The Girl...

Sometimes I stumble upon popular phenomena. This happened to me when I caught the series premieres of shows like Survivor, Lost, and Mad Men, only to become an evangelist for each on its own merits. It happened when I picked up Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and got sucked into this fabulous romantic saga of time travel and Scottish history (though I'm not a fan of most of its sequels). And it's happening in real estate lately. A few weeks ago we went to an open house for a nice but un-updated place in Redwood City; I was thinking seriously about it the next day, when David called to report that someone had that morning put in an offer and been accepted.

These are not random coincidences, I realize. Great minds think alike, good products gain attention, and my tastes are not so unique as to be without peers. Still I am always pleased to learn I've become interested in something that a lot of other people are also interested in. It's nice to know I'm not alone in the world. :)

The latest example is my fascination with the Swedish crime fiction trilogy Millenium. Each title (in English) begins The Girl... (the first is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The two main characters--a middle aged male investigative reporter and a diminutive young female computer hacker with a lot of issues--cross paths and end up working together to solve a decades old crime, but they are not a couple. It's a pretty cynical tale, the author does not shy from incorporating sex, and the beginning is a confusing mix of unfamiliar Swedish names, places and events. But all that aside, for some of us readers it also happens to be a wildly compelling read.

These books are not unknown (on my recent vacation, four of us were reading the second book). They are bestsellers around the world, and have already been turned into a trio of films in Sweden (an indication of the popularity there that this happened so soon, considering the last of the books hasn't even been released in the US yet). Here in the US, the first book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for a year, in spite of mixed reviews. People complain that the author included an inordinate amount of extraneous detail. There are few if any committed healthy relationships to savor within the cast. And there's violence, much of it sexual in nature, which understandably turns many readers off.

Even with all these detractors, I've gotten really involved in the series, and sought out the movie. I wanted visuals and was curious how the book would translate to film. What I found was that the filmmakers did an excellent job of distilling the essence of the plot, maintaining background detail but zeroing in on the action-packed storyline. What I had not been prepared for, in my detail-oriented reading haze, was that that essence was so very, very dark. All that being said, here's my review of the film.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
This briskly paced, 2-and-a-half hour thriller tells the story of Mikael Blomquist, an investigative journalist hired, after losing a well publicized libel case, to look into the disappearance of a young woman 40 years earlier. Mikael is cyber-tracked along the way by a young female hacker, Lisbeth Salander, who was employed initially by a security firm to gather background on him. She is a top-notch researcher, but utterly lacking in social skills and niceties. As a result of childhood trauma, Lisbeth is a ward of the state, even at age 24, and under the nominal control of an unscrupulous guardian. While Lisbeth deals with her guardian, she monitors with curiosity what Mikael is working on and ends up decoding a key part of the evidence. After she shares what she found, Mikael enlists her help, and the two work together to unravel an increasingly bizarre mystery.

At first the rhythm of the Swedish dialogue (and occasionally hard to read white subtitles) were distracting. And the movie does not shy from disturbing scenes of sexual violence that provide a basis for key parts of the plot (the Swedish title translates as "Men Who Hate Women"). But it's a well done thriller, with good bursts of action and tension, a few twists, and a good cast. Other readers will similarly appreciate the film. The movie is a faithful adaptation of the book, and the changes make sense. The movie also stands alone quite well, though I think it would appeal only to those with an appetite for a dark thriller.