Late review - THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011)

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a perfectly well made movie that has absolutely no reason to exist.  It adds nothing to the Swedish original, despite being directed by the spiky, visually astute director David Fincher (THE SOCIAL NETWORK).  It feels like just another faithful retelling of Stieg Larsson's best-selling thriller (whose plot I won't bother to recount), albeit with a bigger budget and better production values.  Fincher's fingerprints were too subtly felt.  Let's be honest, if all we'd been given were a music video for Karen O singing Trent Resznor and Atticus Ross' reworking of The Immigrant Song with the wicked cool opening credits, we'd have gone home as happy as if we'd sat through the entire three hour movie. 

If I wanted to get more granular I'd point out the following - two positives and two negative.  I prefer Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander to Noomi Rapace, not because there was anything wrong with Rapace's performance, but because Rapace feels more like a woman, and Mara really does look like a girl (although I concede that in the novel she's 23).  That makes her victimisation worse, her toughness more impressive, her being a ward of the state more credible.  Second, I really liked Jeff Cronenweth's digital lensing using the Red One.

The first negative is a bugbear I have with many English language movies set in a non-English speaking countries.  Simply put, I want the director to decide what he wants to do with the accent in the film and then stick to it consistently.  I don't care if the Yanks and Brits are speaking English with some undefined mittel-europische accent, or some approximation at it, but I don't want half doing straight English and half doing cod-Swedish.   There's nothing that draws me out of a scene more than seeing Daniel Craig speaking straight English to Rooney Mara trying to do a Swedish accent complete with "hey hey"s and whatnot.

My second bugbear is the perfunctory manner in which the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist is handled in the remake. In the original movie, the genuine chemistry between Michael Nyqvist and Rapace really did centre the film and make us hungry for the next movie.  But in Fincher's take it's all too superficial, and betrays what's meant to be a deeply emotional moment at the end of the flick.  In fact, the movie has a wider problem, which is the very dull, slightly bizarre (plot points changed for no real reason) ending, that drags on for 30 minutes.

Overall, a pretty banal retelling once the opening credits are done. Looks like Fincher did it for the paycheck and directed with a very light hand.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is on release in the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Israel and Slovenia. It is released on January 6th in Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Estonia, India and Australia. It is released on January 12th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain and Turkey. It is released on January 19th in Belgium, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Portugal. It opens on January 27th in Brazil; on February 3rd in Italy and later in February in Japan.

Rooney Mara won Best Breakthrough Performer, tied with Felicity Jones for LIKE CRAZY, at the National Board of Review awards 2011.

George Ghon on MELANCHOLIA

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II

Doom and gloom are high on the agenda nowadays. Lars van Trier’s poetic Melancholia is one of the more beautiful jigsaw pieces that deal with the sombre mood in an arresting way, creatively speaking. A big blue planet named Melancholia approaches earth on a trajectory, which will eventually lead to a fatal crash, terminally extinguishing humanity. Given that background, we follow the wedding party of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at a remote, neo Gothic estate, owned by the rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The newly wed couple (with Alexander Skarsgård as Michael) arrives in a pristine mood, trying to wiggle their oversized limousine up a narrow mountain road, delaying their arrival, but keeping their state of general excitement and mutual enjoyment. Only when faced with the party guests, her parents (a confused John Hurt and a cold Charlotte Rampling), and her unscrupulous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s fragile emotional composure comes to light and we witness the mental pains of a pretty girl, which seems to have, by all conventional standards, a pretty good life. 

If we remember the Justine of de Sade’s eponymous novel as a victim of society in pre-revolutionary France, whose virtuous intentions get callously exploited by powerful figures (representations of church/law/aristocracy), Lars van Trier’s character is a bit more subtle, her suffering largely self-inflicted, or so it seems. There is no apparent traumatizing event that links to her mental condition. The Melancholia from which she suffers comes out of the blue, like the menacing planet that is spiralling towards earth on its fatal course. On a superficial level it could be afflicted by it, but speaking in more symbolic terms, the planetary crash could act as metaphor for the threat that Melancholia, the illness, is to contemporary society. In this context, Slavoj Zizek’s book ‘Living in the End Times’, which was originally published in 2010, gains new relevance. In a chapter on depression he asks the crucial question: ‘If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, so that even its worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochistic) vicissitudes of the libido, will the twenty-first be the century of the post-traumatic disengaged subject (…)?’ The libido recedes in that transformation, leaving Thanatos to overpower Eros. 

Or the libido takes its funny turns, to say the least. Instead of procreating with her understanding husband, Justine opts for the quicky with the dumb office boy on the nightly golf course to momentarily please her wavering sexual desire. It has to be said that the men in this film don’t live up to their roles. The boss is an asshole, the father doesn’t listen, and the only thing the brother in law can think of is his money. The male characters are bystanders on the sideline, one-dimensional lightweights that merely accessorize the plot, which is driven by the emotionally complex interactions of the two sisters, Justine and Claire. As the end of the world approaches, they have to face the tragedy without any masculine comforting. Claire is ridden with terror, but Justine doesn’t fear the approaching apocalypse. Mankind is evil, she concludes, and the universe better off without it. She is longing to die, can’t wait to swap the bland reality she experienced for something that might turn out to be spiritually more fulfilling. 

This abstract desire to annihilate the human race and trade it in for something more sublime, is equally apparent in Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhine II, which just sold for $4,3m at Christies in New York and broke the prize record in a photography sale. The large print shows the grey Rhine River framed by its green bed under a foggy sky. Ultra-minimalist composure, strangely attractive, but with every human trace carefully removed in the retouching process of the digital file. Why are the aesthetes longing for a post-human equilibrium so much these days? Both Gursky and van Trier suggest a pretty radical solution to the struggles of society in the 21st century: Complete wipe out. Let’s hope that this message can be seen in a metaphorical way, too, and be understood as a mere hint that it is time to change, soon. 

MELANCHOLIA played Cannes 2011 where Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress, and Toronto. It opened earlier this year in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Estonia, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the UK, Germany, Italy and Hungary. It opened earlier in November in Spain, Canada and the US. It goes on release in December in Portugal, Slovenia and Australia. It opens in January in Hong Kong and Turkey and in February in Japan.

THOR 3D - a movie so dull it took me two weeks to work up the energy to review it

THOR is a super-hero movie so simplistic that it makes you feel like BATMAN BEGINS never happened.  I left the theatre bored and patronized.  Not to mention shocked that the director – Kenneth Branagh – who brought us intelligent and subtle readings of Shakespeare – was trading in such trite pastiche.  The movie neither challenges intellectually nor delights visually. It is – both in terms of style and content – an absolute zero.

The plot has two parts to it, but both are hackneyed and predictable. The first part is your typical Oedipal tale of familial jealousy and revenge.  Papa loves big brother (Thor) more than little brother, so little brother gets his revenge by framing big brother and having him exiled before usurping his father’s throne. This all takes place in a Norse superhero world peopled by buff gods in He-Man outfits but decorated by Trump.  There is an inter-world travel-ator which looks like a posh version of the Star Trek transporter and is, shock! horror! to comic book fans, guarded by a black god.  (The only shock I felt was why Idris Elba – so brilliant in The Wire – was slumming it in this dreck). This brings us to the second part of the story, which is basically your typical, predictable fish-out-of-water rom-com, as last seen in Disney’s THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.  Aforementioned big brother gets exiled to earth where he meets a hot chick who just happens to be an astrophysicist. He learns how not to be an arrogant arse after one night’s deep and meaningful conversation on top of a camper van, and then buggers off to save his world.

The issue here is that the movie is cheap.  It looks cheap and it goes for cheap laughs. Thor is undoubtedly a camp character but then so is Batman. The problem here is that he is also one-dimensional, whereas Batman has nuance and conflict. Thor’s character “development” from idiot-jock to sensitive-hippie is boring because it doesn’t come by stages but rather at the flick of a switch. The  script-writers are simply uninterested in exploring the genre conventions in which they are operating, and to the post-modern viewer, the result is a movie that seems old clunky, simplistic and frankly, just not trying hard enough.  At worst, it feels like pastiche.  There is little point in discussing performances –for what hope do the actors have to dazzle when they are asked to be little more than cardboard cut-outs? Natalie Portman, as the love interest, Jane, simply has to swoon.  Chris Hemsworth, as Thor, simply has to be ridiculous and be-muscled. Anthony Hopkins, as Papa Odin, has to be austere. And poor Tom Huddlestone, used to much finer fair in British independent cinema, is reduced to twirling his pantomime moustaches as little brother, Loki. This cheapens the actors as much as it cheapens the audience. Poor show, all round. 

THOR is on release in all markets bar Japan where it opens on July 1st.

Preview - BOOGIE WOOGIE

BOOGIE WOOGIE is a highly enjoyable, acerbic satire on the contemporary art world, directed by debutant Duncan Ward and based on the novel by Danny Moynihan. Both are art-world insiders and the film has the feel of authentic anecdotes on speed.

The film has a large cast and many sub-plots, but these all coalesce around the gallery of Art Linson - a Jay Jopling like art-dealer who stands at the centre of the London art scene. Art is played in trademark oleaginous, sinister mode by Danny Huston, who needs to seriously worry about typecasting. Three main stories whir around Art. First, his main clients - art collectors Jean and Maclestone (Gillian Anderson and Stellan Skarsgard) are fucking a young artist and a gallery assistant (Amanda Seyfried) respectively, and are engaged in a bitter battle over who gets the art. Second, naive Dewey (Alan Cumming) is trying to promote his best friend, video artist Elaine (Jaime Winston) who ditches him for Art's assistant Beth (Heather Graham). Finally, ageing collector Alfred Rhinegold (Christopher Lee) is being manipulated by his wife (Joanna Lumley) and her butler (the ever brilliant Simon McBurney) to sell a valuable painting, at a price manipulated by art dealer Art Linson.

In short, the majority of characters are self-involved, sexually promiscuous, and care more about jockeying for money and fame than about art itself. Only a few - Alfred Rhinegold and Dewey - have a genuine passion for the work - and they basically get screwed over for their pains. It's not that the art world is indifferent to their pain, but that characters like Beth and Elaine will actually exploit it. After all, in the era of reality TV and constant self-exposure, pain is just another means to create a sensation.

The movie moves quickly; finely balances humour and disgust; assuredly handles its large cast; and is sharply photographed by John Mathieson (HANNIBAL, GLADIATOR). Art aficionados will appreciate the fact that the art was curated by Damien Hurst. I presume that when this finally gets released, it will be very limited. But this flick is definitely worth seeking out.

Additional tags: Joanna Lumley, Christopher Lee, Alan Cumming, Duncan Ward, Danny Moynihan.

BOOGIE WOOGIE played Edinburgh 2009 and will be released in the UK and US in April 2010. It is, rather improbably, currently being shown on British Airways long-haul flights.

London Film Fest Day 11 - METROPIA

METROPIA is a derivative dystopian sci-fi flick raised above the parapet by its superb and novel animation and brought back down by the essential ridiculousness of its main concept.

Set in 2024, humanity has been brought low by environmental degradation. The world is enveloped in a grey fog, concrete buildings rot, and litter scatters the streets. In other words, this is the environment of every sci-fi flick you've seen. As usual, big business is the enemy, as embodied by Ivan Bahn (Udo Kier), the head of Metropia - the company that linked all of Europe's metro systems. The project was conceived as a peace initiative - making Europe truly one country - and of course, all of us have horror-flashbacks to the last person who tried that, and indeed the last movie, set on a train system, to explore it, Lars von Trier's superb EUROPA EUROPA aka ZENTROPA. Writer-director Tarik Saleh also takes no chances on his protagonist, a boring everyman call-centre worker called Roger. He's firmly in the vein of Orwell's Winston Smith, or Terry Gilliam's Sam Lowry. He has a lovely girlfriend but he dreams of the hot chick on his shampoo bottle. He's also convinced that something's not quite write on the metro and takes the seemingly outlandish step of riding his bike to work. The movie works as a sort of Hitchcock thriller, in which our hero gets enchanted by a Hitchcock blonde - the beautiful Nina of shampoo-bottle fame. Together they try to work out why Roger can hear a voice in his head telling him what to do.

Now, my fundamental issue with the film is that I find the precise means by which the standard-issue evil corporation is going to take over the world absolutely ridiculous. Because, ladies and gentleman, The Man is going to control your mind through.....wait for it.....anti-dandruff shampoo. Yes yes.

The good news is that this film is so technically well-made and perfectly cast that you can almost ignore the fundamentally stupid concept at its centre. The film-makers have basically photo-shopped the frack out of real photos of real people. The result is incredibly unsettling and alienating - characters that look recognisably human but have been subtly distorted. It gives you the creeps - in a good way. The same can be said of the design of the environment. It all looks like our world but subtly distorted - made to look older - like a WW2 film - but futuristic at the same time. It's wonderfully unsettling. Vincent Gallo is superb as the voice of Roger - capturing the whiny, paranoid but no-nonsense character - and Alexander Skarsgard (of TRUE BLOOD fame) is spookily well-matched as his "inner voice" Stefan.

So what can I say? On balance, do I think this film works? For me, no. But my goodness, it was wonderful to look at.

METROPIA played Venice, Sitges and London 2009. It opens in Sweden on November 27th.