The plot is simple enough, the execution, not so much. What starts off as a very engaging plot quickly turns into a grotesque horrorfest of graphic sexual violence and nauseating scenes of rape after rape. And while these sexually violent moments are essential for helping shape the characteristics of the victim, Lisbeth Salander, the graphicness of them could have been avoided – as these scenes not only made every person in the theatre uncomfortable; but led to quite a few walk-outs. After we get through these extremely graphic scenes the plot starts to engage the audience again and continues to unravel at a nice pace... that is, until the last half an hour. This film is two and a half hours long, and that is edited; the original version is over three hours; and technically the plot ends around 1 hour and 50 minutes into the film. The remaining 30 – 40 minutes is an attempt at cleaning up every last untied knot; which lead to moments where the audience goes: ‘wait a second – if that’s the case – this entire movie was pointless!’
Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t hate the film... but I definitely didn’t love it either. The acting was incredible; Michael Nyqvist’s portrayal of Mikael Blomkvist was phenomenal. I am looking forward to seeing him in future films. I’m very interested in seeing the next two films: The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest to see if Mikael Blomkvist can manage the same level of performance that he did in the first film. Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander took awhile to warm up to as a character. She was cold and devoid of emotion and at the beginning of the film you didn’t know if that was a character flaw or an acting flaw; but as the movie progressed and Lisbeth’s story was told her character became much more sympathetic and it would be hard to envision anyone else playing the role of Lisbeth. Once again, I am interested to see how Rapace does in the next two films... and very interested in how David Lynch will cast the 2012 American re-make of this film.
Leaving the film a lot of people either really liked it or really hated it; and really it all comes down to how people a) stomached the sexual violence and b) how they reacted to the explanation at the ending. I don’t want to give away spoilers; but the entire 40 year old murder investigation has absolutely no real premise in the film by the end; and the way that it is presented was done in a way that kind of pissed me off; but really pissed off the guy next to me; who ranted and raved forever about how the ending of the film made him mad and was lazy script writing; etc..
Roger Ebert thinks that this is one of the best films he has ever seen; this confuses me because the film was just subpar, nothing too fantastic, nothing too dreadful. I wish it had been shorter and less graphic. I don’t know how the North American audience will react to this film. First off, it’s subtitled – a lot of fun was had in the first 10 minutes as we watched all the illiterates stand up and walk out of the theatre; secondly – it’s one of the most graphic (sexually) films I have ever seen – it’s on par with Lars von Trier’s Antichrist for sexual violence; thirdly – it’s so long that to have A.D.D. North American audiences try to engage with this film definitely won’t be as easy as European audiences.
The film is not for the faint of heart. If you can’t handle violence or sexual content in films then don’t think you can handle this film. I have sat through some violently graphic films before but nothing has made my stomach churn like a few scenes from this film. The movie isn’t even that fantastic to justify these scenes; they could have been done, as important as they are, without the same level of graphicness.
This movie is definitely not for everyone.
2.5 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment