THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: How David Fincher Turned Smut Into Art

Early in David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – the 2011 remake of the 2009 Swedish thriller based on the pot-boiler novel by Stieg Larsson – Lisbeth Salander, a genius computer hacker with a more than troubling past is asked by her client if there was anything she didn’t include in her background check on Mikael Blomkvist an investigative journalist her client is interested in hiring. Her response is to explicitly and inappropriately reveal the sexual acts that Blomkvist performs on his mistress. “You were right not to include that,” he says. “I know,” she replies back.

Where the 2009 film directed with surface-level style by Neils Arden Oplev and, by extension, the novel itself fail, is in not noticing the problematic nature of Larsson’s perspective. Larsson’s novel, to which many quickly became fond of in 2005, is as problematic and troublesome as Lisbeth’s past is, and that’s why in many ways, she – in the 2011 film, anyway – feels a lot like a device to relay Fincher’s sensibilities and condescension towards the material. Rape-revenge power-fantasy narratives are a big thing now, and with companies as big and family-friendly as Disney willing to tackle the them (i.e. Maleficent), it’s totally possible for them to be done well… Just not from the perspective of an unaffected, aging male journalist that Larsson not-so-subtly plays as a stand-in for himself. Not to mention one that victimized women seem to fall for the same way they might for James Bond. Which makes Fincher’s casting of Daniel Craig all the better – one of the bigger, more hilarious indictments of a films own source material in recent cinematic memory.

And it’s here where the key differences lie. Where Oplev does indeed direct his film with visual panache, he fails at providing any sort of intrigue or commentary on the dull, problematic story he’s adapting. He seems to believe in it the same way Larsson does. Whereas Fincher plugs the narrative into his unsettling aesthetic, and coldly observes the material, drawing out themes that barely existed in the other versions and coming to a broader truth about what this story should really be about. It shouldn’t be the story of a lowly, abused girl getting revenge – which Oplev’s film seems to revel and focus in on more, especially at the end when he allows Lisbeth to celebrate and have a choice in Vanger’s death while Fincher let’s her make that decision only to have it taken from her – it should be a story of Blomkvist and Salander discovering their agency and using it to come to terms with their past, place and purpose in the world.

In terms of plot, both films follow the same basic trajectory: Lisbeth Salander, a young, unorthodox hacker – who is abused, tormented and taken advantage of by the men of power in her life – running from her troubled past finds herself working with a middle-aged, privileged male journalist also running from his troubled past, and together they work on a 40-year-old disappearance and possible murder of the young Harriet Vanger, the niece of Henrik, owner of Vanger industries, a Swedish business drenched in old, white (Nazi) money.

The plot is pretty run-of-the-mill, “edgy” serial killer nonsense that works on a rudimentary level, but it’s also basic enough that it’s vital the storyteller (or director) use the texts ideas – primarily, in this case, coalescing the past and present –and turning it into something meaningful. Oplev unfortunately, finding himself fascinated by the plot rather than the far more interesting characters that inhabit it, doesn’t manage to do so while Fincher (not new to the serial killer game having almost invented this kind of narrative with Se7en and perfecting it with Zodiac), almost simply through visual language finds so much more to chew on. He finds themes of privilege, one edit beautifully compares Lisbeth Salander, someone the public sees as a dingy, dangerous orphan no one cares about to Harriet, the young blonde who went missing that is still immortalized by her rich family – which makes it all the more satisfying when we eventually discover Harriet not only came from a dark past filled with religious-based abuse, rape and murder from a family of Nazi’s, but found a way to confront it and get out of it safely, finding optimism in such a dark tale. Even the cat Blomkvist adopts works as an interesting metaphor for what him adopting Salander into his life might mean. But Fincher doesn’t stop there, he even uses the film as a way to dissect his fascination with analog vs. digital, old vs. new. Blomkvist obviously representing the old-fashioned investigative work that allowed this Harriet mystery to drag on as long as it did, with Salander representing the new world – her photographic memory, for example, working as a metaphor for the disparity in absorbing information – and even going as far as to applying his digital aesthetic that worked so well in Zodiac and The Social Network and then mirroring it with his old-school, eerie sensibilities we might’ve seen in his Se7en and Fight Club days. That opening credits sequence is a great, digital callback to his work on Se7en that shines light on his obsessive, detail-oriented qualities and expertly crafted structure and editing that made him the perfect match for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which is a film he pretty much dedicates to logging and processing information. Slow, investigative montages haven’t been this riveting since Zodiac, one of the best films ever made.

But in the end he returns to the character mechanics, coming to the conclusion that through their collaboration, she helps him discover how to keep afloat in the changed landscape, he helps her discover her power and control, and together they come to terms with their own pasts and present, literally coalesce the past and present for the Vanger’s, all the while bringing down a serial rapist/murderer. That last part may seem like the biggest and most satisfying, and in Oplev’s version – as many will point out how much more rewarding it feels – it is. But it’s these clarifications of themes and story that set it far and above Oplev’s telling. It’s no longer all about the build-up to and moment of Lisbeth getting revenge on a misogynistic killer, but about Lisbeth learning and growing from it, which Oplev just chooses not to highlight. He maintains the novels viewpoint of her as this strange, alien character that’s only truly humanized through Blomkvists understanding of her. Fincher however makes her her own creature – which makes her unification with Blomkvist halfway through the film feel like a collision of two equally unstoppable forces, and that’s the way it should be.

 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is just a glaring example of the auteur theory, and how much influence a director can truly have on a narrative. Especially one like Fincher that has such a consistently unique, meaningful vision and the keen, thoughtful eye execute it. It takes a lot of guts to engage with the material in such a way that thematically reinventing it seems like the best option in achieving a meaningful narrative. If Oplev had been able to separate himself from text, and it’s raving fans that no doubt were looking for the faithful translation he gave them, he might’ve been able to use it as a way to dissect his own thoughts and sensibilities but instead, he chose not to and his film suffers because of it.