David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel premiered at Odeon Leicester Square in London on December 12, 2011, and Sony Pictures Releasing put it in American theaters on December 21. It grossed $233 million against a $90 million production budget. The National Board of Review chose it as one of the top ten films of 2011.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
A Libel Suit and a Cottage on Hedeby
The plot starts with a career in ruins. Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig, is a journalist recovering from the legal and professional fallout of a libel suit brought against him by businessman Hans-Erik Wennerström. Craig’s Blomkvist co-owns the Swedish magazine Millennium and has a reputation for going too far in pursuit of government corruption.
Then Christopher Plummer’s Henrik Vanger makes an offer. The retired CEO of Vanger Industries will hand Blomkvist evidence against Wennerström if Blomkvist investigates the disappearance and presumed murder of Henrik’s grandniece Harriet, who vanished 40 years earlier at 16.
Blomkvist moves into a cottage on the Vanger family’s island estate and starts working the case. Henrik had always received a framed pressed flower from Harriet on his birthday, and he has kept receiving them every year since she disappeared. He believes her killer is taunting him.
Rooney Mara and the Guardian
Lisbeth Salander is the reason to watch. Rooney Mara plays an asocial investigator and hacker who has survived severe emotional and sexual abuse since childhood, and who is antagonized by her state-appointed guardian, Nils Bjurman, played by Yorick van Wageningen.
Bjurman controls her finances and extorts sexual favors by threatening to have her institutionalized. In one meeting he chains her to his bed and brutally rapes her, unaware that she is recording him. At their next meeting she tasers him, binds him, rapes him with a steel dildo, and tattoos a message across his chest. She uses the recording to blackmail him into giving her financial independence and cutting contact.
Fincher treats the revenge as procedure: methodical, unblinking, finished.
Bible Verses and Dead Women
Blomkvist interviews the Vanger relatives living on the island, many of whom were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers during World War II. He finds a list of names and numbers and works out they are Bible verse references. He recruits Salander as his research assistant.
She finds the connection that turns the movie: the list links to a number of young women brutally murdered from 1947 to 1967 across Sweden, which suggests a serial killer. Many of the victims had given names. The investigation into a missing girl and the murders pull together.
Casting a Franchise Under Duress
Sony Pictures began development in 2009, and it took the company a few months to obtain the adaptation rights while recruiting Zaillian and Fincher. The script took over six months to write, including three months of analyzing the novel.
Casting the leads was intense. Craig competed with George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and Brad Pitt for Blomkvist. Schedule conflicts with Cowboys & Aliens and Skyfall prompted him to postpone the process. Given the uncertainty around Skyfall following Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s bankruptcy, Sony Pictures Entertainment and DreamWorks worked out a schedule and Craig took the part.
Craig gained weight and adopted a neutral accent to befit Stockholm’s worldly cultural fabric. He had read the book during its initial craze. “It’s one of those books you just don’t put down,” he said. “There’s just this immediate feeling that bad things are going to happen.”
Fincher called Salander’s eccentric persona enthralling. “There’s a kind of wish fulfillment to her in the way that she takes care of things, the way she will only put up with so much, but there are other sides to her as well,” he said.
Plummer wanted irony in Henrik that he found missing from the novel. He called the Vanger family dysfunctional. “I love the character of the old man, and I sympathize with him,” he said. “He’s really the nicest old guy in the whole book. Everybody is a bit suspect, and still are at the end.” Julian Sands plays a young Henrik.
The Cast Around the Leads
Stellan Skarsgård plays Martin Vanger, Robin Wright plays Erika Berger, Steven Berkoff plays Dirch Frode, Joely Richardson plays Anita Vanger, Geraldine James plays Cecilia Vanger, Goran Višnjić plays Dragan Armansky, Donald Sumpter plays Detective Inspector Gustaf Morell, and Ulf Friberg plays Hans-Erik Wennerström.
The film was a candidate for numerous awards, winning, among others, the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Film Editing, according to the source.
What the Material Gives the Film
The Wennerström thread opens the film and gives Blomkvist a reason to take Henrik’s offer. The corruption the two uncover turns out to be immense beyond anything they imagined.
The film carries a tagline: “What is hidden in snow, comes forth in the thaw.”
The Numbers
- Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
- Director: David Fincher
- Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
- Based on: the 2005 novel by Stieg Larsson
- Runtime: 158 minutes
- Budget: $90 million
- Gross: $233 million
- Premiere: December 12, 2011, Odeon Leicester Square, London
- US release: December 21, 2011
- Score: 71/100 (Metacritic)
The cast list is the film’s clearest argument for itself:
- Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist
- Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander
- Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vanger
- Stellan Skarsgård as Martin Vanger
- Robin Wright as Erika Berger
Craig and Mara drew the praise, along with Fincher’s direction, the score, and the film’s tone and visuals. That is what the record shows, and it is enough to say so.
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