A Perfect Adaptation. A Wonderful Movie

It is very rare to watch a movie based on a favorite book and not be disappointed. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, however, is a rare exception as it is a perfect adaptation. Both the cast and the scenery was very close to the imagery the late Stieg Larsson created in my mind while I was reading his masterpiece. And the story follows the book plot with faithful reverence.

Having said that, even if one missed on the book this is a powerful and very entertaining movie on its own.

The movie is in Swedish (as it should) and if, like me, not fluent in the language, one has to use subtitles. I prefer this kind of translation to dubbing as I find it more respectful of the artists' original vision and craft. German and French (to to mention American) audiences, to name but a few, have been addicted to hearing their own language. This convenience, although it can work for most blockbusters, it rubs off all the subtle details that give rise to a masterpiece.

Noomi Rapace (of Prometheus fame) simply is Lisbeth Salander. The body-type, the attitude, the self-assured distrust towards the world. From the way she enters a room to the way she hits her computer keys she is possessed by Lisbeth's spirit.

In this first installment of The Millennium Trilogy Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his investigation form the center of gravity. No matter, the moment Lisbeth enters a scene she steals it away simply because there hasn't been such an original character for a long time. Nobody wants to cross this version of Pipi Longstockings!

The story revolves around a locked-room/island mystery. An industrialist, Henrik Vanger, has life-long obsession with what really happened to his beloved niece, Harriet. Although the Vagner family has no..shortage of bad apples, the mystery resisted to 40 years of thorough investigation by both the police and numerous private investigators. Blomkvist is persuaded to give it one last try not only by the substantial paycheck but also by the promise to be able to clear his name, tricked and convicted into libel as he had been.

The Millennium Trilogy is Larsson's last gift to the world. And it starts with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If, for some reason, you do not want to savor the books, this movie is strong and potent. It will stay with you for a very long time.

Øverated

Stieg Larsson's brilliant Millenium Trilogy made Scandinavian crime fiction hip again. So, in the wake of his success (and the vacuum created by his untimely death in 2004), Jo Nesbo was brought in to fill the empty spotlight. With only mixed results, I am afraid.

I decided to start with Redbreast because it is the first book of his Harry Hole series that has been translated in English (although there had been two books previous to this one in Norwegian - and there are references to the hero's previous cases). The story may be a standalone but the character development suffers from this truncation.

The story of Redbreast steps on two timelines that slowly converge. One is the story of a group of young Norwegian Nazis fighting on the side of the Germans during WWII. The other is a mess of a police story where a mistake prone Harry Hole stumbles onto a case of the import of a vintage (and extremely expensive) sniper rifle and then manages to fumble most clues and miss a number of opportunities to solve the mystery long before its climax.

I am not going to continue with any more books by this writer. The narration feels forced, with a number of mood-killing reality TV references, predictable stereotypes and one-page chapters. What is worse, the characters are both underdeveloped and internally inconsistent. Nesbo is clearly not in Larsson's league.

I gave the book some extra credit for cantor. When the Germans themselves try to squiggle out of their national shame of supporting Nazism (not to mention still avoiding paying their WWII debts), it was brave for Nesbo to admit that the majority of Norwegians in the 1940's indeed supported the National Socialists and were willing collaborators of Hitler's vision.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not justify the admission price.