Goodbye Ingmar Bergman, Hello Raymond Chandler

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2010)

I've always been cautious about seeing Swedish films made in the last 30-40 years. The reason is that--unlike America, Britain, Germany, China, Mexico, Italy or Australia--there is almost no controversy over who is Sweden's greatest filmmaker. And thus nearly every Swedish film I've ever seen not directed by Ingmar Bergman has either been a rip-off of the great man's work or just shallow trash. (Substitute "Kurosawa" for "Bergman" and you'll know why I also tend to avoid Japanese cinema). Nonetheless, I kept hearing about this film and the book that inspired it. As a lover of mystery novels and film noir, I decided that I need to at least give this movie a chance. And I'm glad I did. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" owes almost nothing to Bergman and everything to the novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald.
It begins when a sickly, elderly billionaire industrialist who knows better than to trust his awful family wants to investigate the 42-year-old disappearance of his niece--the only relative he ever loved (think "The Big Sleep"). Through intermediaries, he hires Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace)--a hacker/private investigator with a troubled past and a large dragon tattoo on her back. Her assignment is to vet disgraced leftist journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) to see if he's up to the job. Eventually Blomqvist agrees to do the job and quickly realizes that he needs Lisbeth to help him. Revealing much more of the plot would be unfair.
Aside from the serpentine plot (involving Nazis, serial killers, and a clandestine romance), the thing I liked most about this movie was Rapace's performance as the inscrutable Lisbeth. Maybe there's a pattern here, or maybe it's just me, but--along with Kristen Stewart in "The Runaways"--my two favorite female performances of 2010 thus far have been portrayals of angry, leather-jacketed bisexual young women. Without changing facial expressions, Rapace is somehow able to show anger, fear, love, sadness and embarrassment at the appropriate times. And I feel the scene where Lisbeth is raped by her parole officer ranks just as high if not higher than the scene in "The Accused" that won Jodie Foster her first Oscar.
According to this site, there is already an American remake in the works. I don't know how that's going to work. Parts of the plot are fairly Euro-centric (i.e. jail-time for libel, a local Nazi movement run by Hitler himself). Plus, the film retains novelist Stieg Larsson's radical anti-capitalist, anti-government views, which most Americans would find unpalatable.
The future of Swedish cinema rests on movies from that country being watchable without giving up their artistic merit. Swedish filmmakers need to step outside the notion of becoming "the next Bergman" because there will only ever be one Bergman. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is a great first step along that path.