On the Hunt for a Hidden Murderer

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (aka Män som hatar kvinnor in its original Swedish title, translated as Men Who Hate Women) is one of those works that comes along every once in a while and catches fire. Everyone suddenly starts talking about it, the media is everywhere, and it captures a portion of the zeitgeist in a way that no one could have expected. Usually you see this for a story with mass market appeal, like Harry PotterFirst released as a series of books (starting in the UK before moving worldwide), the Harry Potter series gained great acclaim before even becoming a series of successful movies. Now encompassing books, films, a prequel series, and a successful two-part play, the series even now shows no end in sight. or The Hunger GamesA dystopian YA series set in the future of the world where war has ravaged the United States and the rich play deadly games with the poor and starving.. Something where you can see just about anyone enjoying the story and getting into its world.

You wouldn’t expect it for a novel about a disgraced journalist investigating a forty year cold case about a missing girl that, eventually, turns into a serial killer mystery about Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, the story is great and I do think that what it brings, its complex and interesting story wrapped around a twisty mystery, is worth getting sucked into. You just wouldn’t expect this to be the story that captures a huge chunk of the world. It doesn’t have sparkly vampires, or some following the mysteries of Da Vinci, or wizards. It’s something else altogether.

Originally written by Stieg Larsson, who wrote the first story and its initial two follow-ups before his death, the series gained worldwide acclaim and has sold millions of copies. It also led to two different adaptations of the original novel, one in 2009 that was directed by Niels Arden Oplev, and a second version in 2011 directed by David FincherStarting off as a music video director, David Fincher has gone on to become one of Hollywood's great, visionary directors with a cool, perfectionist style like none other.. I’ve already covered the Fincher version, which I think is a fantastic film. Of course it would be as this kind of cold, calculating, twisty story about serial killing is right up Fincher’s oeuvre. But a chance browsing through Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. prompted me to go back and watch the 2009 version, and, honestly, I think it might be even better than Fincher’s version.

The basic bones of the story are the same between the versions. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has served as one of the lead editors of Millennium magazine, a Swedish, hard-hitting journal, for years. However, he finds himself at a crossroads after he’s found guilty of libel after he’s sued by billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström (Stefan Sauk). For the good of the magazine Blomkvist steps down from the editorial board, leaving him adrift as he wants for his three-month stint in prison.

As it happens, though, someone else has a job for him. Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) wants to hire Mikael to look into a cold case, that of his missing favorite niece, Harriet Vanger (Julia Sporre), who vanished forty years earlier. Since then many have investigated the case but few have found any leads. With nothing to do, but having the mind of an investigative journalist, Mikael is brought on board to see if he can find something else that everyone else has missed. And when the hacker that ran a background check on Mikael, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), starts digging into the case as well, the two quickly discover that they might just be the right team to figure out what really happened forty years ago.

Clocking in at two hours and thirty minutes, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (we’ll go with the English name for it) is not a fast watch. Hell, if you really wanted you could go in for the mini-series version, which expands all three movies and clocks this story in at over three hours (I didn’t do that version). But that length gives the film a lot of depth. It gives the story time to germinate and expand, filling us in on the characters, their stories before this mystery, and it lets us understand them as people even before we get to the actual case. That time is well spent as it gets us to care about both Mikael and Lisbeth, making them strong protagonists for the film.

Mikael, honestly, is an easy character to like. He’s a journalist with strong morals who was duped with a story that was too good to be true. He thought he was reporting the truth, only to have all his contacts, and all the evidence, vanish as soon as he published his story. We want justice for Mikael, and if he can’t find it for himself then we appreciate that he can find it for someone else. He’s a solid, compassionate person to build a story around.

Strangely the English versions of the story put the emphasis on Lisbeth in the titles despite her, at least in this story, being more of a co-star. While we do get some early development for her story, finding out that she’s a ward of the state and that she has to have a legal supervisor that keeps an eye on her activities (and also that she can serve pretty spectacular vengeance), Mikael has the larger role in most scenes. Lisbeth is more the Watson to Mikael’s Sherlock… except she is also the smarter of the two.

I mean, I get it. She’s the more interesting, darker, and compelling character from a certain perspective. Making her the titular character draws people in. She is also key to solving many aspects of the case, as she’s an even better investigator that Mikael. It just always strikes me as weird that she gets the title but Mikael is our main focus character. I appreciate that the Swedish titles are focused more on the killers and the crimes than either of our lead characters. That puts the focus, I think, where it really needs to be.

This case is the real banger, a twisty tale of one supposed murder that then leads out co-investigators to other murders, and which then reveals a whole long history of serial killing which ties to Nazi culture. Each step of the story gets darker and more upsetting, and before too long you realize that what Mikael and Lisbeth have signed up for is a very disturbing, and dangerous, adventure that they’ll be lucky to survive. That is compelling in ways you would never expect from the opening scenes of the film.

I appreciated Fincher’s version of this story, but I think that his directorial eye was more focused on the case than the characters. Oplev’s version finds richer storytelling potential in Mikael and Lisbeth, creating a stronger bond between the characters while making them feel more whole, more real. The film is also warmer, in a way, than Fincher’s very cold and calculating film. Fincher has a very specific storytelling style, and it works, but Oplev finds more heart and nuance in the work, giving you more to care about than just the story alone. Each has their merits, but I really think Oplev better got to the heart of the characters, as well as the story, making for a richer viewing experience.

Whatever the case, the 2009 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a strong, interesting, and very compelling work of mystery fiction. It’s dark and twisty, strongly bringing the original novel to the screen. I can see why this film sucked people in, just like the novel did before it, and I have no doubt that the two follow-ups will provide strong continuing stories for the characters. That is something Oplev got to do that Fincher never could: the 2011 version didn’t get any direct sequels, leaving the story unfinished. With this 2009 version, though, we can run through the whole series and see all these dark and nasty little tales. It’ll be fun.