Perhaps my contrarian tendencies are
fulminating again: whereas for many commentators this second instalment in the
initial native-made adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” marked a
point similar to Eclipse, the second Twilight movie, as a point of specific
disconnection between casual viewers and fans (similarities between the two
franchises there end…mostly), I must confess I enjoyed it far more than the
first, the popular and interesting, but near-fatally confused, 2009’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which
made Larsson’s novels immeasurably more famous and has now earned itself a big
fat Hollywood remake. …Played With Fire
lacks the fascinating motif which rescued the original from being overripe
trash: hero Mikael Blomkvist falling under the spell of a dichotomous contrast,
between the haunting, long-lost ‘60s blonde, constantly gazed at in longing and
mystery through photos and films, and her lethal, damaged, vengeful spiritual
descendant, Lisbeth Salander. But in its place is a story that dovetails the
themes Larsson was trying to dramatise with far more integral effect, the
acting is better focused, and director Daniel Alfredson’s (brother to the
currently more famous Tomas) handling is tighter. This episode is beset by
rotten edits, but avoids expositional and camera gimmicks, and Alfredson
maintains, for the most part, an unobtrusive approach, and actually proves
superior in drawing out the material’s basis, which, whilst dressed up in
contemporary fashions and techno-geek terms, is nonetheless based squarely in a
deeply carnal sensibility that’s practically medieval, depicting as it does
apotheosis through physical and moral suffering. The film’s many characters,
and Lisbeth in particular, can only truly find actuation in violence, whether
it’s being inflicted or received, in a tale that circles inwards towards a
study in Oedipal rage conflated with a socio-political inflation of the same
rage.
In short, these films are not really
such polar opposites of the Swedish film industry’s classic Ingmar Bergman
template as one might think at first, and this is also their key deviation from
the template of lefty Scandinavian social-realist crime fiction, even if
Larsson and the filmmakers never quite realised it. More ties to the classic Swedish
dramatic tradition of intense portraits of the human experiential crucible are
sustained by the presence of the great Per Oscarsson, in his last role before
his untimely death, star of the canonical 1966 adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, as Lisbeth’s former state
guardian, a compassionate man who’s been left part-paralysed by a stroke and
completely excised from official interest in Lisbeth (as opposed to the
attentive Blomkvist). His presence, and the way it is utilised, elucidates an
interesting idea, that the welfare state is only good for your welfare when
guided by principles and people of decency, and it can be turned into another
apparatus of controlled social narcotisation. …Played With Fire trots in far fewer cornball bestseller cues than
its predecessor, although plenty still slip by, with a new minor hero who’s a
mixed martial arts enthusiast, an arch-villain who’s a former KGB agent, and a
hulking offsider who’s one of the most striking monstrous goons since Jaws in
the ‘70s Bond movies. The series’ basic conceit, of trying to conflate state
and corporate paternalist behaviour with a more intimate, personally violent
version of the same thing, is both calculatedly paranoid and more than a little
reductive, and yet it’s also coherently conceived and executed, at least
insofar as Larsson’s tales offer up characters who constantly, conveniently
illustrate the matters at hand: abusive officials of state, medicine, and law
enforcement whose conspiracies hamper justice and victimise society’s
vulnerable members.
Here, Lisbeth becomes the fall guy for a
neatly composed coup of conspiracy by secretive villains, who try to kill
several birds with one stone. She is set up for the murders of two young,
likeable characters, Dag Svensson (Hans-Christian Thulin) and Mia Bergman
(Jennie Silfverhjelm), who are so young and cute and idealistic when introduced
you just know they’re bound for a sticky end. That pair were working with
Blomkvist’s Millennium Magazine to expose a sexual slavery ring whose
operations had been patronised by many high-ranking officials, and Lisbeth’s
main foil from the first film, Bjurmann (Peter Andersson), the creep of a
state-appointed guardian who raped her and then had the tables turned. The
connection between the two crimes requires following disparate trails of
evidence towards a common source, lurking in Lisbeth’s history. Lisbeth’s
return from her sojourn abroad as a tarted-up multi-millionaire sees her better
tanned and distinctly healthier in affect, but no more soothed and relaxed in
mind. Lisbeth is a distinctive variation on an old kind of hero, one who
practically transcends mortality through her steadfast refusal to be defeated,
a point vividly illustrated in the finale when she literally crawls her way out
of a premature grave.
Noomi Rapace’s performance is better
judged this time around, clearly illustrating the disparity between Lisbeth in
motion and in rest, a creature of brilliant instinct who knows exactly what to
do when facing down hulking thugs and evading law enforcement, but for whom the
everyday world and everyday emotions are faintly perplexing, even upsetting, in
their lack of scale and clarity. Her sometime lover and helpmate Blomkvist
spends most of the film unfortunately stuck in a holding pattern of fending off
the police and trying to grasp onto the elusive Lisbeth’s furiously flittering
coattails long enough to aid her. But at least this time around Blomkvist’s day
job is more important to the plot, which also far more fluently combines
Lisbeth’s traumas and motivations with the compulsory abused females subplot,
here being the victims of the sex slave ring which finally proves to be being
orchestrated by Lisbeth’s scarred Russian thug father Zalachenko (Georgi
Staykov), and her hulking half-brother, Ronald Niedermann (Mikael Spreitz), who
provides the muscle. Meanwhile Blomkvist contacts Lisbeth’s kickboxing
instructor Paolo Roberto (Swedish martial arts celebrity and occasional film
actor Roberto playing himself, sort-of), asking him to help make contact with Lisbeth’s
French sometime-girlfriend Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi) who’s prone to showing off
members of the police force and journalists with extreme prejudice. In an
amusingly violent set-piece, Niedermann kidnaps Miriam, and is chased down by
Roberto, whose practised pummelling of the nerve-addled beast works no effect,
and Roberto gets solidly beaten up instead.
The
Girl Who Played With Fire
bears traces of some apparent influences on Larsson, in particular Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004), reproducing that tale's pattern of an
inevitable, inward circling drawing Lisbeth into a confrontation with a
corrupt father figure/abuser, and a burial alive that she improbably escapes.
This second entry is certainly not faultless: there are some woefully long bows
drawn in the story, it’s slow, and, like its predecessor, the visual lexicon is
however not that of the cinema but television. I’m not sure if some fine
exemplars of clunky dialogue, like Blomkvist’s defensive salvo at the Jewish
cop Bublanski (Johan Kylén) heading the investigation targeting Lisbeth, “She
hates men who hate women,” are a by-product of clumsy translation or were bad
originally. The episode tosses in another of the series’ signature moments
where Lisbeth, this time entirely transforming herself into a wraith of
vengeance with a pancake-slathered face with one blood-red smear for extra
cabalistic effect, ties up and tortures a manwhose thoughtless exploitation of
women supposedly justifies Lisbeth getting her own rocks off with such
behaviour, which served to not make me cheer, as is intended, but instead made
me realise how narrow and contrived the series’ moral schema is. The fact that
Lisbeth may be a version of what she hates isn’t an idea this series’ basic
revenge fantasy exploitation is interested or capable of exploring.
What it does explore, however, and
explores well, is that combination of fascination and revulsion towards
physical violence and sexuality, and how strangely fluid the two can be.
Alfredson’s calmer, meatier direction helps draw this out. Towards the start of
…Played With Fire there’s a
strikingly carnal, bracingly tender interlude between Lisbeth and Miriam, and
unlike in the first film, Lisbeth’s bisexuality isn’t just a throwaway gag but
a part of her complex identity, and Rapace gets to show at several junctures
throughout the film, including here, an edge of befuddled vulnerability to
Lisbeth, rather than simple, alien fanaticism. One seemingly off-hand scene
carries enormous weight, in which Lisbeth decides to grant Blomkvist access to
her apartment via remote control, a metaphorical access into her life she’s
never allowed anyone. The film pulls off one nice moment of ironic brutality,
as Lisbeth bests two seamy bikers employed by Niedermann, and is next glimpsed
riding down the highway, having appropriated one defeated foe’s bike and
apparel, in her element as a highway-cruising bad-ass and wearing her enemies’
apparel like a Greek warrior. It’s a brief interlude of liberation for Lisbeth,
in between flashback nightmares and her final passion and resurrection where
she actively conflates Christ-like parallels with Viking myth. As storytelling,
the Millennium series is barely
choate and often clumsy; as neo-mythology, it’s something much more
interesting.
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