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.
