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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her beloved uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and the tattooed and troubled but resourceful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) to investigate.

Q&A with Director Niels Arden Oplev

(Q): When does the next movie come out?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): It’s already out in Scandinavia and certain countries in Europe and has done quite well. Not as well as this one, but quite well. But when it comes to America is really a question for the distributor and not for me.
 
(Q): I wish the subtitles were more legible; in a different color or with a boarder around them.
 
(Niels Arden Opley): You’re absolutely right. I spoke to Music Box and the say that when the real copy of the film comes they will stand stronger. But it is a problem; certain places where it’s white it is a problem.
 
(Q): Are you going to make any more of the television series “The Eagle”?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): No, I think “The Eagle” has landed. But it was a pleasure to do it. It was very funny because we started out working it as an inter-Scandinavian tv series. It was rooted in Denmark but then it threw in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and then also Germany came in, so it was very fun. And it won an international Emmy in New York, so that was great. But I don’t think so, no.
 
(Q): Why was the decision made to release it in Europe so much ahead of the United States?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): I think that’s very simple; because the English speaking countries have been slower to pick up the book; the book market has been slower. For some reason England, United States, Australia, are like two years behind. Once it came in paperback it really sold like crazy. It’s been on the bestseller list for the “New York Times” for more than half a year.

But it has taken a couple of years to get through to you. I think traditionally translated books have a hard time in America. This is the first time in 30 years that a book shot right to first place on the “New York Times” bestseller list that has been translated, so it’s quite a sensation. But that’s what I think the distributors wanted; they wanted some book readers out there before they put out the film.
 
(Q): I hear from fans of the book that they want to see this movie, not a remake done in the US.
 
(Niels Arden Opley): Sounds good to me. But that certainly depends on all you guys. This is my 10th screening in America and I always say if you like the film feel free to go out and tell everybody in New York. If you don’t like the film, please shut up.
 
(Q): Why do you think this Stig Larsson's book resonate so many people?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): If you look at the first book that Stieg wrote, it is of course a thriller, but when I read it I felt it was so much more. It’s a mystery drama really to me. My previous four films had been dramas so I wasn’t looking for thriller material. When I was asked to read the book in order to consider making a film out of it, I was very attracted to it because it has a strong drama and strong characters. I would say that my main attraction and my main connection emotionally was to Lisbeth Salander.

If you look at Stieg’s first book, it’s an Agatha Christie kind of plot; the rich family up north, freezing cold, 15 rich people with a lot of dark secrets in the closets, and in comes this classic investigating journalist. And all of that is cool, it’s good, for people who like to read thrillers it’s all there, it’s great. And then he wrote in this very strange character; Lisbeth Salander. This broken, abused young woman that’s been raped, violence against her, all kinds of injustices from society, and yet she is this dark violent, punkish kind of personality.

By putting her into the story I feel like he raises it several levels up and it becomes a modern story. Lisbeth of course is a very interesting character; I dare to say she is the most interesting female character in literature or coming on screen for decades. I think the reason why she has captured so many women, especially women but also men, is because no matter what happens to her, no matter how much bad stuff happens to her, she never becomes a victim, she never lies down and gives up, she always fights back. She’s like a dark angel of revenge.

One of the first premiers was in Copenhagen and we had 1,100 people in the room and half of them were women, and when we came to the point where she takes her revenge on Mr. Bjurman lying on the floor the women were gave out like a war cry. And I think that is the popularity of the books, it is her character. She’s an icon and she’s a very interesting character. I see her as Le Femme Nikita’s little sister and I think that we managed in the film to have this tension and discussion and conflict between her and Blomkvist whether you can take the law into your own hands or not. It’s an interesting scene because I think we emotionally want to do what Lisbeth does but we know that society can’t function if people do that. It’s a confrontation inside ourselves; that’s what I love, that’s drama.

(Q): Could you say something about the casting of Lisbeth?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): When I came to cast this film I was, to use a crude American expression, scared shit[less]. I woke up in the morning in my hotel room at 5 o’clock and I thought, “Why don’t I just go home? Because this is impossible.” Lisbeth will be my Waterloo of casting. I can’t be less dramatic. I have casting four films before and three major tv series and I got away with it every time, and I just felt that this was an impossible task. I had scene a picture of Noomi and a cut from one film she had done, and I could immediately see she was a strong actor but I thought she was too beautiful. I called her in for a two hour rehearsal and I worked a scene over 25 times.

I can be really stubborn. I would say Noomi’s the only person I’ve met that is as stubborn as myself. When I saw her in rehearsal I saw that she had a very, very strong, dark, energy, and this is really important. I call it the “ticking bomb effect,” or the “hand grenade effect,” because it’s like I hand you a hand grenade to carry around for two and half hours and you don’t know when it’s going to blow up. She has this seductive quality in her interpretation of Lisbeth and your eyes follow her when she’s on screen.

This is enormously important for the actor that plays Lisbeth to have because when you read the book you have a picture of Lisbeth and you think you have a purely physical picture but you really have a mixed physical and emotional picture. Since she’s such a strong character you need somebody with a really strong quality and energy, and she had that, so I knew after those two hours that this was it. And Noomi told me that she would change physically, so we cut her hair, she opened up old piercings to try to form her into Lisbeth. I would say for a filmmaker, Noomi Rapace is a small miracle.
 
(Q): Had you ever met Stieg Larsson? Did you know him?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): Unfortunately not. When I signed on to the project Stieg had already passed away, and that actually made it kind of difficult. In a way you would have liked to discuss the characters with Stieg, but on the other hand it made me feel more responsible. I think all of us that did the film certainly felt this responsibility of reinterpretation Stieg’s vision onto the screen. We took that very seriously, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we had such a faithful adaptation.

I think all the levels in the film, with the old photos and the whole look of the film, is an enormous logistic operation that Niels Sejer [production designer], with his fantastic brain, has steered to the highest grade you could possibly give somebody. I’m very grateful for that because that is an enormous task of making this film look the way it does.
 
(Q): Did you work closely with the screenwriter?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): I had seven demands for doing this film. The first one was final cut; total artistic control handed over to me. I got two writers in that are really good writers in Denmark and had written a really good political-thriller, and we used some weeks to take this book apart and make an outline. We had several rules; one of them was the changes that we were going to do, we wanted them to be invisible.

So when you saw the film you should think that you had read it. Like when they drive around in this little road trip, that is not in the book but it feels like it is in the book, and it could have been in the book. So we really tried to work that way. Of course, one of the things we did was the first 100 pages we boiled down to two minutes. I think that’s the weakest part of all screenwriting is the first 100 pages, and I know people that have gotten stuck there.

We did other stuff, like making Lisbeth the main character and letting her be equal to Blomkvist in screen time, even though Blomkvist carries the main plot. I don’t think we could ever have done this in Hollywood. One thing that’s really strange about the script is the two main characters don’t meet before 74 minutes into the film; nearly a normal cinema film has passed by before they meet, and I don’t think that would have gone well down here.

We did something untraditional, and funnily enough, nobody really talks about it, that’s just the way it is. And it functions because Lisbeth sits inside Blomkvist’s computer all the time and he doesn’t know she’s there; we feel that she’s there, so that’s a trick.
 
(Q): I like the idea that you dropped a lot of subplots.
 
(Niels Arden Opley): Yeah, or else the film would have been quite a bit longer. Actually, this film was 3 hours and 42 minutes in its first cut. But there actually is a half an hour’s worth of material that we shot that will be screened on television channels as a two times 90 minute version. So those people who thought that Blomkvist was too little in love with other women they can try and get a hold of that version. If there are any disappointed men here then I can say that it will be possible to get it on dvd.

(Q): I would just like to know how much did you make the movie for an international audience and if it affected how you approached the film.
 
(Niels Arden Opley): When I read Stieg’s book I immediately thought that this was unusual material, that this could make a film that could travel. When we started working on it we worked our way into something that could become the “Silence of the Lambs” of Scandinavia. “Silence of the Lambs” was an inspiration for us when we were plotting out the film and writing it, and also a film like “The Zodiac Killer” became an inspiration. For me “Le Femme Nikita” was also an inspiration. We weren’t from the start totally sure how it was going to look but we knew we had something big between our hands.

I think that what this film does is it combines widescreen American entertainment, which we all love, with European edginess and artiness that you normally connect with European cinema. For 20 years I’ve been making films and I look for material that can do that, and I think Europe can do it, and possibly with more depth and edginess than what’s normal for American films. I saw that that’s the kind of material we had and that’s what we were trying to do.

I also thought that, and this is an interesting thing because I think that this is a very Scandinavian film, in a way it has a Scandinavian exoticness to it, but I strongly believe that if you make a really local film that it in some odd way it’s also global. I think it’s a misconception that you have to make something wider to make it an international film. If you’re making a film in a small, strange, village in the islands but if you make it so that it’s humanly interesting for other humans then I don’t think that we are more different. No matter where you grew up and come from you are curious to see that and will learn something about yourself, and that’s what art is; it’s a mirror for our own inner soul.
 
(Q): When the book is so popular and read by so many people, what kind of challenges are you facing for their expectations?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): I think to make the film in Sweden was such a war that I never had time to get seriously afraid of all the expectations. But I would say I feel very responsible for the expectations of other people. Yet I am old enough to know that what I think is good and what my key functions think is really good for this, other people will also think that. I think you have to follow what you believe in as an artist or what you believe in as a filmmaker. I’m hysterical at casting; it took me four months to cast this film because I’m just as hysterical with somebody who’s going to play one scene as with somebody who plays a hundred.

But if you do that right, if you hit that emotional key, the imprint between the actor and the role, then other people that come to see this will follow that and feel that. So it’s really a question of what you know and your experience and all that, and not to start to think about what other people will think. You have to follow your own and then it will be common for other people. If you start to follow what everybody else thinks then you’re lost.

For me the expectations from the millions of book readers was actually a help because I decided under no circumstances do I compromise anything in this film, because then I will be compromising the people that are going to go see it.

So every decision we had to make and fight for, because the money was tight, I always thought about I’m just going to hold my mark and I’m not going to get off this course. I’m not going to take a decision because there’s not enough money or because time is low; I’m just going to keep going like a general. So I did that and it was tough; I would say it was tougher than I thought. When I came home from Sweden I felt like I was coming home from Vietnam; I needed one of those debriefings.

But the result is here and I know that we did this film together and we stuck to this formula. This was Stieg’s legacy and this needed to be quality and there was just no other way.
 
(Q): Did you know there were going to be two more movies when you made this?
 
(Niels Arden Opley): I decided only to make this one for various reasons. I knew that it was going to be a really tough film to make and I knew there was going to be pressure because I could see the kind of situation we were getting into. The conditions for making the other two films, everything had to be shot in 11 months, and I just thought that was way too tight to make a film this size and to follow it all the way home through post-production. You have to make so many decisions that it’s mind boggling.

I just thought that was not possible and I would stretch myself too thin and not make the film that I intended to make. Also, my family and I were based in Copenhagen at the time and that meant I would have to be one and a half years in Sweden instead of six or seven months, and I didn’t think that would be good for the family, so I decided against it. It was tough to let go, of course, and have another director take over, but I knew this director and he’s a very good one. I know that I made the right decision; I don’t think the film would have looked like this if I had said three films from the start.

End.