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Edinburgh University
Film Society 47 Years of Student Run Cinema 1963-2010 Student Film Society of the Year 2002, 2005, 2006 |
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Niels Arden Oplev, Sweden, 2009, 152 mins
Scandinavian thrillers had a sharp rise in sales earlier this year and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is to blame for this. The first in the adapted Millennium trilogy (all of which have already been released in Sweden) it opens the story of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) and mysterious hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rapace).
A framed flower arrives every year to an old man named Henrik Vanger. He suspects the sender is the mocking murderer of his beloved niece, a murder that took place nearly forty years ago. On the wrong side of a libel court case, Blomkvist is sentenced to three months in prison but before his incarceration date he finds himself hired by Vanger to investigate his suspects for the murder, the Vanger family. When the resourceful journalist hits only dead-ends, Salander makes her first appearance. In true hacker style, she arrives on the scene via email.
Up until now, Salander has been involved in her own story and has only been watching Blomkvist from afar. However, when she decodes a part of the puzzle, curiosity gets the better of her and the two of them manage to uncover the story of what happened all those years ago. It becomes horrifyingly apparent that the mystery is far deeper than either expected. They have stumbled across a serial killer who is still in operation all these years later.
Whilst there is no doubt that Nyqvist’s passive, middle-aged and sombre Blomkvist is more than adequate; the film utterly belongs to Rapace. Her portrayal of Salander is dark, dissociative and intense, making The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo a riveting and challenging watch.
A highly profiled Hollywood remake is on our horizons, but there is some doubt that the stark characters and darkly distressing moments that truly make this film will survive the translation. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is at the promising forefront of things yet to come from The Millennium Trilogy.
Review by Raymah Tariq
Taken from EUFS Programme 2010-11