Brightest Young Things

Adapting a popular novel to the screen can be a thankless task. Fans are inevitably disappointed when the filmmakers jettison important sections, though comparisons to the book are often unfair. Even worse, those unfamiliar with the source material are sometimes left wondering why the book has so many dutiful readers. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the latest example of such an adaption, and as someone who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular novel, I fall squarely into the latter category. While the book enthralled millions, including friends whose taste I respect, the movie is clunky and tedious. It often feels as if the production team is in a rush to cover plot points, and without strong character development, the screenwriters lazily rely on fans to fill the missing holes. I can see how Larsson’s novel could keep me turning the pages, yet his approach of plot and suspense intermittently work on celluloid.

Wrongly convicted of libel, 40-something journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has time to kill before he begins a brief prison sentence. The aging, wealthy Henrik (Sven-Bertil Taube) seizes the opportunity, and pays Mikael to investigate the decades-old murder of his niece Harriet. Mikael agrees, and upon moving from Stockholm to a remote island town, he meets Henrik’s family. Meanwhile cyberpunk hacker Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) has been tracking Mikael’s movements ever since she was hired to perform an exhaustive background check on him. Lisbeth has a knack for research, so when she solves a baffling clue, she can’t help but send Mikael a hint. Soon the unlikely investigators join forces, and begin a bizarre relationship defined by Lisbeth’s traumatizing past. Recently a lecherous parole officer abused Lisbeth, yet her flinty intelligence ensures his brutal comeuppance.  Her resolve is asset as she and Mikael get closer to uncovering the killer's identity.

Novels do not require action or dialogue to generate suspense. A narrator can describe a character’s thoughts and frustrations, which will ideally cause the reader to turn the page in eager anticipation. As a medium, film must show and not describe, so it takes real talent to make such scenes compelling. But director Niels Arden Oplev cannot convey the same level of detail as Larsson’s prose, so the unraveling mystery feels inert. It’s famously difficult to capture a writer’s creative expression on film, and similar trappings occur for researchers in the throes of their work.

Some subplots, such Lisbeth’s interaction with a sadistic rapist, seek to provide a visceral counterbalance to the dry investigation. The scenes are strongly acted, with brave work from Rapace, yet they have little to do Mikael’s investigation and therefore remain a bore. Mikael’s back-story receives comparatively less screen time, so the inequitable character-building is perplexing. Fans of the book assure me there is a long-term payoff to the Lisbeth/rapist subplot, one that appears in later novels, but here it does not add to the central story or to Lisbeth’s development. At an overlong two-and-a-half hours, the subplot is an unwelcome distraction, no matter how unnerving it may be.

In a manner similar to Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s work, Oplev and his screenwriters give more attention to Larsson’s action-heavy scenes. Because The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo works best as an unraveling mystery, Larsson’s emphasis isn’t on action – chases here don’t generate suspense the way they might in, say, Green Zone. Moreover, when Mikael discovers the killer’s identity, he’s subjected to a Talking Killer fallacy so egregious it'd fit into a bad James Bond movie. Opley and team do the best they can – the cast fit into their archetypes well, even if the script requires little of them. I guess some books, no matter how beloved, simply don’t translate well into another medium. And since they already have a built-in audience, studios have little incentive to learn their lesson, even as they disappoint fans and confuse novices.