Ever so often, as a respite from watching movies, I read. Yes, I know it is a hard life, but someone has to do it. As a rule, I avoid the bestseller du jour and catch up with today’s flavours several months down the line – which is why I didn’t get around to reading The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz that continues the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, until recently. Upon finishing it, I was completely reinvested in the world of Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist, star reporter of the magazine Millennium , and ace punk hacker Lisbeth Salander.
The book-versus-movie debate is as old as cinema itself, and in most cases, I tend to favour the book. Of late, I tend to watch the movie first and read the book later, as the book is more likely to be densely packed with details that a movie can never achieve. If I do read the book first, then I watch the movie much later, after memories have faded away. That is why I am yet to watch Lone Scherfig’s One Day (2011) because David Nicholls’ book and its unexpected ending are fresh in my mind, and I’m unlikely to watch Tate Taylor’s upcoming film of Paula Hawkins’ TheGirl on the Train any time soon, not the least because they have in all their wisdom changed the location from London to New York. With The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , the first in the Millennium series, I read the book long after I watched Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 Swedish adaptation. And it is only now, after reading the Millennium fourquel, that I watched David Fincher’s 2011 Hollywood adaptation of the same book.
Comparisons are odious, but having now watched two very different adaptations of the same source material, they are in order. Obviously, Fincher had a lot more money to throw at his adaptation, and his version is a lot slicker. His production budget was $90 million and the film grossed $233 million worldwide, whereas Oplev had a budget of $13 million and his Swedish version made $104 million. Looking at the central roles, both Rooney Mara in the Hollywood version and Noomi Rapace in the Swedish version are excellent as Salander, bringing a raw intensity to the troubled genius hacker. Michael Nyqvist brings the right amount of world-weariness to his Blomkvist. In the Hollywood version, Daniel Craig is very good indeed, but I laughed out loud at the scene where he is wincing in pain when Salander tries to stitch up a cut on his forehead using dental floss. This is not his fault; it is entirely my conditioning, as I’ve gotten accustomed to him enduring much more pain stoically in his James Bond avatar.
The crucial difference is the cinematography. Jeff Cronenweth’s work in this department in the Hollywood version is amazing and his frames are rich, warm and burnished. And therein lies the problem – though Craig shivers throughout, and Robin Wright makes an expository remark about the cold, Eric Kress’ stark frames in the Swedish film really capture the bleak coldness of Larsson’s novel. There are Swedish films of Larsson’s next two books, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest , but the less said about them the better.
