The Girl Who Played with Fire/ The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

2009/2009
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Writers: Ulf Rydberg/ Jonas Frykberg

Thank you Lisbeth Salander, thank you for ruining the idea of Sweden for me. Once a place of annoyingly beautiful blondes, stunning landscapes, flatpack furniture and nudists; it’s now a cold hostile place full of violent rapists, misogynists and secret government agencies infringing basic human rights. She really has had it tough, Ms Salander, and now things are really going to get trying for her. After investigating the shady history of the Vanger family with journalist Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), Lisbeth made her escape to the Caribbean using funds stolen from the corrupt Wennerström corporation. One year later she’s back in Sweden and being thrown back in the deep end.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, her investigative partner from Dragon Tattoo Mikael Blomkvist and Millenium magazine are preparing to publish an article on human trafficking by young journalist Dag Svensson and his girlfriend Mia. Just days before the release of the issue, both journalists are found horrifically murdered in their apartment. Meanwhile Nils Bjurman, Lisbeth’s sexually abusive guardian is also discovered to have been executed, both crimes having been commited on the same night and with the same gun. Unfortunately, Lisbeth’s fingerprints are recovered from the murder weapon and she’s now the police’s main suspect. Forced to go into hiding and on the run, Lisbeth sets out to stop the people who framed her while Mikael uses Dag’s article as a starting point to investigate the people behind the crimes and prove her innocence. Both begin to find themselves being drawn into a mysterious web of intrigue, prostitution rings and political abuse, all headed by a shady figure known only as ‘Zala’. To top it all off, Lisbeth is now also being hunted by a seemingly unstoppable man mountain called Niedermann.

To be honest my expectations going into this film weren’t sky high. Played with Fire was my least favourite of the novels, finding it to be slow and slightly muddled in terms of pacing and plotting. Any reviews I’d read for this were mixed at best. I doubt it would ever be able to match the heights of previous film, a much more solid thriller and more in line with a murder mystery, a genre which I have a real soft spot for. I’ve always been intrigued as to how much of an impact prior expectations have on my opinions of the final products; often low expectations lead either to pleasant surprises or disappointments, often because I tend to stay a bit too biased against the film (something I should really try to stop doing!)

The problem in this case is that whatever attitude I had going into watching it, that doesn’t stop it from being a poor film, especially when compared to the previous film. A good adaptation should retain the essentials from the source while moulding them into a form that’s more cinematic. Fire however feels subservient to the novel, following it slavishly. This isn’t helped by the fact that the novel is itself so disorganised and heavy and simply results in a film that feels plodding and slow, despite it being by far the shortest of the trilogy in terms of running time. I ended up checking my watch several times- the framework of the screenplay allows little sense of any overriding tension or progress; it feels like it’s simply doing what it’s being told to do.

Part of what helped make Dragon Tattoo so engaging was the presentation of the unusual relationship between Lisbeth and Mikael and watching it develop, from tentative and perhaps suspicious foundations up to a positive working partnership and a burgeoning sexual relationship, leading to what could be love on her part. Regrettably, there is no building on that in Played with Fire as the two barely interact at all in person. Each pursues their own storylines and frankly Mikael Blomkvist isn’t an enticing enough character to command full attention. Thankfully the saving grace of this film is again Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. Throwing herself so dedicatedly into playing such an emotionally complex and troubled character, Rapace wonderfully exudes the right sense of intensity as well as vulnerability to fully flesh out Lisbeth into someone so engaging. Unfortunately she isn’t given as much to work with here, often being shown either smoking and looking moody or threatening people for information. The supporting characters aren’t given much space for development either.

The film does begin to pick up slightly at the end but the laboured pacing and lack of exciting enough action scenes or set pieces isn’t enough to make it worthwhile. It seems like the film edit of Played with Fire feels mostly like a bridge between its neighbours.

Which brings us on to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest .Without wanting to give too much away, Lisbeth is now in hospital having been severally shot several times and despite the benefit of starting to make a recovery from her injuries, is now having to face trial for all her crimes, both those forced upon here and those she committed in self-defence and revenge. Mikael and Millennium now face battle against a dangerous and covert secret government agency known only as ‘The Section’, which will use any means to possible to try to silence Lisbeth and stop her from revealing the truth. As they discover more about the illegal practices of the Section, the danger grows for Lisbeth as they build a case against her to have her incarcerated against in a mental hospital, as well for Mikael and the entire staff of seemingly around only four employees at Millennium, as the bad guys become increasingly desperate.

Hornets’ Nest already has the benefit of stronger source material- the novel is a pretty hefty tome but is in general far more controlled and engaging than the previous book. This works more as a political thriller in some ways, as the numerous layers of plot begin to intertwine. It’s also far more complex and this can work against the film sometimes, as a large number of new characters are introduced, mainly linked to The Section and the police. It sometimes tricky to keep track of all of them and some don’t get much of a look-in as Hornets’ Nest tries hard to maintain its labyrinthine structure into something more cinematically feasible. This also means we see far less of Lisbeth than I’d prefer. Even worse, she spends most of the film either confined to a hospital bed or sat in a courtroom, horribly restricting her dynamism that made Played with Fire ultimately bearable. Incidentally, due to a lack of many notable setpieces, it’s the court scenes in the final third that carry the most trepidation, as we’re engaged in a battle of wits over who knows what and what evidence either side of the law actually has.

One wonders how many elements of truth there are in the existence of such a corrupt and illegal operation as The Section, as we consider how the novel tries to combine Stieg Larsson’s desire to expose political and social prejudice and abuse alongside a need for more entertaining pulpy content. A lot of the men (and they are all men) and the methods involved with The Section do seem extreme, almost pantomimishly so as they discuss means of silencing Lisbeth in fairly cliché evil villain talk. The character of Dr. Teleborian, the man who ‘treated’ Lisbeth in her stint in the asylum as a child is so unbelievably unpleasant that it feels it can undermine some of the authenticity of the plot.

Perhaps another factor that works against these two films is that they have a different director to Dragon Tattoo. I’m not able to find out much about Daniel Alfredson other than that he is the brother of Tomas Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In (2008), so I suppose most of his previous work was in his native Sweden. The two films aren’t badly directed, in fact they’re filmed quite solidly; it’s just they lack some of the style and vivacity of the first film which leaves them feeling more like the TV movies that you forget they actually are. Neither film has any shots or stand-out moments that linger around in the mind long after the film is finished- it ends up feeling a bit pedestrian. Again, not to say that they are bad films; I did enjoy Hornets’ Nest once it finally began to pick up pace but I would have like to have seen something more substantial. A lot of the novel’s commentary on the state of modern Sweden and the unwelcome prominence of abuse and misogyny isn’t featured as prominently as it deserves to be as the films try to remain entertaining. Ultimately though neither film is engaging enough to really be called totally entertaining. This trilogy was highly ambitious and I’m intrigued to see if I can ever get my hands on the extended versions of each film which were shown on European TV in several parts and deduce whether that leads to any improvements. For now though I have to conclude that Played with Fire in my eyes is a fairly admirable failure while Hornets’ Nest is a mixed success.