Every year I go on holiday with my parents, the resorts we stay at have a selection of the same kind of people. By the pool, of course, they read, and they all read the same things - my parents included. There's the same few editions of airport bought FHM magazines, copies of She and Elle and things, and always several of the same paperback novel that can be found on Waterstones chart shelf a few weeks before. This year, it was Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Done with my novels and short story complimations (oh my god. Noctures by Kazuo Ishiguro. let's get on to that later), I had nothing to read on the journey home. On the 5 hour flight, I couldn't sleep and read most of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The first novel of the Millenium trilogy is pretty brilliant. It is violence, mystery, sex, Sweden, feminism, love. It's also a 'who-dunnit' novel, which for once I did work out part of the answer to, but there's a second huge twist at the end. One of the main things I loved about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that characters came alive in my mind, particularly Lisbeth Salander who I've talked about here before, and Mikael Blomkvist.
Last night, I watched the movie.
I wasn't expecting to love it and for it to be perfect, because that's never happened to me with a book's adaptation (Push/Precious is an exception). But there was a lot that annoyed me about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
I watched the movie with my mother, and it was avaliable in Swedish with subtitles or English and dubbed , which we argued over and ended up watching dubbed - she won.
Lisbeth was good, but the first thing I said was, "Mikael Blomkvist is all wrong". I'm not that sure how I pictured him in my head whilst I was reading the novel - I didn't have an idea for a while until I read a magazine that said George Clooney was considered for the part in the US movie adaptation, which suddenly seemed to fit. Not only did the slightly dead-eyed actor look nothing like I imagined Blomkvist, but the script failed to convey his personality, which despite being a hard-ass professional fianancial journalist/detective/crime fighter there was fun in. One of the things that was imporant to Blomkvist and Salander's relationship, and made Mikael a little more likeable, was the Elvis music mentioned, and the present Lisbeth buys for him at the end, which I think would have translated well to the screen.
Not only was Mikael's affair with Erika Berger, a huge plotpoint throughout all three books, pretty much unexplained and ignored, but Erika looked all wrong. In the version I'm casting in my head, she'd be played by Jaime Murray or perhaps Sarah Parish, and definitely would not be blonde or look like my exchange partner's mother. I started out not liking Erika but by the end of the second book, although small she was firmly in the place of my favourite character.
There were a few other issues. Martin Vanger wasn't slimy CEO-ish enough, he was old and fat and suspicious. Harriet shouldn't have been blonde. Miriam Wu, though we only saw her a second, was just right, though.
Aside from all that, most of the movie was spot on. The scenery - Hedeby Island and Stockholm were how I imagined, but not the Millenium offices.
I liked ranting about the movie here. More later on.
Lizzie
No comments:
Post a Comment