Movie Rant: Men Who Hate Women (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)

Putting out fire with gasoline

It is the kind of taking-the-law-into-one’s-own-hands towards men who hate women – or: revenge if you will – that the film relegates to Lisbeth Salander’s showdown with serial killer Martin Vanger. He dies in a burning car wreck, and Salander does not come to his aid, although she conceivably could. She just stands there and looks at him, waiting.

At the same time we see a flashback to the most pivotal scene in The Girl Who Played With Fire, where Lisbeth as a 12-year old girl sets fire to her father by pouring gasoline in his face and throwing a match. She does it because he has been beating and raping her mother for years and now Lisbeth wants to … what? Revenge? To protect her mother? Both?

It’s an ambiguous scene and it never appeared in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But it is quite clever to have it in the movie adaptation of the first book, because it is an obvious and powerful way to visually shows us just what kind of person Lisbeth Salander actually is inside: A soul in flames, burning with anger after all the abuse she and her mother has been subjected to.

So the film creates a nifty symbolic link between Martin Vanger’s death in the burning car, Lisbeth’s refusal to help him, and the flashback in which Lisbeth burns her father. However, as the film stands it mostly comes of as a link between two men who hate women and Lisbeth as an avenger. The thematic link between misogyny and capitalism and business corruption is very faint. And I’m not sure it couldn’t have been done more strongly, even given the limitations of the film medium.

After all, the film could just as well have been about a rapist of women – Martin Vanger – who happened to live in a small poor village and who happened to develop into a serial killer as well. There is no particular reason for him to be a member of a socially dysfunctional elite business family.

Chris

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Go to rant about The Girl Who Played With Fire …

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What did you think about the first movie?

Yes, the Nest needs your buzz. Do you agree with Chris about the first movie? What did you like – or dislike about it? Are you also in love with Noomi Rapace? Drop a comment below. (But beware: All comments are moderated.)