So, I am writing after watching the first instalment of 'The Girl'. During my purchase of the arty morbid Japanese movie (Departures), I also grabbed a legal National Censorship Board approved, with hologram,18 rating of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'! The seal must have been given by the imams on a day after stuporous meal of santan laden lemang and rendang or flatulent nasi lemak! In their normal tour of duty, their 18 rating is equivalent to Sesame Street!
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| Noomi Rapace@Lisbeth Salander |
It is always better to read a book before watching a movie. What you see in the movie is just the result of the brain work of an individual director's perception of how a fictional story or event took place. To stimulate the action potential at the cerebral level (probably to decrease the chance of senile dementia and possibly Alzheimer's disease), it must be therapeutic; if not life saving, to read and form your own impression of how a paperback fiction should happened. Unfortunately with the advent of TV and various telecommunication advances, the awe, surprise and gore factor is slowly dwindling. As we, humans, become more exposed and more megalomaniac, everything we see becomes, "Ah, seen that, done that!"...
Maybe that is why, when I watched "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo TGWDT- the movie", what I saw was not much different from what I expected it to be. The disadvantage of watching a movie versus reading the book is that one will miss out all the quirky notes mentioned by the author. You would also miss out on the author's soliloquy and the thinking process of the characters, unless the movie is done along the line of Humphrey Bogart's films. Reading the book opened my eyes on the social structure and history of Sweden which is not quite apparent if I had just watched the movie.
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| Michael Nyqvist @ Mikael Blomkvist |
Blame it on watching many made-for-TV Disney movies and made-in-Canada survival in the cold movies during my childhood, my perception of how TGWDT and Sweden should look like mirrors the one showcased by the director - cold, bone-chilling chilly wind, snowing all the time, showery rains and thick clothes. Living up to the name of being a Swedish movie (option of English dubbing and English subtitles) and a modern one at that, they just had to show less of clothes and unnecessary lots of skin and frontal nudity in some scenes.
That is the problem with many of the new movies. They do not sell if they do not portray graphically the emotional affections and bedroom activities - TGWDT is guilty of that. So, now we know that Lisbeth Salander was sexually abused by her guardian and bedded Mikael Blomkvist - to show minutes showing it in detail? Maybe that is why the Millennium trilogy movies are so popular that the following two instalments of 'The Girl' are out! And yours truly had the privilege of ordering and receiving it recently. TGWDT is good otherwise but I am still contended with my black and white Alfred Hitchcock movies as well as movies from the bygone golden era of the silver screen where acting and great dialogue took paramount importance over matters like the scenery (they had not perfected outdoor filming anyway!)
Maybe that is why, when I watched "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo TGWDT- the movie", what I saw was not much different from what I expected it to be. The disadvantage of watching a movie versus reading the book is that one will miss out all the quirky notes mentioned by the author. You would also miss out on the author's soliloquy and the thinking process of the characters, unless the movie is done along the line of Humphrey Bogart's films. Reading the book opened my eyes on the social structure and history of Sweden which is not quite apparent if I had just watched the movie.
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