The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
Written by Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Ingvar Hirdwall
Release Date October 9th, 2009
Published October 9th, 2009
The character of Lisbeth Salander had, for a time, become the dominant pop cultural notion of an international ‘hacker.’ Or, at least she was until faceless Russian trolls became the top meme on that front during the 2016 election year. Before that though, leather, spikes and punk attitude, epitomized by Lisbeth as written by the late Stieg Larsson, was the dominant mode of our imagination of the hacker.
That is because Larsson’s characterization of Lisbeth Salander as the ultimate, badass, rebel, outlaw of the internet was so incredibly juicy. Pansexual, androgynous, covered in leather and spikes with a photographic memory and an intuition to match. And, she can beat up just about any man put in her way? That’s a recipe for an irresistible pop culture heroine. Add to that, Noomi Rapace’s iconic Lisbeth in the 2009 film adaptation and it is no wonder that Larsson and Lisbeth have lived on long past the author himself and his Millennium franchise.
With the latest, and the first under a new author, Millennium franchise story, The Girl in the Spider’s Web about to return Lisbeth Salander to our collective pop culture radar, now seemed like a good time to look back at the first big screen incarnation of the ultimate hacker icon, Noomi Rapace’s 2009 award winning performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces us to Lisbeth Salander as she is investigating a crusading journalist, Mikael Blomqvist (Mikael Nyqvist) who is being set up to go to jail. Blomqvist got suckered into a big investigative story about a powerful Swedish businessman but once he completed his story, he found that all of his sources had disappeared and he could go to jail on Sweden’s harsh libel laws.
This, however, is not why Lisbeth is investigating Blomqvist. Instead, she is working for another billionaire businessman who wants to hire Blomqvist to investigate a 40 year old disappearance. Blomqvist specifically has a connection to the woman who disappeared, Harriet Vanger, as she was his childhood babysitter. Henrik Vanger, Harriet’s uncle, is betting that the personal connection and Mikael’s desperate situation will make him the ideal person to find evidence that no one has found in the past 40 years.
Lisbeth’s part of the story should end there but she is deeply fascinated by Blomqvist. Investigating his case she found him to be the rare case of someone who has nothing to hide, a genuinely good man, caught up in a scheme not of his making. When Blomqvist accepts Vanger’s invitation to investigate Harriet’s disappearance, Lisbeth invites herself into the investigation and becomes Blomqvist’s partner and lover.
The mystery at the heart of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo oozes with intrigue including incest among Swedish elite, billion dollar fortunes, a serial killer and secret Nazis. It’s a whole lot of story for a whole lot of movies, the film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, comes in at a fully packed 2 hours and 30 minutes. In that time, we also get to know some of Lisbeth’s frightful backstory as an abuse victim who has only begun to fight back.
We learn a lot about Lisbeth’s resolve and strength in a violent subplot involving Lisbeth’s new guardian, played by Nils Bjurman. The film never explains why Lisbeth, who is clearly of an adult age, needs a guardian but the hint is that she is a recovering addict. Regardless, the brutal guardian exacts a toll on Lisbeth by taking over her finances and strangling the control she has over her life.
This subplot has received a great deal of controversial attention for having a brutal rape as its central conceit. Many have asked why this scene or even the subplot as a whole exists in the book and in the film. The answer is complicated, at least from my critical perspective. I can understand that the scene in question is brutal and could be fairly called exploitative. On the other hand, this subplot comes to play a larger role in the Millennium series as it goes on.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo introduces this complex, traumatic and problematic subplot and it can be fairly seen as extraneous in the stubborn context of just this movie. In the Millennium franchise however, this subplot has a much larger part to play and comes to be if not a central component of any of the other stories, it’s one that communicates a great deal about Lisbeth, her history and how she copes.
That director Niels Arden Oplev has done little since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2009 to distinguish his directorial career, does little to dim my opinion of the movie. This is one of the most riveting mysteries of this young century, a fascinating, twisty, and riveting work of suspense with an R-rated grit that makes it certainly not for everyone, especially those without a strong stomach.
If you’re interested in the story of Lisbeth Salander ahead of the release, this weekend, of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, this 2009, Swedish language thriller, is the best possible introduction. Yes, even better than the American version of the story. That’s saying something as the 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo carries the distinguished reputation of director David Fincher.
Nevertheless, consider 2009’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet’s Nest as required reading for true fans of Stieg Larsson’s dark, gritty and yet deeply commercial, mystery franchise, before or after you see The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
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