Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

Movies: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 There's nothing quite as potent as a rape-revenge tale. And even more potent than a man taking revenge on behalf of a woman is a woman avenging her own rape. Perhaps this is why Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy has dominated the best seller list for so long. The trilogy (which, full disclosure, I haven't read, although I've seen all of the original Swedish films based on the books) would be nothing special without the character of Lisbeth Salander. Salander, a tiny, anti-social, goth-punk computer hacker is perfect fodder for our culture's weird fantasies about sex and violence. Salander is titillating enough to be a sex object (she's slim, bisexual, sexually aggressive), but also bad-ass enough to fulfill our love of eye-for-an-eye revenge fantasies.

There has been much ado made about Larsson's trilogy and it's relationship towards women and feminism. According to both Wikipedia and Larsson's long time partner, Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson witnessed a gang rape of a young woman when he was 15 years old. This incident caused a deep, lifelong disgust of violence and abuse toward women and was an influence on his writing. In fact, the original Swedish title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was "Men Who Hate Women". The novel is peppered with statistics about rape and assault of women in Larsson's native Sweden. All this would mark Larsson as a feminist. However, others find the focus on rape and torture of women in his novels distasteful at best and exploitative at worst--basically, "rape as entertainment". I, however, fall into the camp that believes Larsson was a feminist. You can find brutal depictions of violence against women in any number of thrillers and murder mysteries--many written by women. It seems to me that Stieg Larsson, whether or not he accomplished his goal, was at least trying to make a political statement about the way women are seen and treated in his country and in the world.

That background aside, David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is a very good, very atmospheric, and incredibly violent film with one major flaw which I will discuss below. If you liked the original Swedish film, you probably won't be *too* offended at the changes Fincher makes in his adaptation. And if you like Fincher's other films and are able to stomach a lot of violence (against both men and women), you'll find this film as thrilling, edgy, and elegant as his other films.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follows the plot of the original film very closely and steamlines the many subplots. The main story concerns Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a disgraced journalist hired by a rich and powerful old man to solve an old family mystery. As Blomkvist looks into the history of the powerful Vanger family, he uncovers some extremely dark family secrets--and find himself uncomfortably close to a man who is a serial torturer/rapist/killer of women.

The subplot, which gets just as much screen time as the main plot, is about Salander, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo--a genius computer hacker who is also a ward of the state because of a violent crime she committed as a child. When her state-appointed guardian begins to take advantage of her sexually, culminating in a distressingly violent rape scene, Salander fights back and take revenge in a brutal way--though arguably less brutal than what she had to undergo.

The two plots come together when Blomkvist seeks out Salander to help him with his research. Together, the two are able to discover not only what happened to the missing niece at the center of the Vanger family mystery, but to find a killer of women who is still at large. Of course, they risk their lives doing so.

This brings me to the biggest beef I had with Fincher's adaptation of the story:

Spoilers!

In the original movie (I can't speak for what happens in the book), Salander has sex one night with Blomkvist. She goes into his room, ravishes him, and goes back to her own room. End of story. No romance, no pining. The two have a mainly platonic relationship of mutual respect throughout the trilogy of films.

In the American version, Salander begins to kinda sorta fall in love (or at least get emotionally close) to Blomkvist. Her attachment is expressed in a number of scenes. For example, she makes him breakfast after they spend the night together. Later, she buys him a leather jacket and when she goes to give it to him, sees him with his longtime girlfriend and becomes visibly distressed. I found Salander's attachment to Blomkvist to be complete baloney. Salander would never make a man (or woman) breakfast after spending the night with them. And the character is often described as anti-social to the point of being nearly autistic. I highly doubt she would get a schoolgirl crush on a man she was working with. Then again, maybe Fincher's adaptation is truer to the book. But it seemed very pandering to an American audience that expects (heterosexual) romance to bloom at the drop of a hat.

That complaint aside, Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an excellent, elegant thriller with beautiful cinematography, a killer (no pun intended) soundtrack, and great acting. If you can stomach the violence, it's worth seeing.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Not On Bread Alone

Movies: Hunger

Continuing the theme of sad movies this month, I was interested in watching Hunger, directed by Steven McQueen (no, not that Steve McQueen, this Steve McQueen) and starring Michael Fassbender, in preparation for the upcoming film Shame, also directed by McQueen and starring Fassbender.

Hunger is--pun somewhat intended--a slim little movie with a very narrow focus. The film depicts the events surrounding a prison hunger strike led by Bobby Sands, an Irish Republican Army volunteer. Sands and the other IRA prisoners wanted political status and various other rights, including the right not to wear a prison uniform and the right not to do prison work. After an unsuccessful "no wash" and "blanket" strike (during which the prisoners refused to bathe and wear the prison uniform--instead they went naked and wore blankets), the prisoners of Maze prison in Northern Ireland used all they had left--their lives--to barter for their rights.

In the end, they were granted many of their demands, although nine men, including Sands, had starved to death.

Visually, Hunger is grotesque and disgusting. The Maze prison is hellish, the prisoners are filthy, there are several scenes of family members and girlfriends smuggling messages and contraband to the prisoners by way of...body cavities. In McQueen's view of things, the prison guards are robots and the prisoners are animals.

There is very little dialogue in the movie, aside from an intense scene between Sands and a priest. The priest tries to dissuade Sands from starving himself--he asks Sands to think of his family and "wee son". But Sands is insulted by the priest's pleas and is set on dying for what he believes is a righteous cause. I have to say, I sided with the priest.

In the final third of the movie, we watch Sands starve to death. It's amazing they didn't end up force-feeding this guy. I guess for all the rights they refused the prisoners, they didn't bother refusing them the right to die.

Hunger's final act appears more like performance art than a film. Fassbender lost a ton of weight for this movie and he appears to be authentically starving by the end of the film. It was distressing to watch--not so much because I care about Bobby Sands or his cause, but because it was alarming to see how radically Fassbender changed his body for the role. Someone get the man a sandwich!

Hunger accomplishes its goals in the sense that you feel for the prisoners, who faced terrible conditions and abuse at the hands of hardened guards. No matter how you feel about the actions of the IRA (I don't know much about the IRA, but I'm against their use of terrorism and violence), you sympathize with their demands. Yet, at the same time, Sands comes off as more of a martyr than a hero in this movie. He starves himself (and, by example, encourages other men to also starve) for what I believe to be no good reason. I would argue that there are very few causes worth dying for--and that people who want to change the world and make a difference have a big advantage in, uh, being alive to work on their goals.

Hunger is a good film, but, like Bobby Sands' stomach, I felt pretty empty afterwards.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Dreaming at 24 Frames Per Second

Movies: Hugo

Hugo is Martin Scorsese's love letter to film, and what a joyous, beautiful film it is. Based on Brian Selznick's book, the film follows the titular Hugo Cabret (played by adorable and talented newcomer, Asa Butterfield), an orphan in early 1930's Paris who, after his father dies and alcoholic uncle abandons him, keeps the clocks running in a train station and steals food from the shops at the station. He also steals knick knacks and small pieces of machinery that he uses to repair an automaton (a small robot) that his father found in a museum. The automaton (which is able to write out messages when wound up) is Hugo's last connection to his father and therefore very important and dear to him.



In his attempts to steal small parts to fix the robot, Hugo is caught by an old man (Ben Kingsley) who runs a toy shop in the train station. He takes Hugo's notebook, filled with drawings of the automaton, and makes Hugo clean and repair broken toys for him to earn the notebook back. Hugo makes friends with the man's goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz, aka Hit Girl from Kick Ass), who is also an orphan. The two work together to find out why "Papa George"--Isabelle's godfather--is so obsessed with Hugo's notebook.

Potential spoiler: It turns out that Papa George is actually George Melies, one of the earliest filmmakers and pioneer of the art of filmmaking. Melies, a prolific director in the early 1900's, lived to see his life's work and dreams destroyed during the Great War--a time so lean, that Melies was forced to sell his film reels to factories that melted the film down in order to make shoes.

Hugo and Isabelle dredge up a painful past that Melies has long kept buried (the automaton turns out to be an early invention Melies worked on before giving it to a museum). Of course, once the children convince Papa George that his work is still loved and valued, the old man realizes that he cannot and should not avoid his past, despite the painful memories. At the end of the film, Melies has adopted Hugo and hosts a film festival of his restored classics.

Despite the PG rating and neat and tidy happy ending, Hugo is not just a movie for kids. In fact, the gravity, leisurely pace, and tangents into film history make it more appropriate for cinephile teens and adults. As someone who fell in love with movies at a tender age (I remember watching City Lights and Annie Hall in middle school and never looking back), Hugo really meant something to me. There is a scene where Hugo and Isabelle visit a library and read a book called "The Invention of Dreams" about the early history of cinema. As they flip through the pages, the strains of "Danse Macabre" play to images of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, the Lumiere brothers--all the greats of early 20th century cinema. It's a breathtaking and deeply emotional scene that pays tribute to film as an art form and part of history.

In Hugo, Melies says at the end, "Come dream with me". I suspect that if you read this blog, you are also a movie lover. Hugo will remind you why you fell in love with seeing your dreams come true on the big screen.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I Know It's Over...And It Never Really Began

Movies: Blue Valentine

It must be sad movie week for me. First, Melancholia and now Derek Cianfrance's beautiful and gut-wrenching Blue Valentine.

The central conflict in Blue Valentine is devastating in its simplicity and commonness. Two young people who don't have much in common other than their initial physical attraction get married for the wrong reasons and end up miserable years later. It's a story as old as time and nearly everyone can relate to it: to love is to experience pain. I don't mean to sound like a melodramatic teenager (despite my use of Smiths lyrics as the title of this post), but when we love someone and take that leap into a relationship, we are accepting vulnerability and helplessness. It's a given--it's part of the deal. Vulnerability is what makes love...well, love.


But I digress. Michelle Williams plays Cindy and Ryan Gosling plays Dean. The couple have been married for about 6 years and have a daughter, Frankie. The movie opens at the beginning of the end of their marriage and then cuts back and forth between how they met and fell in love and how it all unravels in the end. In the beginning, the major differences between Cindy and Dean don't matter so much. Cindy is intelligent and ambitious. She is studying medicine. She comes from what appears to be an abusive home and is in a relationship with an abusive jerk. When she meets Dean, he becomes an escape route for her--an attractive, fun guy who clearly worships her. Dean lacks ambition. He never finished high school. His ideal job is one that allows  him to drink beer at work and make enough money to put some food on the table. But Dean loves Cindy the way a puppy loves its master: unconditionally and in a way that puts the two of them on radically different footing. Cindy starts out as a lost girl who is intrigued by Dean's boyish qualities, but she grows into a woman who needs to be with a man. Dean stays a boy and doesn't want anything to change. He just wants to love Cindy and Frankie and do nothing else with his life.

It's this dynamic that makes Blue Valentine so real and so, so sad: neither Dean nor Cindy is the villain here. They both have their flaws--Cindy is unable to communicate effectively; Dean drinks too much, etc. But no one is really the bad guy. The two are just fundamentally different people. So many relationships end not because one person is abusive or adulterous, but because two people just change and grow apart over time.

In an attempt to salvage their flailing marriage, Dean convinces Cindy to spend the night with him what has to be the saddest sex motel ever. They choose the "Future" room, which Dean aptly remarks looks like "a robot's vagina". Dean's plan is for the two of them to "get drunk and make love". Well, the succeed on the "drunk" part. In fact, it's probably the alcohol that ruins the evening. The two get massively blitzed and try to...er..."make love" is definitely not the right phrase. "Screw" is more appropriate. Dean's attempts to pleasure Cindy are met with resistance and disgust. The look of pain and repulsion on Cindy's face while Dean kisses his way down her body says it all. She has no love, lust, like, or respect for this man any more, as much as he keeps trying and trying.

The next day, Cindy leaves for work and doesn't bother to wake Dean up. Dean goes to the doctor's office where Cindy works as a nurse and confronts her. The scene transitions from awkward and cringe-inducing to violent. It culminates with Cindy telling Dean "I am so out of love with you! I have nothing left for you!" Ouch. It's not that Cindy hates Dean--that would indicate passion of some sort. She's just apathetic and exhausted. The marriage isn't dying, it's dead.

Despite the pain of Blue Valentine, I was enthralled by the film. It's a fascinating character study and although it's difficult to watch at times, it's never boring. For a movie with such a simple plot, Blue Valentine feels full and complete. Williams and Gosling are so talented--they fully inhabit their characters, and the viewer is able to forget their outer beauty when they let their characters' inner ugliness shine through.

A quick side note/rant: Blue Valentine was originally given an NC-17 rating before the director appealed to the MPAA and got the rating downgraded to an R. Apparently, the film was given its original rating for an "emotionally charged scene of sexuality". I've seen this movie and there is no way any of the sex scenes warrant an NC-17. You barely see the actors' bodies, since the camera focuses mainly on their faces in extreme close-up. In addition to the sex motel scene, there's a slightly more graphic scene of Dean performing oral sex on Cindy when they first start going out. The characters are fully clothed and the scene lasts about 20 seconds, but I can just see the MPAA counting the head bobs, or moans, or whatever it is on their checklist of "consensual adult pleasure" that offends them so much and slapping the film with an NC-17. I know it's been said before, but when movies like Hostel and The Human Centipede get R ratings and Blue Valentine gets an NC-17 for an "emotional" sex scene and half a minute of fully-clothed oral sex, there's something wrong with our culture and societal values. Or, you know, the values of the MPAA, which are extremely out of touch with reality.

I said that Melancholia was "painful and somewhat worth it". Blue Valentine is painful and completely worth it. It's a small-scale masterpiece. I know that Cindy and Dean aren't real, but at the end of the movie I found myself hoping that they would be able to move on with their lives and find new partners better suited for them. It's the mark of a great movie when the characters feel so real that you continue to think about them and worry for them long after the movie is over.

4.5 out of 5 stars

It's the End of the World as We Know It, And She Doesn't Feel Fine

Movies: Melancholia

Spoilers ahead.

"Divisive" is a good word to describe director Lars von Trier, both in terms of his work and of the man himself. Von Trier has been known to be a difficult man to work with at best, and downright cruel and piggish at worst. Earlier this year, he made a, er, gaffe at Cannes by saying he "understood" Hitler (Google the clip--it's painful to watch). It's no secret that von Trier, as talented as he may be, has some serious issues.

Likewise, von Trier's films are, well, difficult. I've seen a number of them and I always seem to either love them or hate them. While I felt that Breaking the Waves and Dogville were beautiful, amazing films, Dancer in the Dark was like nails on a chalkboard to me. And Manderlay, the sequel to Dogville, was just stupid in my opinion. Melancholia may be the first von Trier film that I didn't hate, but didn't love. It's beautiful, it's intense, and it's extremely difficult to sit through. At times, I was bored to distraction. But by the end of the film, my heart was racing. I still don't know what I really think of this movie.

Melancholia is about two things: depression and the apocalypse (now I know you're dying to see it!). The first half of the film focuses on internal depression. It follows Justine (Kirsten Dunst, in what I think is her greatest performance yet), a young woman on her wedding day. Her sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother-in-law, John (Kiefer Sutherland), are enormously wealthy and the reception is held at their estate. Justine barely makes it through the evening, often sneaking away to walk outside or take a bath in the middle of the festivities. Claire, John, and Justine's brand new hubby, Michael (Alexander Skarsgaard), keep guilt-tripping her about not being happy. When she protests "I keep smiling and smiling..." her sister says "You're lying to all of us." God, with family like this, who needs enemies?

No wonder Justine is exhausted and depressed--I was exhausted and depressed just watching the damn thing unfold. Seriously, the wedding in Melancholia has to be the most awful wedding, in real life or on screen, ever. By the end of the evening, Justine leaves her husband and has sex with another guy on Claire and John's golf course (yes, they have a golf course. These people have more money than God) and then insults her boss and gets fired. You go, girl! It's her wedding and she can act like a crazy person if she wants to!

At the start of the second half of the movie, Justine is so severely depressed, she can no longer bathe herself or eat. She comes to live with Claire and John and just sleeps for 15 hours a day. Anti-depressants, people! They exist for a reason!

But the bigger concern of the second half of Melancholia is a giant planet that has been discovered by scientists. Appropriately named "Melancholia", the experts believe that the planet will pass by Earth harmlessly. Claire, however, is terrified of it. She has reason to be. Although Melancholia does initially pass by Earth, it starts heading back on a collision course. When John discovers this, he quickly takes the coward's way out and commits suicide, leaving his wife and young son behind. Claire is, of course, distraught. Her husband has killed himself, she has a young son she can no longer protect, and not only will she die when Melancholia hits the earth--everything and everyone she ever loved will be destroyed as well. Justine, on the other hand, emerges from her depression and becomes a source of calm and strength for Claire. Now that Justine's depression is externalized in Melancholia, she and Claire have reversed roles. In the last moments, she helps Claire's son, Leo, build a symbolic "magical cave" out of sticks.  Claire, Leo, and Justine sit in the cave as Melancholia gets closer to Earth and eventually destroys it.

Interestingly, watching the earth blow up was easier than watching Justine's travesty of a wedding.

What does it all mean? I think the simplest interpretation is the best--Melancholia is simply about depression and its destructive nature. Because of her depression, Justine destroys her marriage and career in the first half of the film. In the second half, a planet named after depression destroys everything. No one can escape it. Claire and John may be insanely wealthy, but even they can't fight the inevitability of such an enormous disaster. Like the disease of depression, the planet Melancholia is all-consuming.

Melancholia is filled with beautiful images (as well as a lot of gut-churning hand-held camera work) and devastating emotions. Claire's agitation and hysteria near the end of the film really got to me. I didn't enjoy the first half of the movie mainly because I couldn't relate to the characters or the situation at all. I just kept thinking how annoying, mean, and stupid everyone was acting. But I could sympathize with Claire's helpless response in the face of impending doom. If I was in the same situation, I would not be calm like Justine. I would definitely be like Claire--a frantic, trapped animal. So while the emotions I experienced during the second half of Melancholia were not positive, they felt very real and very intense. I don't watch Lars von Trier's movies to feel happy--I watch them to feel a sort of catharsis. And to that end, Melancholia was successful. In terms of cinematography and acting, Melancholia is among von Trier's best work. But it just didn't captivate me and hold on to me the way Breaking the Waves and Dogville did.

3.5 out of 5 stars