SCREENINGS
& MEANINGS
By
Gerald Schmitz
Human condition: looking for light on the dark side
The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo
(Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Norway 2009)
The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina/Spain 2009)
The Eclipse (Ireland 2009)
During the lazy, hazy days of summer the temptation is to want to switch
off and take it easy. I know the feeling. We all need down time, the
more so given the pace of our 24/7 tech-driven society. Lay back and
think sunny side up — though too much sun can burn more than vampires!
Time off doesn’t have to be time lost. It can also be an opportunity
to refresh our brains, to explore something different. That’s
the problem with popcorn movies pitched to bored teenagers. Forgettable
time wasters just leave you empty. Far better to spend time with people,
read a good book or commune with nature.
That said, don’t give up on finding good movies. In any season
they can be a form of respite, immersing you in another stimulating
reality that makes the journey worthwhile. Sometimes they take you to
mysterious dark places that put your nerve endings on edge.
The following three are guaranteed to do that.
Swedish director Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo 
(now
available on DVD) is a top-notch adaptation of the first in Swedish
novelist Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy. Although
he died at age 44 in 2004, all three — the other two are The Girl
Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
— headed Amazon Canada’s bestseller list as of early this
month.
The popularity of the series owes much to the intriguing figure of its
heroine Lisbeth Salander, a 20-something “girl” with a troubled
past, a computer hacker extraordinaire who dresses in heavily made-up
goth style complete with black leather jacket, tattoos and body piercings.
Nancy Drew she isn’t! I agree with Roger Ebert that, as played
by Noomi Rapace, “Lisbeth is as compelling as any movie character
in recent memory.” A victim of sexual violence — the original
Swedish title is The Men Who Hate Women — she knows how to take
revenge too.
Ferocious consequences follow when this unusual heroine becomes interested
in a case being investigated by Millennium magazine journalist Mikael
Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), who has lost a libel suit brought against
him by a corrupt industrialist named Wennerström. While awaiting
a prison sentence he is contacted by the wealthy head of the Vanger
Group, an elderly island dweller anxious to resolve the mystery of his
16-year-old niece’s disappearance 40 years ago on the one day
the island was cut off from the mainland. Vanger suspects murder within
the family, and that an anonymous annual gift of framed dried flowers
is a cruel reminder from the killer.
The more Lisbeth and Mikael dig into Vanger family matters, the more
sinister and dangerous their search becomes. Not only are the old man’s
brothers Nazi sympathizers, another relative turns out to have a monstrous
secret.
This is an intense movie about mature subject matter. The shocking violence
of some scenes is graphic but never gratuitous. More than just a well-acted
thriller, the film ventures into disturbing moral and psychological
terrain, laying bare interconnections of sex, power and violence, and
the fraught personal choices involved in seeking justice and healing.
Millennium II, The Girl Who Played with Fire, originally made for television
as a two-part miniseries and directed by Daniel Alfredson (no, not the
Ottawa Senators star hockey player!), is now reaching select Canadian
theatres. I found it, however, to be disappointing in comparison. Apparently
there’s also a Hollywood remake of Dragon Tattoo in the works
for 2012. Don’t wait. This is the real deal.
I can’t say enough good things about The Secret in their
Eyes (“El secreto de sus ojos”), a deserved
if unexpected winner of this year’s Oscar for best foreign-language
film. There are layers within layers in this gripping Latin American
film noir from writer-director Juan José Campanella. In 1999
retired crime detective Benjamín is still seized with the case
of a young woman who was brutally raped and murdered in 1974 and wants
to write about it in novel form. He explains this to his former upper-class
supervisor Irene who is now a judge. Their unspoken feelings for each
other haunt him too.
Multiple flashbacks reveal the criminal backstory: how a jealous colleague
conveniently pinned the murder on two innocent immigrant workers; how
Benjamín and alcoholic assistant Pablo dug to the truth to find
the real killer, a soccer fan named Gomez; how despite his confession
and conviction he was soon released during the convulsions leading to
military dictatorship, becoming a far-right hitman; how Pablo sacrificed
himself in an assassination attempt against Benjamín who exiled
himself to the countryside until 1985. Watch for the absolutely amazing
scene of Gomez being apprehended on a soccer stadium pitch during a
game. (This is soccer-mad Argentina, now mourning its World Cup loss.)
Whatever happened to Gomez, seemingly long disappeared? When Benjamín
decides to visit the victim’s husband Ricardo, the latter claims
to have kidnapped and killed his wife’s killer years earlier.
Case closed were it not for a discovery of horrific punishment worse
than death.
The movie operates on several levels, both exposing the savage aftermath
of evil and reuniting Benjamín and Irene, magnificently played
by Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil. There’s nothing
predictable in the way that secrets come to light and emotions rekindled
rise to the surface when their eyes meet. Deep, complex, immensely absorbing,
this is sophisticated moviemaking at its finest.
Finally, some brief words about the moody Irish feature The
Eclipse, a prize-winning effort written and directed by playwright
Conor McPherson. No relation of course to the third “Eclipse”
instalment of the vampire-teen romance Twilight series screening at
every multiplex (this one’s actually not bad if you like that
sort of thing).
The wonderful character actor Ciarán Hinds brings a brooding
soulfulness to the role of Michael Farr, a middle-aged widower grieving
the loss of his wife and plagued by hellish nighttime terrors. Fair
warning: their occurrence can be so startling that, about 75 minutes
in, I literally jumped out of my seat.
While volunteering at a local literary festival, Michael becomes the
driver for two of its main attractions. Nicholas (superbly played by
Irish-American Aidan Quinn) is the hotshot émigré made
good, and an alcoholic hothead clumsily trying to reignite a passionate
affair with Lena (an excellent Iben Hjejle), a Scandinavian author of
non-fiction books about supernatural encounters. She, like Michael,
receives ghostly visitations, staying alone on a remote island. In sharing
mutual solitudes and afflictions, an almost otherworldly bond develops
between them. When Lena is no longer able to fend off Nicholas’s
advances and intrusions, tragedy ensues. Yet, as in an actual eclipse,
the promise of returning light remains at the fringe of the absent sun’s
eerie halo. This too shall pass.
For anyone tired of dumbed-down movies by numbers, the above three present
bracing adult situations that no formula could invent. They accept the
radical uncertainty of the human condition in which dire things happen,
but ultimately turn toward the light rather than avoid it.
Schmitz is a member of the Sundance festival’s patron circle
and an ambassador member of the Canadian Film Institute.
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