples of commerce-malls, where Tony, with a marketer's zeal attempts to bring new customers. Each of these victims have their own "Imaginarium" realms: a wealthy dowager emerges into a vision of giant fashion-shoes, another a 2-D pop-up book forest. At one point, a falling "Imaginarium" customer takes an incredible fall, and Gilliam cuts to an improbable "Python" joke—a giant thumb-tack—sitting in the middle of nothingness (Gilliam mercifully, for the moment, has the hapless mark miss the point). And even outside the mirror, there are wonders of movie-making brio. In a scene where Percey walks away from Parnassus with his usual bluster, Gilliam shoots the diminutive Troyer at a heroic looking-up angle—the camera had to be scraping the street.

Now, a confession. It may sound like I'm gushing about Gilliam here, but I've always had a problem with his films: I fall asleep through them. It's not that I'm bored, but there's something about the richness of detail, the constant flow of new things to look at, and the murky lighting that induces narcolepsy in me. Before seeing a Gilliam film, I try to load up on coffee and sugar to get through it. I have no idea why this occurs (maybe it's Rapid Eye Movement caused from the orbs darting about the screen), but it is inevitable—it occurred here through the Jude Law sequences—but I managed to keep my eyes open throughout the whole thing this time.

If the film is flawed, it is that it tries to do too much. Even with a simple story, derived from old fairy-tale tropes, Gilliam again attempts to fit 10 pounds of story into a 5 pound film. Complications begin to pile up, revelations are delayed, little troubling details are revealed—there's a convenient pitch-pipe here—and everything becomes resolved in an ambiguous and hasty manner. Like most Gilliam films, a second viewing may make murky matters clearer. 

Plus, the overall story has a premise open to interpretation...is it a "God versus Devil" story, or merely a fairy tale? The Christian Science Monitor's Peter Rainer thinks it may even be autobiographical with Parnassus a mask for Gilliam, "a mad dreamer forever riven between his imagination and the necessity to sell it."** And like his "Python" fraternity, there's a streak of dark running through this, as with all Gilliam films (remember how Kevin's parents are killed at the end of Time Bandits?), that may be off-putting for some viewers. Fans of Gilliam's films should expect it, but those who prefer their fantasy milkier may not like the taste of the dark stuff. Avatar is far less subtle, more a punch "on the nose," and although dark, gives the impression of a happy-ish ending.

So, it is doubly appropriate that Imaginarium brings me back to Avatar. For what is Gilliam's film but a re-working of the caution "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time," and that includes the Devil, but the Devil gets his own.

What's Gilliam's next movie? Well, he's determined to go back and film his Don Quixote movie, come hell or high water.*** It is only appropriate for this most quixotic of film-makers, forever charging against the impossible odds at realizing the incredible visions wind-milling in his head.

* Here, the endlessly inventive Gilliam made lemonade—convincing the bus company to provide transport rather than face a law-suit, thus saving lots of production money. And, if all of this wasn't enough, producer William Vince died right after filming. The film is dedicated to Ledger and Vince, and credited as "A Film by Heath Ledger & Friends." 

 

** Nice observation, that. But Rainer also thinks Ledger looks "dispirited" in the film--well, yeah, the character's just gone through a painful transition, but Ledger's performance of it is never less than audacious and energetic. I'm guilty of it, too, but critics shouldn't try to read actor's minds--they're chameleons, after all, when they're doing it right, and we should speculate cautiously when ascribing motivations to surface appearances on film.

 

*** He did. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was released in 2018.

Alexander

Written at the time of the film's release...

Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004) In the two-way race getting the story of Alexander the Great to the screen between Baz Luhrmann and Oliver Stone, the latter got there first, having worked on a screen-play since 1989. Luhrmann's announcement of an "Alexander" project was probably just the thing Stone's film needed to get off the ground, and his thorough planning shows (historical inaccuracies aside): this is one of Stone's deftest film--a combination of his macho liberal ethics and his pre-disposition to turn everything into braying Myth. 

Here he's dealing with Gods and Titans and men who reach beyond their grasp, and if one thinks this one has a political agenda talking about a King wanting to chase his Persian prey into the mountains, you're only scanning the surface for easy targets.*

Stone's going for epic statements here of dreamers and the pains they inflict on Society** and a pretty good tying up of some major themes in several of his films without descending into his fall-back of the "Good and Bad Fathers of our Soul." Oh, there is familial stress going on constantly with two of the more watchable stars as Alexander's warring father and mother King Phillip and Olympias (Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie***). Their battles for the betterment of Alexander (Colin Farrell) make up the intrigue that Stone keeps flashing back to once Alexander reaches Babylon and established his first Alexandria city-state. But the main focus is Alexander and his battles from Ireland**** Macedonia to Persia to India, each one given their own specific vantage point. The desert combat in Persia is given a neat over-view by a mythic hawk, the latest in a long line of familiars haunting Stone protagonists. The India battle is an epic jungle gore-fest between man and beast that turns into a red nightmare, but is affectionately begun with an old-time movie iris-out.

The film is so full of "rules of thumb," you begin to wonder if there's not a training manual with the thing ("A commander never gives an order he wouldn't carry out himself," "Don't surrender your reason to passion," "Moderation in all things" and the film's mantra "Fortune favors the bold"), and as gritty as Stone makes it (and there's a lot of blood-spatter flying through the battle scenes), it has the pristine quality of those Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics where even the Persian city of Babylon seems immaculately free of dust. Stone seemed inspired by the look of The Lord of the Rings and its way around a vast story-line, but seems to favor his Myths well-scrubbed.

Still, it's an epic that was filmed in 93 days, despite far-flung locations and looks miraculous despite the tight schedule. For all the things that could conceivably have gone wrong, Stone's Cecil B. DeMille styled dream project managed a lot of things right.

* Stone's W. biography would show up at the end of 2008, looking rushed and a little wasted and without much to say. You can't satirize a political satire, and the joke ceased being funny a long time ago.

** In an odd post-mortem, Alexander's kinsman Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) supposes that Societies are inspired by dreamers and then exhausted by them to the point of wishing them failure, if not death. That's an interesting thought coming from Mr. Conspiracy Theory. Stone's also one of those liberals who likes to include all of us to enjoy his guilt—"It's all out faults." Hey, speak for yourself, mac!

*** Stone is particularly praise-worthy of his actors on the commentary track of this film and with good cause--Farrell shows off the promise that his over-hyped career has only suggested, Kilmer is as boisterously good as he's been in years, and Jolie again shows why she's one of the most commanding actors on the screen these days. She has a line reading ("Loves. Loves!") that wheels between conflicting emotions with such quick-silver speed that it nearly whips your head around. One would be tempted to see that she's the latter day Ava Gardner if not for one thing—she's a better actor than Gardner. Stone loves a touch of madness in his actors. Jolie is his perfect match.

**** Farrell doesn't disguise his Irish accent, and the kid who plays him (very well) in the early sections of the movie does a fair register of Farrell's brogue. But most of the actors have Irish accents that at times is distracting, but somehow seems fitting for the folk-tale blarney with which Stone tells the story. You go with it, as it feels right. Kilmer's accent is American. Jolie's is faux-Greek.

Knives Out

Thrombey-land
or
Ladies and Gentlemen Grieve in Different Ways

Mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plumber) is celebrating his 85th birthday in a big way. His family is celebrating at the quirky family home for the old man and—as with most family-gatherings—there are issues and squabbles. They all involve money, because Thrombey has been quite a success.

The first clue to that is that he's 85 and living in his own home, as opposed to a facility no matter how healthy he is.

The family Thrombey has done very well for itself: daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) runs a real estate empire with her husband Richard (Don Johnson), but that was done with a considerable loan from Harlan—their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans) left the party early after a tiff; oldest son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the successful Thrombey publishing empire, but is dissatisfied with the elder Thrombey's resistance to selling the filming rights—he's joined by his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome) and son Jacob (Jaeden Martell); daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), widow of late son Neil, has a line of beauty products and her own self-help business and is paying for her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford) to go an ivy league college.

Then, there's "the help"—housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) views the family with a jaundiced eye and maintains her helping attitude with a hidden stash of dope; caretaker-nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) is well-regarded by the family (even if they can't remember her country of origin) and much favored by Harlan for her good heart and her proficiency with the game "Go." After the party, Harlan, after talking privately with all the family members, retires at 11:30.

When Fran brings up his coffee, she finds his bed unslept in and undisturbed. Continuing to his attic study, she finds it very much disturbed and Harlan dead from a slit throat, bled out, his dramatic knife/letter-opener still in his bloody hand. The police think it's suicide and they are in the process—in the form of Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) and Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield)—of interviewing the family about the events of that evening, with one addition. He is Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, looking perpetually smug and utilizing the drawl of Shelby Foote), consulting detective of note (and "The New Yorker") who has been hired—by parties unknown—to determine if Harlan Trombley really did take his own life...or if it was done by the hand of another.

Like that double-conundrum, Knives Out is a multi-layered movie, not only in its plot, but in its timeline-juggling and presentation. There are complexities built on complexities: the mystery of Thrombey's death, which—at the beginning of the movie—is assumed to be one thing, which is called into question not once but twice for different motivations; the mystery of Benoit Blanc's benefactor as the detective is publicly seeking the truth of the first mystery, but privately is working on who hired him for the job.

He spends a lot of his time grilling the family members, not only looking for clues, but also for motivations about why he might be there. So he eyes the entire family like a smirking hawk, which, initially makes him an unwelcome guest and something of a detecting third wheel—he calms the family's fears by purring "My position here is purely ornamental."). But with the reading of Thrombey's newly-drafted will—"Think of it as a tax return by a community theater..."—the family gloms onto him to prove that Thrombey might actually have been killed, staged to look like a suicide, thus nullifying a will that would leave his family nothing.

And that's where things really get complicated. But, to say more would destroy the web of evidence, the suspicions and the dynamics going on amongst the suspected and suspecting family, as well as the timelines based on points of view that Johnson has intricately constructed like a jenga tower to tell a complicated story, while simultaneously building on it.

Now, the way Johnson has designed it, it puts some focus on the family members and the actors playing them. But, no one has more pressure put on them than the character of Thrombey's nurse, Marta Cabrera (de Armas). Of all the denizens of the Thrombey estate, she is the one closest to the old man, knowing him best and having his trust. She is also the most vulnerable—she's not family, but part of "the help." She has to be compliant and complacent, because her mother is an illegal immigrant and the Thrombey patronage keeps her employed and her mother safe. She fears any threat to that comfort, and the family, especially in the absence of the patriarch, is a hostile work-environment despite the smiles and the surface friendliness.

All the actors have a fine time chewing their respective scenery, but de Armas has the toughest role, playing someone "with a good heart" in a den of thieves while not looking like a victim but also looking competent. De Armas has to go through so many moods that swing back and forth like a pendulum, fading into the background, lest she betray something to the family. She must become simultaneously suspect and detective in order to protect herself and her family. It's a tough job, and de Armas pulls it off charmingly.

Knives Out carries out the time-honored game-plan of the mystery genre, but twists it in a gordian knot. to build audience expectations and then pulls the rug out from under them, staying ahead of the amateur sleuths who are trying to outguess the already-worked-out scenario. At the same time, it's a Christie-an exploration of the foibles and frailties of the upper crust, who are only too ready to break through and fall into the goo, and showing how far things can descend when greed is bad...not good.

The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)(2015)

Written at the times of the films' releases...

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier...Spy"

Investigative reporter Mikael Blomqvist (a nom de plume purloined from the fictional detective Kalle Blomqvist) has just been found guilty of libel for an article he wrote about a powerful Swiss industrialist. In six months he's set for the barry hotel, but in the meantime, he has down-time. He gets an invitation for a job—the coldest of cases, literally and metaphorically—on the remote wintry island that serves as a compound for the Vanger family.

The Vangers are the Swiss cousins of all the encrusted old-money families of British and American detective fiction. Be they Baskervilles or Armstrongs or Sternwoods, the "storied" elite families stood in for the Rothschilds and Lindberghs and Morgans and Rockefellers in a literary class warfare that assured the punters that bad things happened to the rich, as well. In fact, it was more than likely to happen to them as money is the root of all things evil. Perhaps.

Money was on the family's mind that Children's Day weekend on the Island, as a family board meeting was taking place, when one of the daughters disappeared, and her father drowned in a boating accident. One of the patriarchs wants to know, finally, forty years after the fact, what happened to the girl, who killed her, and charges Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) with the task. 

For the disgraced newsie, it's a case of interviews and solitary visits to the caked-in-dust morgues of newspaper offices and libraries. But, though isolated on the Island, he's being watched, not only by the family, but by a security investigator who's hacked his computer.

She's Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,* a 22 year old full-time goth-punk chain-smoking, bisexual, PTSD'd borderline schizophrenic, sociopathic, fire-fixated security-investigator-computer-hacker...and part-time judge, jury and executioner. And where Mikael is dusting off old store-rooms, she's mining hard-drives through the back-door for any information that might be useful, like, say, on the creep who's been appointed her guardian. Life has rumpled Mikael, but it's deeply scarred Lisbeth, and the two tarnished angels are linked by more than cyberspace in a mutual interest making peoples' forgotten pasts their field of play.

They were made for each other, and, as both are incapable of seeing a mystery without inserting themselves, fated to team up to solve the question, if it is to be solved.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one of those whodunnit's much in love with every squeaking trope, and dangling aringarosa of the detective literary genre, and the puzzle is of the classic "Closed Room" variety—a traffic accident cut off the one exit to the bridge when the skull-duggery happened, so the scope of the search is limited to who might have been on that island to perpetrate it. The clues are varied in sources and nature, an old diary the girl kept with no entries that might lend suspicion, the few photographs taken that week-end...and Blomkvist's own memories—the girl was his nanny on Island holidays—provide nagging evidence, as does a single portrait that haunts him, like the Mona Lisa.

There are so many referrals to past films noir and sleuth-cinema that one could get lost in many a blind-alley (not that there are many on a rural Swedish island), but there are more than enough cousins and butlers and drawing rooms to go around—as with the best mysteries, no one is a suspect, but everyone is.

It is violent—there are two upsetting rape scenes that are essential to the plot, ultimately—but there is a cross-running sub-theme of sexual tyranny equating male sexism and domination as a form of fascism (it's an in-bred cousin to the feminism issues that made The Silence of the Lambs more important than a "boogey-man" story) that makes the film interesting philosophically in the genre. Director Niels Arden Oplev stages those scenes in a brutal manner that divorces them from any sexual act and makes them sadistic acts of violence, but one should be warned that there is rough stuff, far beyond cloak-room murders and high tea. The film is unrated, but consider it a hard "R." 

It's a cracking pastiche, with the best thing about it being the (English version's) titular character. A product of the very brutality embodied by the mystery itself, the stakes are personal for Salander (and Blomkvist, certainly), but, like the Hannibal Lecter character in Silence of the Lambs, she is such a wild-cannon on deck during the proceedings that her motivations keep your thinking cap distracted from the mystery at hand. As played by Rapace, she is a kabuki-like presence than can turn ninja on a dime, a literal smoking gun, who can make things better or worse, depending on her buried mood, making the film categorical as "Suspense" as well as "Mystery."

The other films in the trilogy will be released later in the year. Then, an American remake is planned...at this writing starring Brad Pitt and Carey Mulligan.

(Yeah, well, not so much...see below)

* That's what it is known as in English-speaking publishing circles where mysteries series need a unifying "hook" like John D. McDonald's colorful titles for the Travis McGee novels, or "Cat" series of Lilian Jackson Braun. In its native Sweden, the title—"Män som hatar kvinnor "— translates to the more straight-forward and to-the-point, "Men Who Hate Women." The popular series of novels, dubbed the "Millennium Trilogy" (for the publication Blomqvist works for) stopped at three due to the untimely death of its reporter/author Stieg Larsson of a heart attack at age 50, before the first could be published.

Michael Nykvist, who starred in the Swedish films, died June 27, 2017

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Girl With the Dragon, Take Two"
or
"Once More...with Feeling"

"We come from the land of the ice and snow
from the midnight sun where the hot springs FLOW
How soft your fields so green,
can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore."

"Immigrant Song"  Led Zeppelin

The American production of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo advertised itself (amusingly) with the tag-line "The Feel Bad Movie for Christmas."  Compared to the Swedish-TV version (with Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace), it's actually, if one can believe it given the subject matter, a "kinder, gentler" version.

So, what's different?  For those familiar with the first version, many of the locations reveal themselves to be the same. Resolutions are slightly different. The casting certainly is (and more on that later). Editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall keep things moving very fast, sometimes abruptly, and scripter Steven Zaillian delivers punchy dialogue dripping with icyclic irony, while keeping the circumstances equally savage and shocking (what else can you expect from from a murder mystery involving in-bred families crusty with krona, corruption, Nazi affiliations, serial killers, sexual violence and "men who hate women"—the original title of the book when published in Sweden?). 

It's how director David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network) approaches the tone that's slightly different, and though still mordantly frigid, this version is a bit more clever in presentation, adding a darkly humorous slant. Sure, the violence is still sickening, but blunted, even handled at times more discretely, making the impact contrarily even more squeamy, while, at the same time, counter-pointing with sly musical choices.*

But, it's the casting where the main differences occur. Daniel Craig, no less intense, but muted and reduced to human scale with a world-weary familiarity, plays Mikael Blomqvist, co-publisher and chief reporter for an investigative magazine, Millennium. Disgraced by a libel suit gone against him and to shake off the publicity and the hit to his reputation and bank account, he takes on a murder investigation for the patriarch of the industrialist Wanger family (Christopher Plummer)—a literal cold case of the forty year old disappearance of the elder Wanger's granddaughter, although distinctive clues point to her either being alive, or the killer is cleverly taunting the old man.

It's soon clear that Blomqvist may be over his head and he calls on an "assistant"—the same background investigator who cleared him for the job for the Wangers. She's the titular "girl with the dragon tattoo"—Elisabeth Salander and "she's different."  "In what way?" asks Wanger's lawyer, Frode (Steven Berkoff).

"In every way," says her employer.

Too true, not only in terms of Society, but also from the actress who previously took the role (Noomi Rapace, currently starring in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).  She's still the same Salander, the goth-punk, vegan, pierced, bi-sexual hacker-savant who becomes the focus of the series, zipping around the bleak Swedish countryside on her black-on-black motorcycle, but this movies version, in the form of Rooney Mara, is slight (she had to be starring opposite the 5'10" Craig), tiny and even more startling in appearance than Rapace.

There's still the same shock of hair, but with her elfin face, shaved eyebrows and eyes sunk deep into her face, she has the appearance of the walking dead, her head looking often like a skull, and speaking in a dull, listless monotone.  Rapace looked like she could kick serious ass (and did in the Swedish productions), but Mara is deceptively tiny, even looking sickly frail, so when she goes on the attack, it's doubly alarming. 

We learn more about the little spit-fire in the second and third books of the series (hopefully they'll have their own versions with this cast—as with the Swedish films—because this cast is too good to waste, but the film's poor box-office showing—"The Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas," remember?—may make that unlikely), but Mara's dead-inside interpretation, that only slightly blossoms through the film, is an interesting take, doubly tragic, keenly felt and puts both her character and Blomqvist's into an interesting perspective.

I actually like this version better than the first.

The main title with the Trent Reznor/Karen O version of the Led Zep song.

* The best being what was used in the initial trailers—Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," subtly adapted by producer-composer Trent Reznor (the perfect guy to score this film) for female vocal, while keeping the brutal orchestrations of the original intact.  The Main Title sequence accompanying it, is visually arresting, suggestive and creepy, almost a mission statement in tone—black and white, reflecting the film's dark muted color scheme—while suggesting minds, trapped, tortured and squirming like toads.