So I had a completely smug moment when I went up to pay for our tickets and said, “Two adults for The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, thanks,” and the cinema person said, “You know, you’re the only person who’s managed to say the title correctly.” Little did she know I’d sold five billion of the book, read it in a frenzy the day it came out, and attacked all customers who bought it afterwards with “I finished this yesterday/last week/a year ago! It is SO GOOD.” Anyway, while the title makes sense, especially within the context of the whole Millennium trilogy (deep breath): number one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, followed by The Girl who Played with Fire, then ending on The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, it’s still true. Long titles are difficult to remember, like the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (aka “The Potato...Jersey...book” to customers) and A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian (“Uh, The Story of Tanks in Brazil?”). So while they’re quirky, publishers shouldn’t do it. And while we’re on the topic of things that are ridiculously long, the film The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, at more than two and a half hours, is ridiculously long. It’s mostly worth it, but you’ll be too distracted by the need to pee to pay attention to the last half hour.
In the third and probably final title in the Millennium Trilogy—there are rumours kicking around of a fourth that is mostly written, and that late author Stieg Larsson was intending to write ten—we pick up from where The Girl who Played with Fire ended. Feisty heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace, now ridiculously and deservedly famous) is in the emergency room in hospital after being shot in the head and hip and shoulder, her completely vile father Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov) is down the hall in a room with a Salander-inflicted axe wound to the head, and Lisbeth’s half-brother Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz)—the “blonde giant”, and someone who can’t feel pain—is on the run. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), journalist at Millennium magazine and champion of Salander’s cause, is doing the very best he can to save Lisbeth from the media storm worked up by the frenzied attacks at Zalachenko’s house, and the residual hype around her from the murders she was accused of in the second movie. Now she is accused of the attempted murder of her father, as well, an accusation aided by her attempted murder of him years earlier as a twelve-year-old defending her abused mother, and supported by master bastard doctor Peter Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom). Yes, it’s all very dramatic. And when it involves politicians from the very highest parts of Swedish society, it’s about as dramatic as you can get. And it makes the ending all the more delicious.
Most of Salander’s screentime is spent with her locked up—first in a hospital room, aided by her hot and all-round fantastic doctor Anders Jonasson (Aksel Morisse); then, in a jail cell; and finally, in a courtroom, assisted by Blomkvist’s pregnant lawyer sister Annika (Annika Giannini). We also follow Blomkvist, and the rest of the Millennium team, as they try to find links between Zalachenko and parliament, despite numerous death threats and Blomkvist’s single-minded approach. Along with the police, aided by Blomkvist, and the bad guys themselves, who basically sit around shitting their pants, we also have the displeasure of watching Niedermann’s grotesque escape route, as he kidnaps and harms everyone in his path.
I have a lot of goodwill for the books, and the brilliantly cast movies. And I enjoyed The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, and it was fabulous to see virtually everything wrapped up. You can’t help but get completely involved with Lisbeth Salander and want desperately to see her free from the horrific life she’s had to live through since she was a child. The movie has a very satisfying black-and-white way of looking at the world, where all the good people are wonderful (though Blomkvist makes some bad decisions, it is ultimately for a greater good) and all the bad people are snivelling monsters who deserve all they get.
Still, this movie was not without its flaws. The police force came across as completely incompetent—too slow-moving to defend against the lumbering Niedermann, unable to figure anything out without the help of a journo, and in one eye-bleedingly cheesy scene, driving along a pavement and almost hitting a woman wheeling a pram (a pram! Wasn’t that trope done and dusted after the bit in Speed where Sandra Bullock hits a pram and it’s full of cans?) Despite the time lapse between the start of the movie and the end—Lisbeth has brain surgery, grows her hair out, becomes stronger—Annika remains just as heavily pregnant throughout the entire film with no actual mention made of the fact that such an integral part of the team may burst into labour on the courtroom floor. If you haven’t seen the two previous movie, it’s really not worth seeing this one, as you’d spend most of it trying to remember what the hell is going on, what happened in the past, and who that middle-aged guy on screen is. Hell, I’ve read all the books and seen the movie and I still had trouble cottoning on sometimes. The courtroom aspect ends neatly but leaves you thinking, “Wait, what was the crime being discussed, and why, despite what just happened, was this the outcome?” It felt that often one little sentence was all that was needed to make a confusing aspect make sense. But they didn’t happen, and so I sometimes sat there with a perplexed look on my face dribbling my Pepsi out the side of my mouth. And seriously, I cannot state this enough: it’s too long.
I’ve mentioned this with the previous movies but it bears repeating: one of my favourite parts of these films is the casting, not just because they’re talented actors (they are), but because all the people are just so damn normal. Blomkvist is handsome—and I adore him—and has a mid-life belly and a rough-skinned face. Erika, his blonde and beautiful editor, wears the same clothes over all the movies and has wrinkles and fuzzy hair. Salander punks up for her courtroom scene in more silver jewellery than a Kmart full of teenagers, and doesn’t really make it sexy deliberately, even though she’s gorgeous. Everyone is just wonderful in their everyday way and it makes movies so much more believable when they are. Of course, they’re all speaking Swedish which just reminds you that American/Australian/British movies have a long way to come in this regard.
In Summary: Meets Expectations. A fine thriller with a dash of politics, a sprinkle of action, one and a half teaspoons of schadenfreude, and sixteen cups of length. It missed out on some parts of the books I was hoping for—the relationship between police officer Monica Figuerola and polyamorist Blomkvist, for one—but did a fairly good job of containing the important parts. May have made a better television series—ten episodes per book or something—and apparently were actually filmed as telemovies in Sweden anyway.
GIVEAWAY! Want to see this, but not sure enough to fork out full price on it? Well I have a handful of two-for-one passes for The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest valid Australia-wide, so if you’re keen, comment here about what you think the fourth book should be called, and if you’re lucky (chances are supremely high) I’ll send you one out!
I like to be spooked. I’m really pretty cynical in reality—I’m an atheist, I’m not spiritual, and I don’t believe in ghosts. (The jury’s still out on aliens, but I don’t think they’re here, anyway.) But damn if I can’t leave all those feelings at the door when I’m watching a movie or reading a book, and scare myself silly waiting for monsters to jump out of my closet. I find demons and hauntings much more chilling than serial killers, maybe because I can properly disconnect from reality with them. I can happily squeal and turn the lights on halfway through movies and put books down and back slowly away from them. And so on. Which is why I like John Ajvide Lindqvist, who has so far written about vampires (Let the Right One In), zombies (Handling the Undead) and, now, with recent release Harbour, the chilling, supernatural power of the Swedish sea.
A young family—Anders, Cecilia and their daughter Maja—are on the Swedish island of Domarö for a winter holiday. They ski across the icebound snow to the lighthouse island of Gåvasten for a picnic. Thinking their daughter is safe with nothing but snow surrounding them, they let her out of their sight. And that is the last anyone sees of her.
Two years later, Anders returns to the island, bringing with him an alcohol addiction and, after the breakdown of his relationship, almost no hope. It is then that he realises some questions were never answered about Maja’s disappearance, and that other questions were never asked in the first place. And that perhaps the beautiful summer vacation island of Domarö is hiding an awful secret that threads through the community’s past and out into the sea itself.
Like just about everyone who saw it, I adored the Swedish film version of Let the Right One In, and it led me to read Lindqvist’s last novel, Handling the Undead. Harbour is a much better book. It follows the same desperation felt by an adult who loses a child that Handling had, where amongst other family stories a grandfather was desperate to hold onto the child who had just come back from the dead, but who was not in any way well (because he was, well, dead and underground for some time). But with Harbour, the isolation of the book’s setting was a great improvement. Instead of covering the lives of many and the dead people they are heartbroken to let go of, Harbour stays with Anders’ family and their inescapable history on Domarö.
Harbour is a haunting story, the kind that delivers genuine chills, immersion in the characters’ lives, and possibly a slight fear of the ocean. Seriously, don’t read this at the beach, unless you want to never go swimming again. (Team it with Jaws to really ruin your holiday.) The narrative dips into the past, a device that can sometimes make me angry that the plot is being deliberately forestalled, and ruin a novel’s flow but, in Harbour, it just pulls the reader deeper into the story and creates a full background for everything that happens.
And it is an exciting, unflinching, evocative story of how isolation can change the game plan. Like Stephen King on a good day, Lindqvist taps into the surreal but not to the point of the ridiculous; just enough to test your nerves. And win.
In summary: Above Expectations (because I didn’t really like Handling the Undead, even though I desperately wanted to.)
I am having trouble writing this title without changing the word “played” to “plaid”, even though I know full well that it’s a completely different word. So this is me apologising in advance for any typos.
For those not aware of the Steig Larsson juggernaut, this movie is the film adaptation of the second installment of the Millennium Trilogy, a series of books set in Sweden and concerning Lisbeth Salander (computer hacker, tough, persecuted, and all like tattooed n stuff) and Mikael Blomkvist (investigative journalist, determined, roughly handsome, defender of Lisbeth) who team up together off and on to solve crimes. Except they are much more than that, too. Lisbeth has many personal issues to sort out, and is an expert researcher with a lot of resources at her hands; Blomkvist is in a polyamorous relationship with his co-worker Erika (in the book, anyway, as this isn’t touched on in the films) and cares deeply for Salander. The crimes they solve are multi-layered, often far-reaching into Swedish politics, and involve men who hate women—the latter phrase being the original Swedish title of the first book, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.
The Girl who Played with Fire begins about a year after the last movie ended, with Lisbeth returning to Sweden after months of overseas travel. She is checking up on Nils Bjurmann, the guardian who abused her in the first film, but her interaction with him causes her to be accused of the murder of two aspiring journalists—who were working for Blomkvist’s magazine. Lisbeth goes into hiding and investigates why she has been set up, and Blomkvist, who doesn’t believe the allegations against her, does the same. He is unable to contact her, but she is watching him and he knows it. Separately and together, they discover that this crime goes much deeper than they expected, and will affect their closest friends and family.
This film has had mixed reviews; I even read one that gave it that nasty little dog symbol. (Especially strange, because dogs are cool, aren’t they?) I can’t understand that at all—I really enjoyed it. Because I’m a fan of the books, for me, it’s like when you want to reread a favourite book but don’t quite have the time, so you kind of skim through to the most important scenes and just read those. Watching these movies is like that. The film miss some seemingly important aspects of the book, but I do think they do a good job of condensing long books into two hours of film.
As with the first film, the strength lies in the casting and the honesty of the actors. Unlike in Hollywood, the actors don’t feel quite as plastic. Lisbeth Salander is supposed to be boyish and skinny, and Noomi Rapace is exactly that; she is hardly unattractive, but she is whippet-thin, bereft of curves, and leaves her underarms unshaven. Mikael Blomkvist is played with rugged allure by Michael Nyqvist; he is soft around the belly and his skin bears marks of acne, but he is one of the most appealing men in cinema because of it. Lena Endre is Blomkvist’s love interest, Erika Berger, and she also is as beautiful as the book says she is, while still rocking wrinkles and a curving belly. I wish more films were shot like this, with gorgeous actors that aren’t built by surgery and Botox but through talent.
Night scenes are hauntingly beautiful, shot as if in black and white with a hint of colour. While The Girl who Played with Fire misses the lovely snowbound feel of the first film, the city of Stockholm does sparkle in this one. Because I had the knowledge of the books behind me, I understood the movie well and enjoyed it very much, despite the subject matter—violence against women, political manipulation of the system to the detriment of Lisbeth—being tremendously unpleasant. It was well paced, interesting, exciting, and doesn’t hold back on the ugliness of violence and people. There is a wonderfully shot love scene between Lisbeth and her girlfriend Miriam Wu, as they make love in the dark and the elderly gentleman in the row behind me cleared his throat repeatedly. It didn’t feel gratuitous and I felt again embarrassed about American and Australian movies lagging behind in the world of film.
I do feel—and heard from Chris—that if you hadn’t read the books, it could be difficult to follow, to understand all the connections, and to get involved with some of the peripheral characters that are heavily introduced in the book but skipped over in the film. There are also some oddities in the movie: Blomkvist is unable to open an envelope by himself and demands a knife from a waitress at the cafe he is in; Millennium doesn’t seem to have any other articles on the go during the film, making the employees seem a bit lazy; there are some deaths that have very sappy signposting; people don’t call the police when they witness violence, instead taking retribution into their own hands.
Altogether it remained, for me, a touching film, filled with brutality. It shows how Blomkvist and Salander can remain friends after being lovers, and does well at recreating the main characters and their world. It’s unable to do the impossible task of getting everything right, but tries very hard and it shows.
In summary: Meets Expectations (which were high.)
In early 2008 I was handed a copy of the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by a sales rep at work and told it was going to be the next big thing. I have heard this spouted before—about thirty-seven times a week for ten or so years—but this was the one time it was absolutely and utterly true. And unlike Harry Potter, I was there at the start, telling people about this new book and selling it without the power of 21 million books sold and three movies behind it like it has now. Sure, it’s a pathetic claim to fame, but in the bookselling world, you take what you get. (I had a ghastly-covered advance copy of Twilight once too, but alas had to give it back to the rep once I’d finished reading it. Now they’re selling on eBay for nearly two thousand dollars and I wish I had pretended to lose it.)
Stieg Larsson would have been a tremendously rich man had he been alive to reap the benefits of the Girl empire. Alas, he died before publication of his trilogy, and caused not only the adoration of an entire planet, but a scandalous controversy involving his defacto widow unable to get any of the profits because under Swedish law their length union counts for nothing. I should point out here that this has no bearing on the movie or the books; I’m just a gossip. Like an overprotective member of Stieg’s legacy, I was hesitant of the movie to begin with, angry at Noomi Rapace’s version of Lisbeth Salander being too pretty and Michael Nyqvist’s Mikael Blomkvist being not pretty enough. I was sure it would all go horribly wrong and that the only person to do it justice would be director Quentin Tarantino, who at one point was rumoured to have his paws on the American version. But after seeing this, I rescind that statement and go back to my initial stance that the original movies are always better than remakes and America should just keep their greasy mitts off.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—or Män som hatar kvinnor, translated as Men who Hate Women—is an excellent thriller. Of course it’s hard for me to be entirely impartial as I know the story of the book’s characters so well after three books and eight million billion pages (which is what it looks like when you see them next to each other) and feel quite attached to them. But I was anticipating a crap B-grade movie and did not get one. While we saw it on a Sunday afternoon in a fairly posh suburb, I was still surprised to see we were the youngest audience members by a good twenty years. Having read the books and flushed red from the violence of some of the scenes, I was mildly worried that half of the crowd might be unconscious from copious fainting in their seats when the lights went on. They all bore it remarkably well, even the woman in the back row WHO APPARENTLY NEVER LEARNED THE RIGHT NOISE LEVEL FOR WHISPERING. And there are some truly horrific scenes.
Stripped down to the bare bones of the story and neglecting some key characters, the film is the story of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, convicted of libel against corporate bastard Wennerstrom, and given the opportunity to lie low for a while by a desperate Henrik Vanger. Vanger’s niece Harriet went missing forty years ago and he is attempting one last time to find out what happened, employing Blomkvist—a determined and thorough journalist—to investigate. Investigating Blomkvist himself is young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, a young woman shown no benevolence by authority figures and who reacts to life accordingly. She is a fabulous heroine, merciless and unforgiving, but only towards those who deserve it. Her scenes are by far the most upsetting in the movie, as she is abused by the man appointed as her guardian by the state—and then strikes back. I had to put my popcorn down and hold onto Chris’s hand for those parts.
And with that, I was completely sold. Rapace wasn’t too pretty at all—she is attractive, but plays Salander as gritty and boyish as she is in the book. Nyqvist endears with his adorable smile and plays Blomkvist’s earnest honesty and quests for truth well. Peter Andersson as Salander’s guardian Bjurman plays for chills and succeeds; Sven-Bertil Taube is pitch-perfect as hangdog capitalist Henrik Vanger. A lot was missed or glossed over in the making of a film, but that happens in any adaption, especially one where the source book runs at over six hundred pages. While the dense plot of the book was enthralling as I love it when everyone gets a backstory so their motivations are clear, the movie was whittled down to what made for interesting viewing and story clarity. I hope, however, this won’t affect the next two movies.
I imagine the actress who played Blomkvist’s editor Erika Berger was thrilled when she got the part, only to find she appeared in two scenes and spent most of them looking like a sad puppy in the direction of Blomkvist. In the books she is a huge part of the story, knockout gorgeous, feisty and tough, parading around looking attractive and keeping Blomkvist’s outside world afloat. Along with Salander’s original guardian, the lovable but physically incapable Holmer Palmgren who gets absolutely no screentime in the film, she caused me to feel a sad loss. I also missed the nudity that I was expecting in a Nordic tale of a man who tenderly bonks just about every girl who says hello to him; in the movie, Blomkvist is much more restrained and “gentlemanly” according to social norms. The books delight in uncommon relationship dynamics; Erika is a polygamist and no one minds, Salander loves men and women equally in her bed, as long as they are there on her terms.
The setting, winter in Sweden, is absolutely beautiful; all picturesque mansions covered in snow and roads that defy gravity. While the actors and script shine, I’d be lying if I said it was flawless. The music felt heavy-handed at times, making some scenes slightly laughable. If a breakthrough was made by Blomkvist or Salander, it was accompanied by superimposed photographs and a pointed explanation. Movies that don’t give their audience any credit can be very frustrating, but I forgive this one. Not holding back on the attack on Salander—an important part of the book, if not almost unbearable—gets those points back.
One more thing: I was notified halfway through the film by the attractive young gentleman beside me that I was misinterpreting Salander’s reactions. Chris once studied linguistics and learned that what we consider a short, shocked intake of breath was just the everyday pronunciation of “yes” and “no”. So don’t think Salander’s shocked by what she’s discovering, despite the fact that you might be.
I’ve been a bit lax on the reviewing front of late, but I have an excuse—Stieg Larsson. If I’m reading a 600-page Swedish novel I can’t be expected to even be thinking about anything else. This feeling was summed up nicely by a colleague today, who is in the midst of reading the same book: “I’m jealous that you’ve finished Hornets. It means you’ve got your life back!”
The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is book three in the Millennium Trilogy. In the book world, it’s been a phenomenon, creeping up towards Twilight/Harry Potter/Da Vinci Code territory, but with a much more interesting back story. Author Stieg Larsson wrote the three books in the trilogy but died of a heart attack at age fifty, just before the books were published and adored both in his native Sweden and internationally. There are rumours that Larsson, an investigative journalist like his male protagonist Mikael Blomkvist, was actually killed off due to his profession. I’m not sure whether this is true—though he almost certainly received death threats—or if it is a marketing ploy. Either way, he died young, and it’s sad. Because the Millennium Trilogy is a downright excellent series, and Larsson himself comes across as a genuinely bang-up guy.
It’s hard to review the last book in a series without in some way spoiling the contents of the others. But once you’ve read the blurb, you know two things: one, the main characters live through the first books; and two, they’re pissed. Book one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, felt in some ways like a locked-room Agatha Christie book: there was a crime on an island with no viable escape routes. Mikael Blomkvist is summoned, in the mysterious way that non-police detectives often are, to help solve this crime, now decades old. He’s happy to lie low after being jailed for libel after breaking an uncorroborated story, so he accepts the challenge. (Incidentally, Swedish prisons come across as luxury spa retreats.) Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, the most unlikely and therefore most fabulous heroine in the history of fiction, is just trying to survive in a world that conspires against her. Twenty-five years old, tattooed, pierced, skinny, and able to pass for a teenager, she hates everyone and with good reason. After having her mental state questioned all her life, she is given a guardian who uses his position to abuse her in a truly horrifying scene that literally made me break out into a sweat on the tram. Lisbeth is not the kind of person who lets such things go by unpunished, luckily, and her story, which becomes linked to Blomkvist’s, makes for fascinating reading. Book two, The Girl who Played with Fire, follows the two of them as they go their separate ways—Lisbeth to search out and avenge her childhood wrongs, and Blomkvist back to what he does best, exposing bad guys. The death of two of Blomkvist’s colleagues bring them together yet again as Salander is accused of all number of crimes, not least Looking Scary and Being Uncommunicative.
Knowing that the characters survive each book isn’t the same as knowing what condition they will be by the next one. Book three begins with Lisbeth in hospital, fiercely unwell and accused of some more crimes and barely metres from the man who is the reason for most of the crimes perpetrated against her. Blomkvist is out and about trying with all he has to get her vindicated and to expose the enormity of the situation that led to Lisbeth’s current state. This is not light reading, and while I’m generally a fast reader it’s because I skip through sentences and rush to the end of the page. The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest isn’t the kind of book you can do that in, so laden is it with Swedish politics from decades ago and countless new characters who are all equally important. While this may make it seem like hard work, it’s still an exciting thriller. One of Larsson’s best talents is to spend the first two-thirds of a book revealing the atrocities of humanity and then, in the final third, letting all the bad guys get their comeuppance.
But these aren’t simple spy thrillers. The most important part of these books is said by a character in Hornets: “When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” Lisbeth, along with her mother and many other females in the books—as well as in reality—are treated appallingly. If it takes a bestselling thriller to bring facts like these to light, so be it.
This may be the one flaw in the books—that some of the women suffer, others are brave and powerful, but I can’t recall any of them being a villain. Larsson isn’t denying the existence of them as such; they’re just not here, for these occasions.
I know this is a painfully long review—worse still, it’s my third draft—but I’m putting the effort in because they’re books worth reading. They’re not always pleasant, and sometimes very complex, but they are undoubtedly rewarding. With Larsson’s death, the trilogy is all we have of him. The third book ties up nicely, apart from one very very small loose end, which he could perhaps have followed through with in another story. We won’t know.
Sweden is ahead of us in making movies of the series (with all the characters looking wrong, ugh) but there are rumours going around—just rumours—that the person grabbing at the American film rights is young Mr Quentin Tarantino himself, purveyor of girl-power movies (Death Proof, anyone?) I believe he’ll do it justice, but you may as well grab a copy now and read it for yourself before the movie comes out, no?
So I had a completely smug moment when I went up to pay for our tickets and said, “Two adults for The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, thanks,” and the cinema person said, “You know, you’re the only person who’s managed to say the title correctly.” Little did she know I’d sold five billion of the book, read it in a frenzy the day it came out, and attacked all customers who bought it afterwards with “I finished this yesterday/last week/a year ago! It is SO GOOD.” Anyway, while the title makes sense, especially within the context of the whole Millennium trilogy (deep breath): number one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, followed by The Girl who Played with Fire, then ending on The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, it’s still true. Long titles are difficult to remember, like the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (aka “The Potato...Jersey...book” to customers) and A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian (“Uh, The Story of Tanks in Brazil?”). So while they’re quirky, publishers shouldn’t do it. And while we’re on the topic of things that are ridiculously long, the film The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, at more than two and a half hours, is ridiculously long. It’s mostly worth it, but you’ll be too distracted by the need to pee to pay attention to the last half hour.
