Lisbeth Salander's Liquid Core

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2011)

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher, 2011) concerns the interaction of two characters who are dipoles on the social spectrum. The wrapper of the mystery and acts of aggression committed by or against them serve to enamor the spectator to Lisbeth Salander (Mara Rooney) and Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig). The character Lisbeth is title namesake and hence the primary protagonist. Lisbeth is the first character to appear in the film as she engulfs the spectator in the opening credit title sequence. The primordial ink stained technological opening denotes the subconscious processing of present and early traumatic events in the dragon girls dream-nightmare life. From this point forward Lisbeth remains an enigma of feminism exploited. In the tradition of fetishism of female protagonists, Lisbeth falls somewhere between horror and pornography. She is broken up, dissected and split between the two genres as both victim and hero. The sadomasochistic aspects unleashed upon our hero have her pinned into the corner of inescapable social conformity that has been thoroughly corrupted by perpetrators of the administration. She is obviously not a nice girl and as such must be punished for her non conformity. Director David Fincher gives us this punishment beyond what we may have imagined. This added level of pure sadism inflicted upon Lisbeth and physicality of abuse leaves her character totality stripped of any humanistic element, there is little choice for her other than to curl up and die or fight for her life. It leaves the spectator with the feeling, "well she did not deserve that!" and questioning their own system of beliefs and morality. Reacting as a caged animal would, she lashes back at the audience in the psychic castration most feared by the phallus wielding spectator. The audience is more than elated by her resilience and exacting revenge against the atrocities committed, indeed it has been quite some time since I have witnessed such an outburst of cheers elicited from todays placated spectators. Her vengeance is not only for herself individually but for female victims everywhere. As is the trend of modern cinema, the character has become a vessel for the spectator ego-ghost, and we are given a protagonist that is a blank canvas upon which we paint.
Trnet Reznor's sound-image adds considerably to the film. I especially enjoyed Lisbeth's scream/roar on the subway escalator. The NIN t-shirt plug is a little cliché. Fincher does a nice job, in Hitchcockian fashion, of building suspense and downplaying they more graphic elements as contained in the original version. It was an excellent film and Fincher is at the top of his game, although the general public still may not recognize his name as much as more celebrated Directors.
Excerpt: The Ego-Ghost Theory: "The oscillation continues between the inner (RIS) Spheres as sustained elevated duration enables reading of a complete cinematic language. The double level communication structure exists between the Ego-Ghost and the Screen Universe itself. Complete cinematic language as interpreted by the Ego-Ghost is provided in transference as a psychic imprint to the outer (RIS) Spheres of the Ego.
Future trends with respect to the Cinema can be observed in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The Ego-Ghost as inhabitant of the characters of Lisbeth Salander and Mickael Blomkvist moves beyond the screen universe. As the characters seek to solve the mystery, they, and we as their inhabitants, are drawn into the spectacle of home movies, multi frame still images, computer video media and audio-visual evidence. This spectacle within the spectacle may produce an additional level of (RIS) essentially inverting the model again and the producing a perceptive refection that the events and evidence are in effect real".