“Side Effects” (2013) and Steven’s last stand

According to Steven Soderbergh, Side Effects will be his last film — for a while, at least. “The tyranny of narrative is starting to frustrate me,” he explained to New York Magazine not long ago about his decision to do other forms of art. “Or at least narrative as we’re currently defining it. I’m convinced there’s a new grammar out there somewhere.”

I want to celebrate that decision. Just because Soderbergh’s so good at his craft doesn’t mean the work is necessarily enjoyable to him year after year. Anyone who’s read the Harry Hole novels by Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø can see that you can be eminently skilled at something and yet find that your job is slowly killing you. And so, upon seeing this last Soderbergh film and wrangling for the last 24 hours with its ending … well, I think I’m okay with his taking a break. 

After seeing the film with superior friend and excellent human being Aldine, we sidled up to a bar to debrief. (The timing of our debriefing was important, as we planned to follow up by stuffing ourselves so full of Ethiopian food as to be incapable of higher thought). The bartender asked if the film was good. What does one say to those questions?

Here’s a provisional answer: there’s a sweet spot in the film, during its second quarter or so, when you have no idea where the story is going. It keeps tipping out of your reach, tempting you with possibilities and then feinting in new directions. Is this going to be a story about a Lazy Psychologist? about the Bad Pharmaceutical Industry? about the Guilt And Responsibility? about the Subconscious Gone Wrong? When I say sweet spot, I mean that I stepped out of myself for the moment and wondered if this was going to be the best thriller ever.

I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? you see, this is how the tyranny of narrative works; I started telling you about Soderbergh’s last film, and then started telling you about the bartender who wanted to know whether it was good — and all because that’s how it followed in my life (except for the intervening 24 hours, in which Aldine and I had a successful trip to Nieman Marcus and drank more cocktails). I should at least offer up a squib of the film’s plot. A proper film comment always lays out the plot.

How’s this: Emily (Rooney Mara, looking not at all like a girl with a dragon tattoo) brings her husband home from prison after a term for insider trading, but all the while she’s slipping into a terrible depression, a “hopelessness,” she calls it. Not that anyone would doubt it, with her big eyes and little-girl teeth and pale, pale skin. In one particularly grim moment, she gets into her car and drive straight into a brick wall. In another even better moment, she accompanies her husband to an uncomfortable cocktail party on a yacht with some of his former colleagues, only to see herself distorted in a mirror and lose it.

The psychologist who takes her case, Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), earnestly seeks out appropriate pharmaceutical help by ticking through a list of anti-depressants, many of which she has taken and rejected in the past for their debilitating side effects; he even consults with her prior psychiatrist Victoria (Catherine Zeta-Jones, doing an exaggerated version of “I am a professional”). Eventually they settle on a new one called Ablixa (oh, lordy, how I love that minor plot point alone).

Ablixa’s awesome. Emily gets her sex drive back, enjoys happy days in the park with her husband, and ceases feeling nauseated. The only side effect is an alarming tendency to sleepwalk. And thus the film hustles us toward that perfect sweet spot of the second 30 minutes or so, as it establishes a dark undertone to the narrative, gives us a horrifying scene of violence, and proceeds to pull us in different directions as the director inspires you with the pleasure of trying to guess where it’s going.

Now, I’ll tell you what I told the bartender: yes, it’s good. You always know when you walk in to a Soderbergh film that you’re going to be interested, that the cinematography will be unusually evocative, and that he’ll offer up some surprises.

But what I found so odd about Side Effects — and so disappointing — were the specific ways the film ultimately commits to a storyline, and the film’s overall determination to be as crystal clear as possible. And as that narrative emerges in all its clarity, you can’t help but feel disappointed. Not least because it trots out some old chestnuts (I won’t reveal them here, but honestly, Steven?); but most of all because you feel as if Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns, decided the whole story needed to be over-explained and wrapped up in an excessively tidy box with a bow, as if it was no longer a thriller about the unknowns of real life but in fact a repackaged Ocean’s Eleven in which we have clear good and bad guys.

Now, I get it about the tyranny of narrative. Even in the academic business we create narratives, so often adhering to one genre or another. But what I don’t understand is why someone in Soderbergh’s position would feel so tied to tidy, wrap-it-all-up tales given the vast storytelling creativity out there (to wit, this year’s The Master). I consider Soderbergh to be one of the most creatively free directors out there. Why doesn’t he experiment with alternative endings?

I’m complaining, and yet what he does with that early portion of the film — he toys with us in a way that’s so enjoyable to watch that I’m already looking forward to his return to directing.

One more note: during our drunken debriefing Aldine wanted to know my favorite Soderbergh films, but my phone’s battery had died and we couldn’t remember all of our favorites without internet assistance. So here’s a short list of mine, in rough order:

• Out of Sight (1998) — totally my favorite Soderbergh ever.
• Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
• Erin Brockovich (2000)
• The Informant! (2009)
• The Limey (1999)
• Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Looking forward to seeing you back sometime soon, Steven, once you’ve got your groove back.

“Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2011): A pre-holiday chat about a non-holiday thriller

There are two kinds of movies in the theaters right now: the highbrow ones seeking out Oscar nods, and the heartwarming Christmas ones.

Then there’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In one early scene, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) greets Mikael (Daniel Craig) while wearing a t-shirt that says, FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK.

So with that in mind, perhaps you won’t be surprised that I ♡ GWTDT. The real question is, how did our friend JustMeMike feel about it?

JMM: Like you, I find Lisbeth compelling. At the same time, I’m a bit scared of her. She is fierce, as was Noomi in the same role. That comes from knowing what she’s capable of. But while Lisbeth has that don’t fuck with me attitude, much of the time, she appears to be drawing herself back in, like a turtle might do.

Didion,  I knew you be all over this one, which was probably why we agreed to do a joint review/discussion on this film all the way back in September, knowing it would be released just before Christmas.

To set some background, let’s briefly discuss how we independently came to the Stieg Larsson books and films.

I kind of fell into them by accident. In early November of 2010, I somehow lost the book I was reading in Riomaggiore — in Italy’s Cinque Terre area. The next day, back in Milan, I went to the American Bookstore to buy another copy of Nelson DeMille’s The Lion. Only they didn’t have it. The lady who ran the shop asked if I had read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I hadn’t, so I took her advice. Within the following six weeks , I’d read all three books, and have since seen all three of the Swedish language films made from the books about seven times. So I was very eager to see this brand new version directed by David Fincher. How about you?

Didion: I’d never even heard of them when one of my best friends sent me a copy back during maybe February of 2009 — she’d read it while in Europe, long before it was released in the US, and knew that we shared a penchant for Scandinavian crime stuff. We now share an unholy love of Lisbeth Salander, one of the most unexpected and great heroines of recent history.

JMM: Back to the present. I saw the 7:00 show on Tuesday night. This was the opening night in Sarasota. The theater was about 90% filled. When did you see it and how was the crowd?

Didion: Just the opposite! We raced to the theater on Wednesday the 21st for the 7:30pm show, and when we walked into the theater 15 minutes early there was one guy — ONE! — who’d beaten us. By the time the film started there were maybe 12 or 15 people in a theater that probably holds 300. (Let me say: this was a very happy 12 people.)

JMM: My brother even sent me a survey a few days ago that stated that 75% of the women that were asked said they weren’t eager to see the film. Well then, there are reasons for that which we might explore later. Let’s look at a few headline reactions from some well known or outspoken critics before we get into the particulars. Roger Ebert wrote, “Hey girl, that’s a cool dragon tattoo”. A.O. Scott wrote for the New York Times, “Tattooed Heroine Metes Out Slick, Punitive Violence”. Kenneth Turan for the LA Times wrote, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is too frigid.” One more — Kyle Smith for the New York Post called the film, “Rubbish”. So Didion, do you have a headline in mind?

Didion: How about, The Perfect, Laconic, Tattooed Heroine For Our Sins. First reactions: Rooney Mara was terrific and made this part her own; David Fincher teaches all filmmakers a lesson here in how to translate a sprawling book for the screen; and the scenery was spectacular. I’ve got some quibbles, but on the whole I was entranced. I don’t know what Smith & Turan are talking about.

I’m the worst of all possible viewers: I know the books really well; I loved the first Swedish film; I thought Noomi Rapace was amazing in the role. Mara and Fincher were really going to have to knock my socks off to please me. (My socks: knocked off.) Now I’m thinking that the Swedish film will pale in comparison when I see it again.

How about you? First reactions?

JustMeMike: Worst possible viewer? I would think just the opposite about you. Your experience would be an asset. At least that’s how I read Fincher’s intentions. My first reaction or headline? Loved It But Not More Than the Original.

Didion: Walking in, the first thing I wanted to know was whether I’d like Mara as Lisbeth, having loved Noomi Rapace in the role so much. Rapace’s black eyes did a lot of great work for her — she was so clearly angry. Mara has a little-girl face with big bluish/grey eyes, which made me fret Fincher would turn her into Little Girl Lost. But actually she truer to the Lisbeth of the books: a kind of emotionless, blank expression, which reads to some people as if she’s autistic. And she’s also capable of incredibly vicious, economical violence when necessary.So I thought Mara was fabulous. What did you think of Daniel Craig as Mikael?

JMM: In the featurette about the film, Fincher called the Blomkvist character middle aged. I thought that Craig did not appear as middle-aged as did the Swedish actor, Michael Nyqvist. But that wasn’t a negative. Craig seemed less vulnerable than Nyqvist. He was slimmer, and seemed tougher physically even though he didn’t play the role that way.

Didion: …and Craig took his shirt off far too often?

JMM: Well then, far too often? Not really. He did have the body for it.

Didion: I kept thinking of a silly line from the film Galaxy Quest in which one of the side characters says dryly to the Capt. Kirk-type lead, “I see you got your shirt off.”

I’m with you on Craig as a far more glamorous Mikael. Which I didn’t mind eye-candy-wise but I don’t know about his acting choices in certain spots, either. I liked Nyqvist in the role much better.

JMM: Bingo! My take is that between Craig and Fincher — they decided to make Mara’s Lisbeth the star. In fact Fincher stated that while Lisbeth begins as a secondary character, she quickly rushes to the forefront of the movie even though Craig’s character is the lead actor (story-wise).

Didion: Okay, can I burble for a moment? There are a couple of things I thought were done really well and which need to be highlighted. Spoilers ahoy! If you don’t want to know about plot details, get your butt off NOW.

First, the rape scene. And lordy, how I hate a rape scene. I have a whole series of rants about how they should be eliminated from film altogether — the gratuitousness of the violence, the vision of a helpless woman…don’t even get me started.

JMM: Sorry — you started this one yourself, but go for it —

Didion: So how does a director do this one, which is absolutely necessary to the story? The scene in the Swedish version was hard to watch, not less for Lisbeth’s painful walk home after being victimized.

I thought this one was handled really well — considering. (Maybe I was dreading it, so it didn’t seem as bad once I saw it?) It shows Lisbeth writhing around on the bed and doesn’t underplay the violence in the least. But it also doesn’t feel as gratuitously detailed and humiliating as the Swedish original, or the rape/violence in some other films like Monster or Boys Don’t Cry. So kudos to Fincher for including it in a way that moves the story along to Lisbeth’s quick and utterly satisfying revenge (ahhh, a good revenge scene).

And second (quickly): this film did a fabulous job of highlighting what was so great in the book — a crazy fascinating mystery. The story is always front & center in this film.
JMM: Well, as for the rape scene — Fincher gave us a built in break — which allowed us to prepare ourselves. For those unfamiliar with the story it was key — and for those of us who knew what was coming it was still an excellent decision. After Bjurman slaps the first handcuff on, Fincher backs the camera out of the room, even has the door closed. So we don’t see the real violence needed to get her on the bed and completely shackled. I thought that was a marvelous choice.

Didion: And another thing: this film did a fabulous job of telling a feminist tale. It’s a story about how she saves him. And that’s after she saves herself after being raped. The ending is all about Lisbeth racing off to rescue Mikael, who’s been chained up by the bad guy.

I could probably count on one hand the number of movies where the girl saves the guy (in most of them, she doesn’t even help). So hooray for GWTDT.

My quibble: the film undermines that a bit at the very end by having Lisbeth appear to get jealous of Mikael’s relationship with his editor (Robin Wright). Which is an odd time to put that in, and different enough from the book that I bristled a bit.
JMM: Hold on a bit — you lost me. You referenced how “she saves herself after being raped”. Not right after — it took a while for the revenge scene to come. But as for the girl saving the guy — you’re right on that score. But I’ve a small quibble about how that was set up.

I believe in the original, Lisbeth didn’t set up the spy-cams until after Mikael was shot — when they realized how dangerous this really was. In Fincher’s version — she had the spy-cams already set up when he stumbles back in after nearly being killed.

As for Lisbeth’s jealously at the end — this is a matter of interpretation, no? I read it differently. I thought that Lisbeth saw them and thought he’s moved on, so I guess I have to as well. So she tossed the leather jacket she’d bought into the trash, and rode off. Question is this a clue that makes one think there will be a sequel?

Didion: I wondered that too. I haven’t heard anything either way (and IMDB doesn’t list them on Fincher’s page). If I were Fincher, I don’t think I’d want to commit to the whole series, especially since Lisbeth kind of becomes more unknowable by the 3rd.

But here’s another gushing bit of praise: Christopher Plummer. This is the second great role I’ve seen him in this year (last summer’s Beginners). As the head of the nightmarish Vanger clan and the one who hires Mikael to figure out the mystery, he’s both funny and ominous about the details of the family history. It wasn’t necessarily a big role for him, but I thought he nailed it. Actually, considering how few Swedish actors they used — Stellan Skårsgard was the only major one — everyone, including Robin Wright, looked satisfyingly Swedish to my American eyes.

JMM: Okay — let me catch my breath for a second and gather my thoughts …. okay — First I agree that Fincher, Craig and Mara would be wrong to do sequels. Even though I’d love to see them again. But I’ll let go of that.

Second Plummer — I can still hear that line inside my head — “You’ll be investigating thieves, misers, bullies. The most detestable collection of people you will ever meet — my family.” Yeah Plummer was marvelous. Nailing the role as you say — and a complete departure from the original. The Swedish Vanger seemed meeker, frailer, and less dynamic.

Third the non-Swedish cast? Once the decision is made to do the American version, then the necessity of more Swedes in no longer in play. They’re going to be speaking English, so anyone is in play.

Okay, I toss one to you — Lisbeth seems to pick up the girl in the bar — She sits there, sending out a visual “I’m interested”. and moments later she has her hand between the girl’s legs. Did this surprise you — did you see her as the sexual aggressor?

Didion: Actually, that completely worked for me. It’s a bit of a fantasy, I think, that a woman might recover from being brutally raped that she’d engage in sex so quickly (and with a man, later, when she seduces Mikael). But that’s a fantasy that belongs to Steig Larsson, the book’s author.

Larsson wanted a heroine who was absolutely iconoclastic. She heads to that gay bar because she likes sex and wants to enjoy herself. It’s a nice scene in which she takes back her own sexuality and has sex how and with whomever she pleases. Again, just because most women would be traumatized after what Lisbeth has been through doesn’t mean that this scene didn’t work; for me it seemed yet another instance of Lisbeth taking control of her life, not letting other people rule her.

JMM: Lisbeth didn’t seduce Mikael. It was more like she jumped on him. He crawls into bed, unaware that she’s taking off her clothing, and to me, he was genuinely surprised. I also didn’t think it was a gay bar. But I agree that she was taking control, if not of her sexuality, than  certainly of her emotional state.

Didion: Fair enough!

You mentioned above that you thought it wasn’t better than the Swedish version — and on that we disagree. I thought this one had a more disappointing Mikael, and told a better tale. I also liked it that this one showed more of Lisbeth’s dogged pursuit of Wennerström’s money at the very end. Why didn’t you think this one trumped the earlier version?

JMM: First of all, they solved the case too easily. Did Mikael figure the Old Testament angle in the book or in the first one? I didn’t like that he moved right ahead – after his daughter gave him the clue when she said — the bible references as she was boarding the train.

Didion: In the book it was Mikael’s religious daughter who solves the bible verse question; in the first film it was Lisbeth. A quick note: I don’t know my bible very well, but this aspect of the story never seemed persuasive to me. Does anyone refer to bible verses in telephone-number format? But that’s a side issue.

JMM: Okay — And I disagree about Lisbeth’s ‘dogged’ pursuit of Wennerström. She said she’d already dug into him, and when she asked Mikael for the money, she already knew everything. What was left was the execution of stealing the money – not the pursuit of finding it.

As for the actual references — it was a short hand — she left out the book, the chapter, the verse.

But back to why I didn’t think the new version trumped the old one. The ending — I kind of liked that he had to go to Oz (Australia) to find Harriet in the old one. This new ending was a nice twist — but maybe it was a cost saving twist, as well as a completely new ending.

Didion: I liked that twist too. And goddamn, if Joely Richardson as the London financier/Vanger relative wasn’t amazing. It’s fabulous that she’s such a ringer for her gorgeous mother, Vanessa Redgrave; but here she uses a slight twitch in her eye to convey that big emotions are passing through as she hears news of the family. Amazing. And I was fooled — that’ll teach me for being such a Larsson completist.

If I were going to quibble, I’d point out that there’s something a little too easy about the idea that Harriet assumed her cousin’s identity. But whatever.

Here’s a more valid quibble (but it matters to me, anyway): the chess scene! Early on Lisbeth is bringing a copy of Bobby Fischer’s book on chess to her former guardian, indicating that she knows from chess. But at the very end when they play a game, their first moves — to shift the rook pawns (at the edges of the board) into play — are the dumbest of all possible first moves. Was there no one on that set who’d ever played chess??

JMM: I missed the eye twitch. Very good on your part to have noticed. The whole guardian gambit was a bit confusing. When she visited him I wasn’t sure who he was. In the original Lisbeth got a call announcing that he had a stroke, and was being replaced – did she get this call in the Fincher version?

Agree on the chess — but if we consider that (Palmgren) made the first move, and he had the stroke, maybe it was rationalized that way….

Didion: That raises a really good question: is this film, as well as the Swedish version, written and produced for fans of the books? I may be so inside the box that I can’t rightly tell.

It seems to me that Fincher was in a tight spot. I mean, look at the film versions of popular books with millions of crazed fans — shall we call this Harry Potter syndrome? or, at the risk of alienating many of my own readers, Pride and Prejudice syndrome? — directors are left trying to figure out how much of the original plot elements and/or dialogue to include.

Fincher had to explain how Lisbeth ended up with that appalling Bjurman as her guardian without distracting us from the real story, which was the mystery inside the mystery. So, JMM, do you think this film is intended for fans of the books, or is it also just a great stand-alone film?

JMM: I think you are asking a series of questions. The motive for making the film. That’s easy — the producer Scott Rudin could easily see that book sales (65 million copies) far exceeded the amount of money that the Swedish film and sequels took in. That could mean but one thing — many more people would see the film if they didn’t have to bother with subtitles.

Didion: Here’s my own opinion: Fincher is a total top-shelf director who gets to choose his projects. And although he’s best-known for his films that deal with manliness on interesting levels — Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — he’s also regularly done film projects about some awesome kick-ass women (Panic Room, Alien III).

I wouldn’t be surprised if he read the book and/or saw the Swedish version and said to himself, “I love this Lisbeth Salander. I can turn this into a phenomenal film.” That is, I doubt mere ticket sales entered into his thinking, because he doesn’t need to care a whole lot about that, especially after the crazy success of The Social Network — and I’ll bet he just started to imagine how to make a great film with a great heroine that tells a great story.
JMM: Okay, I have to back off then because I don’t really know who first got the idea. But back to your other thoughts. Bjurman being added was a decision made by the authorities in Sweden. If we think about that — Lisbeth would get whoever was assigned. She’s have no part in that decision. It was her bad luck to get one of those Men Who Hated Women.

Finally — the third part of your question — Yes the film does work as a stand alone. It isn’t necessary to know the story or to have seen the originals to enjoy this one. Although knowing the story certainly helps you. Didion, have a look at this image — and tell me what you think when you see it —

Didion: I’m struck by how giant Craig appears next to the teeny Mara, and how trepidatious they both appear. And I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t quite remember when this scene took place in the film. What do you think this scene conveys?

JMM: I don’t recall the when either. But I think it is clearly before they had sex. But maybe not. But I just like the look of it. Mara seems a bit more closed in than Craig does in the shot. But maybe it was just a scene in the transitional sense. And only that.

Didion: Okay, I’ve got a scene for you:
Mikael has been shot at, and there’s a lot of blood coming out of that head wound — especially because he’s been running away. I loved, lurved this shot, and it makes so much sense that it immediately precedes the sex between them. In any other film this would have been a tender moment of clarifying their gender roles: brave, injured man allows gentle, care-giving woman to care for and heal him. But this one is vintage Lisbeth: she takes a reel of dental floss, “sterilizes” it with some vodka, jams the bottle into Mikael’s hands, and starts stitching him together in the most efficient, unsentimental and brutal way imaginable. No bedside manner whatsoever. Loved it — because it jars your memory of all those other fixing-wounded-men scenes, and imprints Lisbeth on you in the most vivid way.

JMM: Wow. I loved that scene too. The physicality sets us up for the sex that followed (even though Blomqvist was still surprised). When you mentioned other films about a female care-giver, I immediately dredged up Lara from Dr. Zhivago in her war nurse time. But you‘re right about it establishing and clarifying Lisbeth. To me it WAS standard Lisbeth. Full throttle — no concern about to how to do it — only that is was necessary and needed to be done asap.

Didion: Actually, your thoughts there make me think about the sex in a slightly different way, and you’ve reminded me that when she unceremoniously jumped him, he’d been in the middle of fretting about the case, their safety, his own pain. I remember thinking, as she climbed on top, “Well, that will get his mind off the pain.”

That is, I don’t think she jumped him as a Lisbeth version of caregiving — I really do think she just wanted some sex (after all, stitching him together may have been the first human contact she’d had since much earlier with the hot woman from the bar), but it was also helpful to get Mikael to shut up already about the pain/the case/their safety.

JMM:  Well we won’t have an answer to the why — shutting him up, easing his pain, or just that she needed the sex. All or any worked and fit.

Taking us back away from sex for the moment — I liked both Stellen Skårsgard and Steven Berkoff as Frode. I considered both a vast improvement over their predecessors in the original.  What about you about Berkoff as you’ve already mentioned Skårsgard…

Didion: Oh yeah — he was fabulous. I especially liked it that as the Vanger family lawyer he appeared somewhat inscrutable, even suspicious at times. He really helped to add to the general atmosphere of the film as full of memorable faces and shadowy motives. Really, the entire supporting cast was amazing.

I’ve always loved Fincher’s films for their use of lighting and atmosphere. One of the other reviewers you quoted above complained that the film was overly cold; but I loved the sets (that Vanger family compound-qua-island was just perfection) and the fact that so much of the film takes place in winter, with snow falling. (There’s even a lovely scene in which Lisbeth says, “It’s Christmas again,” and you think to yourself, wow, that’s the weirdest Christmas moment in film history.) And let me say how much I liked it that the scenes from 1966, when Harriet Vanger disappears, scenes during which Fincher uses a washed-out Kodachrome-style color that looks old but cutesy or fake. The original Harriet was also a perfect casting decision.
JMM: The supporting cast was indeed terrific. Even Armansky was an upgrade.

Didion: Yes! Good for Goran Visnjic, who also made a great move from Beginners to GWTDT! He looks excellent in grey hair, IMHO.

JMM: As for the winter aspect — that’s what makes the story great. This couldn’t have worked on a Caribbean island. As for the flashback to 1966 — this had to done that way — the washed out look seems to takes us back in time. At least it does for me.

But to bring you back to the winter — and this will be a philosophical question about Larsson’s motives — When Skarsgard’s character is discussing (maybe ‘bragging’ about his earlier victims) he uses the term ‘immigrant women’ and says that no one will care for or miss them. And when Mikael is talking with Harald — it is Harald who describes himself as the most honest man in Sweden — is this Larsson taking his countrymen to task  for their not so hidden racial and ethnic philosophies — and is this an off-shoot of having to endure long and severe winters — that the Swedish society had more indoor time on their hands … ??

Didion: I wish I could say for certain — sadly, I know just enough about Swedish cultural politics to make me dangerous. With the hope that Scandinavians will write in to comment and correct me, I’ll say that Swedish crime fiction seems to me fascinatingly obsessed with the theme of how a vision of “traditional” Swedish culture is having to come to grips with a new reality of multiculturalism, immigrants of many colors, and social change. And all of this has dredged up truths about the Swedish past that many people would prefer to keep buried — the the large number of open Nazi sympathizers among the population, etc. Anti-immigrant action and violence has reminded many Swedes of an ugly past they wish would go away. In that respect, I think Larsson’s GWTDT is of a piece with contemporary anxieties.

I’m not convinced this has anything to do with the long winters. And I’m not sure Swedish winters are any harsher than those in Massachusetts or Chicago (many Europeans are appalled by what New Englanders/North-Midwesterners live with). Swedish winters are darker, though, that’s for sure — much closer to the North Pole.

Interesting that this anti-immigrant posture comes up in a European context. I hadn’t considered that perhaps Fincher is also slipping in a warning to Americans about their own anti-immigrant tendencies, and where they lead. This isn’t altogether convincing, but who knows?

JMM: Okay. Maybe this is too far reaching a topic for us to go any further with it. Just thought I’d ask. Back to the film — and we can begin our descent towards closing — What was your favorite scene?

Didion: Whew. This is a tough one, but let me say three things: 1) the scene in which Lisbeth stitches Mikael up, natch. 2) The scene in which she enacts her revenge on Bjurman. Which requires some explanation: it’s a tough scene to watch, but what I liked was how clearly she had planned out every possible way to prevent him from ever, ever touching her again. She laid out the new terms for their relationship in an almost unemotional way and had covered every single possibility for his resisting. I could live without the scene of her tattooing him, but who doesn’t love the idea that such a man is now permanently scarred with details of his own crimes?

And third: I loved the fact that this film was so creepy, so thrilling, so nerve-wracking that I shivered through the entire thing and walked out of the theater in serious need of some yoga. It’s the perfect filmic version of a creepy, thrilling, can’t-put-it-down book.

How ‘bout you? Do you have a favorite scene, or three?

JMM: Of course, I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t. The first is within the revenge scene — when she says, if the terms weren’t met or if she was harmed that the video would be uplifted to the net. Second, when Berger is at the cottage and she heads off to the bedroom, strips down, and asks Mikael if he’s coming to bed, and he gets up and heads in immediately. And Three — I think when Bjurman gets into the elevator and finds he’s locked up in a small space with Lisbeth. He probably figures she’s already got the stun gun in hand, so he can do nothing. It is here that Lisbeth tells him that if she finds him with another woman, she will kill him. That was my single favorite moment.

Didion: Oh! you’re too right about that elevator scene. My favorite part: that he was literally shaking in his boots during it — yet again the scene reversed the typical gender dynamics of such a moment, as it’s usually it’s the raped/traumatized woman who’s got to face her victimizer, which feels yet again like a kind of assault. Loved it.

So if I had to conclude, I’d say again: loved the film, loved Mara’s Lisbeth, loved the story-like-a-house-on-fire, loved the scenery/moodiness, loved the feminism. I’m so-so on Daniel Craig, chesty as he is. I’m not sure I’ll buy the DVD — I rarely do — but I’ll probably watch this film three more times when it comes out on DVD. One final thing: go see it in the theater, because it’s worth seeing all that snowy dark creepiness on a big screen. After seeing with only 12 other fans, I’m concerned it’s not going to hit the box office numbers it needs/deserves.

Any final thoughts?

JMM: I attribute the sparse crowds in your theater to the fact that it just a few days before Christmas. However that doesn’t explain the nearly packed theater that I saw the film in. I expect the numbers to increase post Christmas. But my brother did state that the survey stated that ¾ of the women surveyed were NOT hot to see the film. I’m sure I will buy the DVD.

I will also say that I loved the film too. Whether or not I think it is better than, same as, or less that the original is really a separate. question. My last thought was that the opening imagery was truly creepy – maybe this was a part of the reason you have used the word ‘creepy’ so often.   

Didion: So, JMM, here’s to a film that gets us all off to a very interesting start to the holiday season! Hope yours is full of eggnog and spice cookies and fattening foods, and less inflected with the rape/revenge/Nazism/terror of a Swedish winter with Lisbeth. I, for one, found this film to be a refreshing palate-cleanser for all the saccharine holiday movies and Little Drummer Boy music I’ve been hearing. And now I’m fully prepared for a happy visit with the family.

Feliz Navidad! and enjoy what I hope are easy travels, as this is a terrible time of year for travelling.

JMM: I wish you a happy holiday too. I’m hoping to avoid snow in Northern Connecticut. As for the holiday fattening foods, I probably won’t be able to avoid them. But I’m fairly certain I won’t seen any rapes or Nazis in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The War Horse, or Ghost Protocol.

Didion: That’s the best holiday wish of all: that we both might see some excellent new films. I’ll drink to that. Cheers, and I’ll see you on the flip side.

JMM: See ya! And have a cold one for me.

“The Social Network” (2010): a love story between men

Here’s what I’ll take for granted for the rest of this piece:  this is a tight, fascinating film about a Citizen Kane-type character capable of extraordinary brilliance, caustic wit, and whiplash-inducing revenge.  As anti-heroes go, Jesse Eisenberg’s rendition of Mark Zuckerberg ranks up at the very top with Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley, Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, and Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth II.  You’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard already that the writing is vintage-crisp Aaron Sorkin, the directing is vintage-creepy David Fincher, and (less discussed) the editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall makes it feel like an action movie rather than what might otherwise have been a ponderous, “Rashomon”-like multiple-viewpoint meditation.  It’s great — a really good movie.  But I want to talk about its depictions of manliness and women, which are alternately profound and utterly tossed off.  Guess who gets tossed off?  To cut to the chase:  I think it’s more useful to think about this as a love story between men.

In his interview last week with Aaron Sorkin Stephen Colbert commended him on the opening scene, in which Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) and Erica (Rooney Mara), who is breaking up with him, have a conversation that’s more like a boxing match than a typical film conversation:  they’re two exceptionally sharp and flinty characters, and she can’t stand him anymore.  Yet, as Colbert noted with the kind of forthrightness we wish we’d see elsewhere, “The other ladies in the movie don’t have as much to say because they’re high or drunk or [bleep]ing guys in the bathroom.  Why are there no other women of any substance in the movie?”  In response, Sorkin hawed for a moment, then copped to it:  “The other women are prizes.”

Colbert and Sorkin weren’t joking.  As much as this breakup matters to the story, women in general are utterly objectified by these Harvard men, primarily serving to propel the story forward only when they prove to be crazy, underage, or appearing briefly to utter something true, as Rashida Jones’ character does near the end.  (Sidebar:  I maintain that last is more an example of the Magical Negro trope [as Spike Lee and Dave Chappelle have most brilliantly laid it out]; it’s no accident that Jones’ character is not just sexually unavailable to Zuckerberg but, famously, mixed-race:  her real-life father is Quincy Jones.)  To be clear, none of the objectification of women is criticized by the film; the fact that beautiful women throw themselves in the way of powerful men is portrayed as one of the natural by-products of a man’s arrival to popularity or status.  The way the film treats women of Asian descent is especially abhorrent, using the cheapest stereotypes in the book.  Women are forgettable, throwaway prizes, like a ribbon or a certificate or a trophy-ette one puts on a shelf.  Granted, these are prizes one can [bleep] in the bathroom; the point is, what matters is the competition between men to get those prizes.

And that’s what I love about Fincher’s movies:  as much as he often finesses his female characters, he’s brilliant when it comes to subtly tracing the alternately loving, eerie, homoerotic, or twisted aspects of men’s relationships with one another.  I still think Fincher’s “Fight Club” (1999) remains one of the best analyses of 20th-century manhood we’ve got.  Okay, an easy criticism here would be, “Great — yet another elaboration of manhood.  We sure didn’t have enough of those.”  Don’t worry:  I’ll advance that criticism of a lot of those other films, but not this one.  As much as I throw up my hands at its treatment of women, “The Social Network” is punctuated with moments that reveal Zuckerberg’s complex relationships with men, relationships that could appear in Eve Sedgwick’s formative, brilliant academic work, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, published back in the early 90s.  Men’s relationships with each other are perhaps of primary importance, Sedgwick suggested, as it is there that men find their most likely access to both financial reward and prestige — but also to fraternal bonds that may matter just as much as material advancement.  For part of the film, the main affective relationship is between Zuckerberg and his wealthy best friend from Harvard, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield); yet when Zuckerberg meets the power-prettyboy-Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, in a terrific casting decision), he falls just a little bit in love, and the chips fall from there.  Tenured Radical calls Parker Zuckerberg’s “soul mate,” an utterly accurate depiction.

It’s no surprise that Zuckerberg struggles with a social life, as he seems inherently antisocial in an Asperger’s way.  He wants more than anything to be “punched” to be a prospective member of one of Harvard’s prestigious final clubs; too bad he’s so unattractive on so many levels.  (“Punched”!  honestly.  No one could invent material this apt.)  Saverin, however, does get punched — prompting Zuckerberg to respond with an almost manic, nasty combination of derision and predictions of his ultimate failure to make the final cut.  Those ugly personal qualities beg the question whether Zuckerberg is driven at least partly by revenge when, asked by an elite group of finals club men to create a social network website for them, Zuckerberg steals the idea and creates what he calls at first TheFacebook.  He basically treats everyone as falling on a spectrum from stupid to objectionable; but when TheFacebook proves to be wildly popular and he’s getting pressured to find ways to make it profitable, Sean Parker appears to offer advice and direction for the young startup.  Parker is eminently cool and easy with women, both things that Zuckerberg can envy from his lonely perch; more important, Parker articulates with exceptional clarity the college kid’s vague thoughts that hadn’t yet cohered into a game plan.  It’s like a classic love story:  Saverin hates the new guy, but Zuckerberg is willing to listen to every word, even when it leads to pushing Saverin out, and it’s that breakup that ultimately becomes the central tale in this story.

So it comes down to this:  why does a film that says so many smart things about manliness and power have to rely on debasing women?  Women are never irrelevant to the dramas between men; they help to remind love stories like this one that we’re not talking about homosexuality per se, or even a homoeroticism that any of its characters would recognize as such.  “Fight Club” was much more explicit about the erotic bond between Jack (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).  Here, the erotic tones are covered over with triumphal uses of women as objects — affirmations of heterosexuality, yes, but affirmations that help to confirm emotional bonds between men.

On a different note, I asked my students this week if they were planning to see “The Social Network,” and one of whom exploded and said, “No way!  There’s no way I’m giving that guy any more money!”  He continued to insist, despite mild protests by his peers, that Zuckerberg would find a way to reap millions from it.  I think he’s right.