The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2011 USA
I've put off seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a few weeks because I felt that a film with such a dark theme would do little to enhance my festive holiday experience. Better to wait until after Christmas when my annual wintertime depression returns. A movie about sexual violence against women doesn't go well with Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole ringing in one's ears. Despite the subject matter, this is a good story. I like the characters and think that the actors' portrayals were true to the novel. The thing that I don't necessarily like about film adaptations of books is the issue of timing. A good novel is difficult to squeeze into a two hour film. In this case the film was even longer; two hours and forty-five minutes. Much of the back story and other plot elements are cut out to simplify the script in order to meet the necessary time constraints. I can appreciate why this has to be done, but I don't like it. Dialogue seems artificial when one character has to explain to another a huge amount of information that took many pages and chapters to develop in the novel. The characters are weakened when we get only an abbreviated version of their histories and they aren't allowed to fully develop. The Da Vinci Code had these same problems. If I ran the world, I would take these long intricate books and adapt them into TV miniseries. Anyone who has seen A Game of Thrones on HBO or Pillars of the Earth on STARZ a few years ago, will know how good a miniseries can be when put in the hands of a talented production company with a healthy budget.
But I don't want to come off as one of those assholes that brags about how much I read and how books are always better than movies. The movie was satisfying, and I think the tension was sufficient at the climax to keep me interested and on the edge of my seat. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first novel in a series usually referred to as the Millennium Trilogy, so I believe we can expect to see two more films in the next few years. I would rather see Daniel Craig in more of these films than another Bond reboot.
I will try to find something more upbeat to watch tomorrow. Maybe The Deer Hunter is streaming on Netflix.
These 3 books have to be near the top of my all time list. I haven't decided if I'll see the 'Americanized' movies as yet. I thought the Swede movies were decent. I'll definitely be seeing them alone as there is no way I can drag the wife along. She ridiculed me for even reading them.
ReplyDeleteI thought the American version was similar to the Swedish in both atmosphere and content. It felt like the same film but with better actors and a bigger budget. There were some changes, but nothing that should annoy fans of the prior film or the book. I haven't seen the Swedish sequels yet. But they're in my Netflix queue.
ReplyDelete