Salander Soundoff

Well, as a follow up on my last post on Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I will dedicate this brand new post to Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 Swedish version.  My classmate Billy (thanks Billy!) was kind enough to lend me his copy of the DVD, and I was glad I had the opportunity to compare the two films.

Before I begin, I love the character of Lisbeth Salander.  Dark, haunted, and badass, she exudes a strangely sexy confidence that we wish we had.  It’s also the kind of personality that we wish to see a female portray on screen.  With that said, Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara bring something different to the role of Lisbeth Salander.  Rapace, from the Swedish version brings a more human quality to the role than Mara, who stars in the same role in the 2011 film.  Roger Ebert in his review of Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comments that “Rapace seems more uneasy in her skin, more threatened.”  I would agree.  Rapace’s Salander questions herself, she has emotions.  That isn’t to say that Mara’s character doesn’t have emotions, but her Salander is more mechanical. 

With short dark hair, high cheekbones, and a uniform straight from Hot Topic, Mara is androgynous.  She has taken everything Rapace is in her film and transformed it.  In Fincher’s film, the piercings are more extreme, the make up more ghostly, and the attitude twice as cold.  Mara appears more robot than human.  Where we can actually see the human qualities behind Rapace’s Salander, Mara has taken the character and turned her into confident criminal.  There is no emotion when Mara shoves a dildo up Nils Bjurman’s rectum.  She does it with the same efficiency and assurance it takes to hack into a computer.  For her, there are things that need to be done and she does them.  She doesn’t appear to question her actions during or after they have taken place; in her eyes she is justified.  With Rapace, we have a Salander that is more mentally present.  In the scene where Rapace is attacked by a couple punk kids in a subway station, we are able to witness her emotional responses.  When she is struck by one of the boys, we can see the pain on her face.  She looks frightened.  These aren’t the human emotions we can share with Mara.

 On a side note, I wanted to address each cast as whole.  I preferred Oplev’s Swedish cast over Fincher’s for many of the same reasons I have listed above that deal with Salander.  The Swedish cast seems more real, more raw.  They are not the most attractive group of actors, whereas Fincher definitely goes full Hollywood with his casting choices.  Mikael Blomkvist is played by Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist, whose portrayal of the character is natural.  Not that the characters are any less believable in Fincher’s film, but Oplev definitely seemed to get it right when it came to choosing actors that allow us to relate to.

Fincher's Grey World

This weekend I decided to sit down and watch my DVD of David Fincher’s newly released The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (a steal at 40% off at Barnes and Noble!), a film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel of the same title.  I had already seen the movie in theaters a few months ago, but decided on buying it because my “date” that night did not go as planned.  Who knew watching a movie with a graphic rape scene could make the night so awkward!?  Not I.

Upon viewing Fincher’s film for the second time I was able to appreciate things I missed out on originally because I spent thirty percent of the film blushing horribly behind my popcorn.  For starters, the cast is amazing, with performances by Rooney Mara (Lisbeth Salander), Daniel Craig (the sexually charged and tabloid celebrity, Mikael Blomkvist) Christopher Plummer (Henrik Vanger), and Yorick van Wageningen (the Sadist Pig, Nils Bjurman) to name a few.  I am half way through reading the second installment in Steig’s series, titled “The Girl who Played with Fire”, and I can safely say that these actors are Steig’s characters in the flesh.  Mara plays an amazing Lisbeth, and captures every bit of her socially incompetent, but wildly smart personality down to the bone.  The actresses’ movements almost become one with Lisbeth’s as she moves across the screen, wary of her presence in places she ought not to be.  But while Lisbeth is cautious of her surroundings, she is also surprisingly comfortable, or so she appears to be.  In one of the beginning scenes of the film, Lisbeth follows an elderly woman to the front of her apartment building and pretends to be interested in her cigarette while she listens to the pass code being typed into the security system.  Ever smart, Lisbeth punches in the same code in succession and gains entrance into the building.  With her signature black clothes and baggy style, she is able to slip through almost anything.

Whereas Lisbeth is the hard-hitting character in the film, Mikael, is the opposite.  While Craig delivers a true performance, his character, like in the book, seems to be easily disposable.  Anyone could have taken the place of this tabloid, scandal-ridden character.  We spend a good amount of the beginning of the film focused on Mikael, a journalist, and we learn that he has become involved in a huge scandal.  Without any real work, Henrik Vanger hires him to solve the murder of his niece that is believed to have gone unsolved for decades.  But the clues don’t start coming together until Mikael insists on having a research assistant, which is when Salander comes into the picture.  A sleuth and hacker, Salander is able to put together pieces that Mikael has overlooked.  This is when the film starts to veer and we are now torn between the two storylines of both Salander and Mikael as they  both work to solve the mystery.  Mikael becomes almost secondary, a character that can’t keep up with the new-age, savvy, wildly sexual Salander.  It is, after, Mikael who relies on Salander to save him after he is captured by the serial killer.  And let’s not forget who helps Mikael get out of the scandal and back into being a respectable member of society (brownie points if you guessed Salander!).

            Like other films directed by Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo takes place within a grey world.  Characters that aren’t so seemingly normal wind up in a place where right and wrong can blend, and someone else’s view of what constitutes these terms will almost certainly not be the ones you believe in.  Much like the serial killer in Se7en, Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgard) in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is methodical with his killings.  What he deems as “right” (murdering young girls based on Bible passages) cannot be based on the illegal activities that both Salander and Mikael have committed in order to solve the mystery.  Surely their acts of breaking and entering, prostituting, and hacking computers, to name a few, are also wrong.  But weren’t they justified acts?  Vanger definitely believes his were.  It’s this knocking around of judgment, this grayness, which allows the film to be pulled in different directions.  It’s the contradicting terms (the hacking into someone’s computer, only to get mad when they hack into yours) that perhaps pulls this film down to us, because surely we also live within moments of grey.

Walt Disney Out for World Domination

       I missed Dr. Gerald Peary’s symposium presentation because I was presenting a film during my night class.  To make up for it, I attended two other smaller paper presentation events.  The first one I attended focused on a variety of 1962 films: Dr. No, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Gypsy, and The Sword in the Stone.  What intrigued me most was Danielle’s discussion on The Sword in the Stone.  When it comes to film, I adore Eastwood, I’m well versed in Hitchcock, and I could spot a Tim Burton film with my eyes closed.  But I know nothing about animation.  Absolutely nothing.  And until Danielle’s presentation, I didn’t think there was any reason for me to become acquainted with animation, its history or its influence.

            I know Disney makes up a large part of the animation world.  I’m aware of this; I’ve been to Disney World.  Like most girls, I grew up watching Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, or my personal favorite, Aladdin (shirtless Arabian? Need I say more?).  Danielle’s presentation on The Sword in the Stone opened my eyes to all of the history that not only surrounds Disney’s animation, but other production companies as well.  She talked at length about the attention to detail that Disney’s animation studio did not give to the film.  This was evident in the film clip Danielle played.  Obvious drawing lines can be seen, which should have been hidden from the audience.  Danielle also pointed out the backgrounds, which were painted sloppily instead of detailed. 

            

        Danielle’s presentation made me realize the lack of attention I give to animated films.  Before, I never would have paid attention to things like the mise-en-scene of an animated film.  To open my mind a bit I decided to review a few Disney clips.  First I checked out the opening scenes in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first animated film Disney created.  I can clearly see the attention to detail that went into the background of this film.  In the scene where Snow White sings to the bird in the forest I can make out individual trees and shadows and lines.  All of the color looks like it was placed meticulously, and it is not sloppily done like the backgrounds in Sword.

           

        Next I checked out The Lady and the Tramp (1955) and I saw the same elements in this movie as I did with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  In the opening scene of Lady the family is opening gifts on Christmas.   In this scene the background is clear; all of the images of the Christmas tree, the mantle, and the wall paper are perfectly colored.  It is obvious that there was more attention to detail than in The Sword in the Stone.  The characters, like in Snow White are drawn well, and I’m no animation artist, but there doesn’t appear to be any of the visible lines on screen that Danielle mentioned in her presentation.

            

        After I watched bits of these two Disney films I checked out Rotten Tomatoes to see what they considered the top fifty animated movies of all time.  Disney dominates the list entirely.  I flipped through and saw The Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, Monsters, Inc., among others.  No surprise, either, the number one animated movie according to Rotten Tomatoes is Toy Story 2, which is slightly disappointing because the first Toy Story is the best one and I’d be willing to dispute this with anyone.  Other than Disney there were movies on the countdown that looked out of place next to wholesome animation.  Namely, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999).

            If anything, Danielle’s presentation helped me become more aware of films in other genres.  Animated films can’t be neglected, because they are after, still films.  There’s even a spot for them at the Academy Awards.  It also made me wonder how people view animated films, and whether there is a narrower outlook on them in comparison to films starring live actors.  This made me think of Rango, an animated film which involved the actors actually acting out scenes as they did their lines.  This in turn had me thinking of other things.  I could go on for days, so I think I’ll leave it at this: how do you view animated films and do they hold the same in comparison to other films?

Welcome!

HI and welcome to my wonderful film blog.  I know many of my fellow classmates from various other film courses, but if this is your first time getting to know me, I want to introduce myself.  I’m Ashley and I’m a senior English/Lit major and Film and Media Studies minor.  A few things about moi: my favorite film is Night of the Living Dead ('68), I love Clint Eastwood, and I can recite every line of the Eagles' "Hotel California".  Seminar in Cinema Studies is actually my last film course as an undergraduate, so it’s a little bitter sweet.  I entered college as an English major only, but after taking a film genre course with Dr. Lucia in the fall of 2010, I fell in love with the program. 

Enough about me!  I wanted to share some thoughts on The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962).  It’s the film I have chosen to adopt for the film symposium this year, and I viewed it again for the second time this weekend and fell in love with it.  I never thought I would desire subtitles for a film in English, but these England accents are ridiculous.  To set the scene, the film centers around Colin Smith, a teenager who has been sent to a reform school/detention camp after he robs a bakery.  The school prides itself on its unity, and all of the boys wear the same clothes, shower together, work together, and eat together.  There is an awfully creepy scene where an auditorium full of boys sing a hymn in unison.  Smith becomes singled out by the headmaster after he learns the boy is an exceptional runner.  Smith then spends the movie training for a competition against another school for boys which takes place at the end of the film.

Between Smith’s workouts we get flashbacks of his life.  We learn that he comes from a poor, working class family, his father has just died, and that there is some definite tension Smith and his mother, who has moved on quickly after her husband's death.  I found there to be many themes that run through this film.  There is definitely tension between lower and upper class, and even region.  This is evident in the way Smith treats money, and the way his mother spends all of it after her husband dies.  There is also tension between the idea of conformity and authority.  Smith appears to resent both, but finds himself in between the two at many points in the film.  He conforms to the rules/ways of the reform school, but was obviously unable to do this in the outside world, because his repeated stealing and lying ultimately gets him in trouble.  Along with these themes, we also glimpse into the teenage life of Smith, who spends his time balancing between the 'typical' (finding a girlfriend) and 'atypical' (becoming a father figure).

I did a little bit of poking around on the internet to see what the UK was like during the sixties.  In ’62, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones were emerging.  The British New Wave occurred during the early years of the sixties, where filmmakers were producing films that were based around social realism.  There was an emphasis on the working class, location shooting, and London.  I see very obvious connections to The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.  For starters, many scenes were filmed with a hand held camera, adding to that aspect of real life.  The film also centers on Smith, who is from a lower, working class background.  Many scenes take place on location, in worn down, tiny neighborhoods and streets.  There is some animosity toward Smith’s hometown and his desire to live in London, which could stem from the stress his family causes him.  Aesthetically, Loneliness differs from its Hollywood counterparts.  The handheld camera (which I’m a sucker for) gives it a more realistic, rough look, which is the complete opposite of Hollywood’s more polished films (think Splendor in the Grass).   You should check out The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which can be found here.