2016 Academy Awards Part 2

...This is a continuation from yesterday's first blog to cover the 2016 Oscars, which you can find here. It covered everything from Chris Rock's opening to Stallone's loss. Now, on with the show...

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio, during his Oscar acceptance speech, from Us Magazine at this website. Picture courtesy of Mark Ralston, AFP.

--Louis C.K.'s intro was the best speech of the night so far. And he's right: Makers of Documentary Shorts tell very important, very depressing stuff, and they don't get rich doing so. Because who wants to pay to see such terror, horror and heartbreak? (Besides people like me, that is.) But someone's got to record this stuff, right? To prove his point, two of the nominees were about concentration camps, and women under oppressive regimes who get their faces burned and scarred.

--Chris Rock's performance turned awkward when he shamed celebrities into buying Girl Scout cookies.

--I met Kate Capshaw in the summer of 1995 or '96, when I was an extra in Amistad, directed by her husband, Steven Spielberg. She came on the set to chew him out about something. Even angry, she'd been beautiful--just as much in person as she'd been in Temple of Doom. Now, due to a botched plastic surgery or two, she looks like a female Joker. Shocking. She would've become a beautiful middle-aged and then older lady if she'd let herself. She'd already retired from acting (just one film in the last 10-12 years or so) to raise their family, so she didn't need the surgery to stay active in the profession, which is what so many of them say. I don't get it. She'd been truly gorgeous.

--A standing ovation for Joe Biden?

--Even more surprising: An impassioned Joe Biden?

--Great performance by Lady Gaga. None of the songs wow me this year, and this one was good, with an important message. Worse songs have won. And I didn't know she could play the piano.

--The director's constant camera movements have befuddled many of the presenters and performers tonight. They often haven't known which camera to look into. Lady Gaga got caught a few times looking up into the crane camera. It's been a little too much tonight.

--An Emmy for American Horror Story: Hotel; the best thing about this year's Super Bowl; and now a great performance tonight, and probably an Oscar for it. Lady Gaga's had a helluva year.

--Okay. Whatever. I didn't even like Spectre's song. And I wasn't thrilled with Spectre, either. I gave my better half a thumb's down when the song played during the movie. Surprising loss here.

--At least two of the nominated songs couldn't be performed. Why? Time constraints? And yet we had to be subjected to a few minutes about Girl Scout cookies? If they're pressed for time, wouldn't you rather hear the nominated songs--just like every year--rather than some of the things we had to sit through? Thumbs down on that!

--Two words: Olivia Wilde.

--I don't know if one director has won for consecutive years, but I doubt it. But Birdman and Revenant were incredibly well-directed. Mad Max was, too, and George Miller has had a lot of well-deserved kudos this year. But a well-directed, scenic movie with plot and great acting will trump a well-directed, scenic movie with great technical mastery and stunts, at least at the Oscars.

--Speaking of one movie trumping another--I said it in the last blog, but here's the spot to say it again:

Note to Mr. Trump: The Oscar for Best Director for the last three consecutive years has gone to a Mexican.

--And, oh yeah: The Oscar for Best Cinematographer for the past three consecutive years has also gone to a Mexican.

--So you might want to re-think the value of that wall, big guy.

--I've nailed every movie music or song played throughout the night, while the presenters are walking, or the show's coming back, or the winners are approaching the stage. I'm just sayin'.

--Most amusing of the night: Joe Biden entering to the theme music of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

--Lots of commercials made specifically for this year's Oscars. I don't remember a year so many were made specifically for this evening.

--Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins. For my money, his best performance is still in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

--Not surprised by Spotlight's win. It's a more important movie than The Revenant, and I think the full Academy of voters thought so, too. But I'll bet it was a close vote. I really want to see Spotlight now.

--Michael Keaton, who disappeared for a long time, and then made the it-was-so-awful-I-got-angry White Noise--and who then disappeared for a long time again--has been a major actor in the last two consecutive Best Picture winners. Yes, he's back. I hope he wins one sometime before he's done.

The Revenant -- Movie Review

Photo: from the film's Wikipedia site

Very gripping, in-your-face film with fine performances and great directing and cinematography. The setting is really the main character of the film, and there are long stretches of it, with little action or dialogue, so you'd better like it. I did, like I do watching Terrence Malick films, but if you don't, this film may be an ordeal for you. (It's supposed to be an ordeal, but more on that later.) This scenery does for beautiful negativity what Malick's does for gorgeous serenity. It's all supposed to be taking place in the northern climes of the Louisiana Purchase in 1823, though most of it was actually shot in the Canadian Rockies and in Argentina. But I'm gonna call it the Arctic, 'cause that's sure what it seemed like to me. Unless you're an expert hiker and really know your landscapes, it'll seem that way to you, too.

There are so many shots of snow, trees, rivers and streams that it'll either strike you with awe or with annoyance. These shots are supposed to be metaphysical; yet they're also supposed to nail the point home that this is a beautiful, but desolate and unbelievably harsh landscape. The movie is more about survival in this setting than it is about revenge or anything else.

In no particular order, DiCaprio's Hugh Glass has to survive the greed of his fellow trappers; the anger and desperation of Native American tribes (three of them are mentioned in this movie); the unlawfulness of French trappers and traders (which includes murder, kidnapping and rape); the freezing temperatures; the blizzards and snow; starvation and dehydration.

And, oh yeah--that bear.

Photo: Hugh Glass (or an 1800s James Cromwell?) and DiCaprio, from The Telegraph's article of the real Hugh Glass

This is not a film for the squeamish, though the bear attack was not as bloody and brutal as we've heard. (Or maybe I'm just battle hardened.) More disconcerting is the frequent brutality of many forms. You know how in most movies guys get one bullet to the head or one stab in the chest and that's it, they're done? Not so here. And violent things happen to CGI bears, bear cubs, moose, elk and wild dogs, too. And a horse, from that cliff clip we've all seen, when Leo and Horse go over. And Leo uses that horse like Han Solo did to another creature in Jedi, but even more so here. Yuck!

And it's all very realistically written, acted and directed. If you've seen last year's Best Picture winner, Birdman (and if you haven't, you should), then you know that Innaritu--last year's Best Director--really likes close-ups. And I mean, close. So much so, so often, that the frozen wilderness will seem claustrophobic, though it's all open space and wide expanses. But the camera is right on these guys. Not in their face, exactly, but closely above them, or beside them, or under them. There aren't too many distant shots of these actors. If they're on screen, they're taking up the whole screen. So be ready for that you-are-there feeling that this type of direction generates. You'll feel like you're in the Arctic with them--and you'll feel like you can't wait to get the hell out of there. An interesting achievement, that: You'll be glued to the screen (no small feat, since it's over two and a half hours long), but you'll be so overwhelmed by the brutality and the conditions that you want to be able to leave. I got the feeling, somewhat, that I was trapped.

Which was the director's goal, of course, and he succeeds. The film is an ordeal, and I mean that in a positive way. You suffer along with everyone--and everyone does suffer. This movie is about suffering and survival, and it does not have a solid, clear, winning ending. Consider yourself warned.

Photo: The director, Alejandro Inarritu, and Leonardo DiCaprio, from the same Telegraph article

DiCaprio deserves his nomination, and I'm not sure I saw a better leading performance this year. I don't mean that negatively, but nobody has stood out for me in terms of an obvious win at Oscar-time. I suppose DiCaprio is that guy.

Tom Hardy also deserves his nomination, as did Mark Rylance, whose performance I liked a little bit better. He didn't have the conditions to play off of, as Hardy does, and he says a lot more than Hardy does. (Tom Hardy, since his performance as Bane, seems to have specialized in roles that require minimal verbosity. He says more here than he does in Mad Max, but not by much.) I still feel Benecio del Toro deserved an Oscar nomination for Sicario, which itself was also not nominated. His was the best supporting performance I've seen this year. It's hard, as I mentioned in another entry, to compare his performance to Rylance's, because they're so different: his is exceptionally harsh and cold, and Rylance's is very powerfully quiet and nuanced. But del Toro's role and Tom Hardy's role are actually quite similar--though Hardy evoked quite a bit of Tom Berenger in Platoon for me here--and they both play guys who are cold and evil to the core, and who don't change. This was a nice change, by the way. Hardy says some very memorable things at the end of Revenant that you may not soon forget.

So go see this film if all of the above sounds like your cup of tea. Speaking of that, you will want something hot to drink after you see this, because the surroundings are so much the main character of this film that you will feel like you've just spent two and a half hours in the frozen, bloody Arctic.

P.S.--I always sit through the credits, so here I saw a name I haven't seen since the early-80s: Lukas Haas. Can you guess the movie? He was the little boy with Harrison Ford in Witness. Yeah, my mind works like that--I didn't even have to look it up. It hit me in the theatre. It's an illness.

2013 Academy Awards

photo: The Oscar statuette, or the Academy Award, but actually officially called the Academy Award of Merit, from Oscars.com.

Not too much to say about this award show.  I saw most of the nominated films, including:

Prometheus, which I can't believe I never wrote a blog for.  Look for that blog entry after the next.

Skyfall, which will have an upcoming entry.

Zero Dark Thirty, which will be the subject of my next blog entry.

Lincoln (click the link for the blog entry)

Silver Linings Playbook (click the link for the blog entry)

Django Unchained (click the link for the blog entry)

Argo (click the link for the blog entry)

The Hobbit (click the link for the blog entry)

So I had a pretty good feel, for once, for the show, and who should win.  I haven't seen Life of Pi yet, or Amour, which may be way too depressing for me.  But just about everything else, so--

--Christoph Waltz over Tommy Lee Jones, in Lincoln, or Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook?  Waltz, as I mentioned in the entry for the movie, essentially repeated his Inglorious Bastards role, this time with a conscience.  Jones ate scenery in Lincoln, as he does so often, and he's won twice (I think) before.  But De Niro was very un- De Niro in his role.  Both deserved it more than Waltz, who I like, by the way.  And Waltz has won for the same director, too.  Probably the one who deserved it most was Philip Seymour Hoffman, who did not repeat a role here, or play himself, which Alan Arkin basically did.  Seymour Hoffman played a cult leader, therefore having to act outside himself, but nobody saw this film, and those who did were sort of turned off in general.  Almost every prognosticator I read said he should win, but wouldn't.  Nobody picked Waltz.  This was a surprise.  Ultimately, of course, none of this matters.  Go see the films.

--Apparently, belting "Gold--FIN--GAH!!!" deserves a standing ovation.  Tripping up the stairs did, too.  But Massey and Lawrence handled themselves very well, and I was happy for their happiness.

--It would've been nice to see all the Bonds together, though I doubt Connery would've been willing to show up.  It wasn't quite the Bond celebration I was hoping for, or expecting.

--Hollywood showed its respect, big-time, for Tarantino.  Who's gotten very big, very fast, by the way.  And I'm talking, like, physically.

--I'm okay with Ang Lee winning Best Director, as he's a well-respected guy who's never gotten his due.  It doesn't matter to me because my pick would have been Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty.  The controversy centered around the non-nomination of Ben Affleck, but, as I mentioned in another entry, Bigelow had a much more challenging job with more difficult material to direct.  Probably Lee did, too, though the sheer amount of CGI in this film worries me a little.  But Life of Pi's cinematographer won, too, so maybe there wasn't as much CGI as I thought.  So I guess I'm okay with it, though again I see that Hollywood continues to give Spielberg the finger.

--Jennifer Lawrence's and Daniel Day-Lewis's wins were givens.  The surprise was that Day-Lewis was very amusing when accepting his award.  Lincoln himself may have had much more of a sense of humor than what I thought Day-Lewis had.  Speaking of Lawrence, she was the talk of the town at my job the day after the awards--for tripping up the stairs.

--As there is a separation of Church and State, maybe there should be a separation of Hollywood and State as well.  How starstruck do we want our politicians to be?  I like the Obamas, of course, but I don't know if I want the First Lady giving away the award for Best Picture.  Why couldn't Jack Nicholson have done it?

--Seth McFarlane did a good job when he didn't have the stars themselves in his cross-hairs.  The breast song was amusing, but probably a turn-off to the stars themselves, as was his Ben Affleck / Gigli comment to Affleck himself.  The Clooney joke fell flat to everyone, including Clooney, and I'll bet McFarlane was feeling the heat of those jokes, judging by the number of times he grimaced when he knew he was taking a chance with a joke.  But he was very breezy through most of it, and he gets away with a lot because of his natural demeanor, and smile.  Since the Awards ratings were up 19%, I'm guessing he'll be asked back next year.  But he'll have to lay off the comments at the stars themselves, and I'll bet many of them will not be happy to see him again.

--Argo winning for best picture, without being nominated for any acting or directing awards, smells to me like Hollywood awarding itself, as the movie could've been re-named How Hollywood Saved the Hostages.

Argo

Photo: Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, from the film, and from the film's Wikipedia page.

I'd wanted to see this film for a long time, since before it came out, and I'm glad I did.  I'm not a huge Ben Affleck fan; I've long considered him to be the more pale of the Affleck / Damon team.  But he directs Argo even better than he acts in it, and he wisely keeps his acting subdued and minimal throughout.  (In fact, one wonders if that was all his real-life character said to the people he helped save.)

It's filmed in a purposely grainy 70s style, more old 70s film than documentary film, if you know what I mean.  The sets, style, props and costume are all pitch-perfect.  The film even opens as if it were a 70s Warner Bros. showing (which I'm just old enough to remember), a nice touch that I noticed right away.  Anyway, this film is all 70s, all the time, even superficially so--and this helped it a great deal.

The directing, pace and acting was so good that, although you know how it's going to turn out (everyone of that age knows that all the Iran hostages came out alive, right?), it's still full of tension anyway.  For this reason, the Academy's snub of Affleck as director is a little confusing, although the other directors also did great jobs, and their films were maybe a little harder to direct.  Maybe.  I don't have a beef with any of those nominations, but it would've been nice to have a sixth slot for Affleck.

In terms of the film being an actor's showcase (which it essentially is, just like Lincoln, which was a better film, and hence the snub, maybe), it's really Alan Arkin's film.  Arkin is all over the place recently, which is nice to see, as he's been a great, but sporadic, actor for a long time.  (One of his better recently was in the silly but very watchable Get Smart.)  He has all the good lines here, and he delivers them with clear amusement.  (This is very obvious when he delivers the movie's catch-phrase, which involves the movie title, and which he delivers with relish.)  He and John Goodman obviously had a good time filming this.  Though those two characters have limited roles, and though they're literally trapped in their office on-set (they have to be there when the phone rings), they manage to somehow carry the film from that side of the Pond.  In a small but clear way, this is a Hollywood film that pokes fun at itself.

At just two hours, it's also one of the shorter better films of the year.  It doesn't feel too short, and it definitely would've seemed too long had it been so.  The film doesn't have anything more to say but which it says.  Speaking of that, don't leave the theatre at the end of the film if you'd like to see photos of the real-life people juxtaposed with the actors who played them, as well as some historically-relevant shots of the real people with other important real people of the time.

I normally don't recommend spending $11.50 on a film that's just two hours long, that doesn't need to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate.  (I want to see so many films that I have to narrow it down.  Two of the ways I do this is to choose longer films--thereby getting more bang for the same eleven and a half bucks--and to choose films, usually action or sci-fi, that need to be seen on the big screen.  Prometheus was one of those.)  But I do recommend spending that money to see this short-ish film that doesn't need the big screen to fully appreciate.  Just see the longer ones that need the big screen first, as I did.   

Golden Globes

Photo: The Golden Globe

A few quick things about the [see title]:

--Yes, I can be a big fan of football games and yet still watch the Golden Globes.  (In fact, I was told recently that I know the sport perhaps a little too well.)  One of my favorite high school memories is about when I tackled someone so hard and so immediately after the catch, that he literally said, "What hit me?"  And I actually replied, "I did."  Don't judge.

--Someone needs to make sure Mel Gibson didn't have a stroke at the Golden Globes.

--Maybe he was stunned at Jodie Foster's speech?  I mean, he knew they were always going to be just friends, right?

--Anne Hathaway's comments about Sally Field were tremendously classy.  Field wouldn't have had better things said about her if she'd actually won the award for her role in Lincoln.

--I want to look as good as Jodie Foster does when I'm fifty.  And I don't want to have to spend any money or to have any procedures to do it.  Hey, it can happen.

--Sofia Vergara's Diet Pepsi ad ran maybe 27,000 times during the broadcast.  Not that that's a bad thing.

--Michael J. Fox's kid looked like Michael J. Fox playing Marty McFly's kid in the second Back to the Future, if you follow me.  You know, when his coat's sleeves extended past his hands and his voice was so high and cracking that only dogs could hear it?

--Mel Gibson and Tommy Lee Jones had the most memorable faces of the night.  I'll bet Mel hasn't risen from the chair yet, or closed his mouth.  And I'll bet Jones still looks like he's just bitten somebody's face off.

--Jodie Foster managed to exude class even while she was babbling and verbally floundering about.  And her speech ended very, very well.  And I'm sorry to hear her mother has dementia.  Been there.  Not fun.

--The Globes' director very wisely put Selma Hayek on camera as often as possible.  She appeared almost as often as Sofia Vergara's commercial.  Incidentally, I love saying Sofia Vergara's name, though I'm sure I'm butchering it and my accent is way off.

--I don't care too much about who wins or loses at these things, though I still haven't gotten over Saving Private Ryan's Best Picture Oscar loss.

--I never heard of Jessica Chastain before Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (which Ebert said recently was the best picture of all time, from any country) a few years ago, and now she's in everything.  Loved her speech, too, when she said that she'd been an also-ran and behind the scenes for so long, she can't believe she's made it.  Gives ya hope, ya know?

--Though the comment about torture and being married to James Cameron was funny, I'm getting very tired of people saying whatever they want about whoever they want, especially when that person isn't there to respond.  Maybe Cameron is as much of a jerk as everyone says, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be called that on camera to literally billions of people throughout the world.  Just because you can, that doesn't mean you should.

--Bill Murray looked like he'd just stepped out of a Dickens novel.  Maybe he's shooting such a movie?

--The most courageous thing Jodie Foster said was how incredibly lonely she sometimes is.  (I mean, we all knew the other thing, right?)  Read a full transcript of her speech from latimes.com here.

--Quentin Tarantino very suddenly got big.  (Read my review of Django Unchained here.)

--The Globes are always very amusing, but does absolutely everyone have to get plastered?

The Artist

photo: Poster, from the movie's Wikipedia page

I wanted to see the Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director, and I knew I had to see it fast before it left the theatre, as this is in the theatre now only because of its Oscar wins.  I can't comment too much on its Oscar qualifications, as I have not seen too many of this past year's nominated films, except for Hugo.  So all I can really do is comment on the film itself.

It's obviously an allegory (as was Hugo), or perhaps a fable, as the awesome dog plays a big part.  The direction was superb, and as I only have Scorsese to compare it to, I have to give the nod to this movie's director.  He had a lot more to do, with the black and white (though I didn't miss the 3D credits at the end), the silence, the actors (as this is more of an actors' movie than was Hugo) and the pressure of making a (mostly) silent film zing.  Which it does.

The Oscar has gone to worse performances than the one given here.  From what I understand, this actor is huge in his native France, and for good reason.  Without his voice to help him, he's still an obviously gifted actor.  He looks a bit like Clark Gable, too, and is a born-again 20s and 30s look-alike actor, so he certainly fit the bill.  I'm not sure this film could've been made without the biggest name in the country of its origin, though it shouldn't go unsaid that this is essentially a French production, using mostly American actors, filmed entirely in L.A., about the Hollywood of the 20s and early 30s.  This movie really should have been made by an American company, but sometimes the best mirror can be shown by someone holding it, not the one peering into it.  And American films aren't artistic allegories these days, either, in case you haven't noticed.  They don't simply tell stories, as this one does.  It's a creatively complex way to tell an essentially simple story.

Now, the story.  I have to say first that it's really like the pre-Shakespearean morality plays, this one a warning against Pride (yes, with a capital-P).  And maybe a little bit of Vanity.  I know this not just because I'm an astute guy, but because two different characters (and maybe a third, a cop near the end [played by a guy who's in Mad Men, the one who peed himself]) tell him to beware of his own pride.  But here's where it gets dicey for me: no fewer than three awesome beings (a man, a woman, and a dog) cling to this self-pitying, stubborn man.  The dog, who steals the movie from its Oscar-winning cast and director, walks with him, sleeps with him, acts with him, mugs with him, and is very clearly the love of his life, even surpassing Peppy Miller (an awesome name that unfortunately brings to my mind Pepe LePue; but, again, that's me, not the movie's fault) and certainly superseding the woman he was living with.  You can say that he loves the dog even more than himself, and that's saying a lot.

James Cromwell (very cool seeing him again, looking the same, really, decades now from Babe and L.A. Confidential) is his chauffeur, and father-figure, and Arthur-like caretaker, and best and only human friend, and ever-suffering angel and confidant, and...and what's he supposed to represent in this allegory?  An angel by his side?  (Because that's also what the dog is.)  I don't know.  And Peppy Miller.  Beautiful, though too aware of it, but, whatever, again that's just me.  Lively, very flapper and, apparently, philosopher, and all-too 20s and 30s, and a great dancer, and what a smile, and a nobody until she bumps into him (literally) and he makes her a star.  But they don't have any friendly or romantic interaction between then and the end (in fact, there's a briefly curt scene), and yet she very clearly pines for him, and buys all of his stuff so he doesn't have to lose it (which only reminds him of his pride and vanity), and cares for him, and loves him, and finally resurrects him and his career (though it's a sad commentary that his self is forever entwined with his career)--and all because he gave her a start?  I guess, but for how long can you hold someone in such awe when he's in awe of nobody but himself?  For how long can you love a selfish, self-pitying, stubborn, vain fool?

Is that harsh?  But the movie makes it all work, of course, as it's all very clearly allegorical anyway, and never meant to be taken as literally as I am perhaps taking it.

The Artist is also an obvious homage to, first and foremost, Citizen Kane.  The shots over the breakfast table between the star and his jealous co-star (who doesn't like playing second fiddle to the dog, or to the guy's superior stardom), the freak-out scene when he trashes the film and his room, the closet in Peppy's mansion that holds all his vainglory belongings (like the pan shots of Kane's statues), the ponderous painting of himself, and even the shots of him standing up in the film-light splashed black-and-white backdrop, a la the newsmen in the beginning of Citizen Kane--sometimes, it bordered on a re-showing of that movie, the homage was so obvious.  But that was okay, as it never crossed the line, and I love Kane anyway.  There's also a lot of Singin' in the Rain in The Artist, as the star looks a bit like Gene Kelly as well, and the dancing scenes are a dead giveaway, as is the rain-soaked scene when she visits him.  He also passes on an older, less-talented woman to fall in love with the pretty, younger starlet, who also dances with him, and the silent/talkies thing, and...yeah, if Citizen Kane and Singin' in the Rain could have a child, here it is.

And it was wonderful.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Movie, Swedish vs. American

Photo: poster for the Swedish movie, from its Wikipedia page


Rented the Swedish version, the original, of course, and figured I would share my thoughts about it, as compared to David Fincher's American film.  Feel free to agree, or disagree.  And please read my write-up of the American film here.  Reading what I wrote about Fincher's direction and Rooney Mara's performance may lead to a better reading of the critique of the Swedish film, below.

--Noomi Rapace's performance deserves its many accolades, and gets extra points for being the first, which, rightly or not, sets the stage for all other interpretations of the role, and must be the one all others are compared to.  If another performance were to be better than this--which I believe Rooney Mara's is--then it must be as juxtaposed to this one, in accordance to its successes and failures.  This makes Rapace's performance all that more singular.

But it doesn't make it better, though a better/worse distinction isn't what this art is all about, and is almost nonsense anyway, as both performances are very good.  In this case, I think it has to do with the script, which I believe is superior in the American film.  It calls for Lisbeth to be edgier, scarier, more vulnerable, and easier to be sympathetic to.  This will be dealt with in better detail later, but the final word here, regarding performance, is that, frankly, Rooney Mara had more to work with, and she gave it her all, which the combination of script and director allowed her to do.  Rapace undoubtedly would have, as well, had she been given the chance.  But she wasn't.

--So, the script is better in Finch's version, and this I can explain easily.  The American film, surprisingly, follows the book much more closely than does the original Swedish version.  This is shocking because a) American films are notorious worldwide for bastardizing its original source, which it does not do here, and b) the Swedish film is, of course, based on the book from Sweden, and so therefore has, you would think, more allegiance to the film.  The Swedish film is the highest-grossing film in Swedish history, and it was followed very closely by the other two films in the series--all of which is based on the best-selling novel (and novels) in recent Swedish history.  One would think that the pressure to be faithful to the book was extreme, but apparently not.

[Spoilers coming; be forewarned.]

While following the evidence more closely than the American version (but not by much, and perhaps it does so just a little more clearly, rather than closely), the script veers dramatically in the characterization of Salander.  For example, you see her in bed with another woman when Blomqvist arrives at her apartment, but in the book, her sexuality is a big deal with her character, and the bisexuality plays a major role in her development.  It adds to her confusion, or rebelliousness, or search for affection, or yearning for affection and attention, or...whatever you want to call it.  But it matters.  Here, it's very glossed over, with just the woman's appearance in her bed.  You're missing a lot if you don't get this part of her character.  Fincher's American film did this much better.

The same could be said for her mentor who suffers the heart attack, who is totally and oddly absent from the Swedish film.  He also represents her confusion, longing for affection, father-figure (important, considering what she did to her real father, and considering what a horrible person he was) and loss.  This latter is most important, because she is born to the father from Hell, then is given to a saintly man--but then she is given the custodian from Hell when this man is struck; her father is the Devil, then her father-figure is switched with the Devil, and, more crucially, the fact that he was her only positive interpersonal relationship to the outside world is thrown away if you throw his character away, which the Swedish version does.  This is huge.  The American film does this much better, and by doing so, it gave Fincher's and Mara's Salander more to emote about, more to suffer from, more to lose.  This only deepens her character.  Rapace never got this chance.  And I can't ignore the obvious by pointing out that Blomqvist is her father-figure/lover, a distinction that is so obvious that I, thankfully, don't need to go into it.  Except I'll say that the pendulum of father-figure has swung again, from good, to bad, back to good again.  Which leads to...

The relationship between Blomqvist and his editor/friend/lover from Millennium is also completely and strangely absent from the Swedish film.  When he goes back to her at the end of the American film (and in the book), it only adds another layer of loss to Salander's character, as her connecting to him was a major achievement in of itself for her.  When he leaves her (notice at the end of the Swedish film, he's still in jail, and she leaves him), he takes away the only stable and positive relationship she has to anyone outside her family, or still-living mentor.  That is a HUGE loss that Larsson clearly understood and intended--and obviously juxtaposed with Harriet Vanger returning to her own father-figure/mentor, the man who replaced her own Devil-father.  (Surprisingly, Harriet Vanger's father is the Devil, while Salander's father was more like his Beelzebub.)  They never forgot each other all those years.  That's such an obvious Shakespearean foil-character juxtaposition that I am shocked the Swedish filmmakers chose to completely disregard it.  To do so throws away the most tragic elements of Salander's character.  This is astonishing--especially as it does not honor the original source.

It is jaw-dropping to me that the American film version honors the characterization and true spirit of the original Swedish text much more so than does the Swedish film.  I at first wondered why an American film company would bother making a film based on an already-appreciated Swedish film based on an already-successful Swedish book.  Now I know--Fincher had a much better script to work with, and he knew it.

I point out all of these differences--and there are many more, but this will suffice, I guess (no, wait, there are more below)--because Lisbeth Salander is of course the heart of this series of books and movies.  It goes where she goes.  She is the energy, the spirit, the real, fleshy character.  She's the one the audience really connects to, and hopes for, and feels for.  Larsson knew this from the beginning, which is why he focused on her so much (and why the third book flopped so badly, because he strangely wouldn't let her do anything).  To throw away so much of her character in the Swedish movie's script is to throw her away--and she's the beating heart of the whole thing!

Okay, so a few more differences that really bothered me:

Her sexuality is severely torn down in the Swedish movie, which is odd, because the Swedish culture and lifestyle is much less prudish, really, than is America's.  That's a huge part of who she is, and it's nowhere in the film.  Her past of drugs, crime and institutionalization is also nowhere to be found in the Swedish film--which is, again, throwing away everything that she is, and all that she is trying to change from.  Throwing away her embezzlement wizardry is also a mistake, as that helps her become a new her, which she did in part to be with Blomqvist, and it's because she loves him (in her own way) that she does all that research, delivers it to him, then dons her wig and takes all of Wennerstrom's money, which she knows will lead him to being knocked off by the criminals he worked with.  And this is what happens, which the Swedish film completely glosses over when it says that he clearly killed himself instead.  She basically kills him in the book, and in the American film, and she does this because he set Blomqvist up, sent him to prison, ruins his reputation, and, for God's sake, she's protecting the guy she loves and avenging his sacrifice.  The Swedish movie blows all this by ending the way it did, which blows her attempt to connect to someone, and to change--and it is this attempt to change that is ruined by the ending of the book and the American movie, when he goes back to his publisher/friend/lover, which the Swedish film also completely ignored.  And, lastly, the Swedish version is missing Salander's considerable rage, specifically towards Men Who Hate Women--which is why it's a shame that the Swedish version didn't include her asking Blomqvist at the end, "Can I kill him?" when she goes after Martin Vanger.  Not giving a bit of air time to her rage also erases a huge part of her characterization and character.  She isn't Lisbeth Salander without it, and the Swedish film completely misses that.  Rooney Mara had that nailed: that rage.  That ever-present anger.

The American film has ALL of this, and more.  It is clearly better, and so is, therefore, Rooney Mara's performance.  She had a completely fleshed-out, round and changing character to work with, and defined her to the hilt.  Her interpretation was more than worthy of her Oscar nomination.  A much more thorough, edgy, sexy, intelligent, sociopathic, empathetic, sympathetic and engaging character to watch and to root for.