On Thursday I went to see the Sweedish version of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” As the owner of the theater said in his curtain speech (yes, the Arts Cinema nearby features an old man who does a curtain speech before every show, it’s adorable) the U.S. version will probably take this adult thriller and turn it into a PG-13 mystery romp for boys.
Without spoiling people who haven’t read the novels, I thought it was a good adaptation of the book. They cut a lot of things, but they had to, and I thought most of the cuts made sense. There were several times I was nodding along, filling in what they left out, agreeing with the cuts. My favorite review of the book is to simply tell people that: “Shit goes down.” And the Sweedish version shied away from none of it. I couldn’t get anyone to come with me that hadn’t read the book, but I wonder what their take on it would be. It almost served, to me, as an abridged companion piece to the book. So much of the nuance was lost in the translation to a movie. A lot of the details are what made the book so much fun. (Granted the book is overly detailed at times, down to precise shopping lists, email addresses, etc)
Also, I suppose to relationship between Erika and Mikael was cut for time? And don’t worry – this isn’t a spoiler for anything – they added elements from the second book to the movie, and I’m not entirely sure why. I guess, in the movie there’s so much less on Lisbeth’s internal monologue, so the flash backs sought to provide some of that?
Also I still want to go to Sweeden, who’s with me?
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