Dogtooth

Like most movies, I think this one could have benefitted from me not being half-asleep through most of it. The word every single person uses to describe Dogtooth is “disturbing”. I think the cover displaying a girl with a bleeding mouth and missing tooth warn you of what you’re getting into. That said, I’m pretty sure I was totally out during the most unnerving scene in the movie. I woke up and there was a dead animal on the ground and the characters standing around it. I don’t think that’s all that spoilery, but maybe my indifference towards the film affects my judgment when it comes to revealing plot points.

The entire film revolves around a dysfunctional family where the children are obviously not normal. As the film unfolds, you realize they’ve been totally secluded from the outside world, and taught all sorts of strange and incorrect things by their batshit parents. But I could never get invested in the concept at all. Sure, it’s a commentary on how control and isolation can wreak havoc on impressionable and powerless subjects, but the concept is so totally out there and weird that it never clicked with me. And it didn’t stick with me, either. Most parents that control their children as much as possible usually do it for what they think is their benefit. What’s the benefit of the licking other people’s bodies? Not sure why that stands out to me now, but jesus if that wasn’t the most irrationally strange thing ever. Maybe I missed something while I was too busy falling asleep and someone can explain it to me?

Basically nothing clicked at all here. There are parts that are clearly meant to be darkly amusing, but the only thing that elicited a smile was one of the girls reenacting Rocky. Oh, and I guess a vagina being called a keyboard was funny enough. But I’ve already undermined my thoughts by saying how I wanted to snooze 15 minutes after starting it up on Netflix Instant Watch (and ultimately succeeded). I didn’t know Greek people got this weird, I thought they just liked having corrupt governments.

Enter The Void

I almost made it through this movie without falling asleep. I may have even only half-dozed off. In this case, it has less to do with the content of the movie than the length. My God, is this shit incomprehensibly long. The first half of the movie is pretty damn great, as the first-person perspective and the dreaminess that comes along with it creates shots that remain in your mind. And there’s one scene repeated throughout the movie that definitely won’t exit my mind for a long while. I remember being maybe two-thirds through the movie and thinking that scene was done with and it came back and almost gave me a heart attack and I wanted to curse Gaspar Noe. I haven’t seen Irreversible, but I know some people had a similar reaction to that entire film.

Anyway, the second half is where it drags on forever, with the camera swinging back and forth across Tokyo, giving me a goddamn headache, showing the lives of the residents connected to the main character. Like in Boardwalk Empire, Paz De La Huerta is naked seemingly most of the time she’s on screen (it’s to distract people from her face), and she’s still a terrible actress — as is the main character. I’m not sure if it was a conscious choice on Noe’s part to have the protagonist — who you see almost exclusively from behind — speak with absolutely no inflection at all. It’s totally disconcerting and frustrating. I would consider the possibility that Noe wanted the viewer to insert himself into the role as much as possible, but then he would have stuck with the first-person perspective instead of pulling the camera back behind the dude’s head. He definitely wanted the sensation of the protagonist watching his own life — a life where he spoke in a monotone voice, apparently.

So while I was sucked in by the first half of the movie, with its bright flashing Tokyo lights seen from the perspective of a drug-dealing and -taking kid, the second half eventually lost its appeal somewhere around minute 130. Yes, there’s a point to the length that’s pointed out earlier in the film, but it still didn’t make it any less unbearable. Yet, I’d still recommend it. And if I could see it in a proper theater tomorrow, I’d be all over it. I’d probably feel the need to take some sort of drugs beforehand, but either way, it’s the type of movie that lends itself to a big screen. Unlike Dogtooth, which did not move me at all, there’s something here that sticks with you — whether it’s the spectacular credits, or the eerie feeling of being a ghost drifting through the world, or the thought of re-living your life in the same manner portrayed in the film.  It’s a ride that goes on for too long, but it’s a ride nonetheless.

The credits sequence is a necessary YouTube embed, but it’s nothing like watching it on your HDTV in pitch black, which is nothing like watching it in a movie theater:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E

Animal Kingdom

Hey, a more traditional movie! Like Enter the Void, this one is also in English, but instead of from France, this comes from Australia. A crime film that centers around the youngest member of the crime family and his place in the world after his mother passes away to start the film. Guy Pierce, who is fucking awesome and underappreciated, plays the role that introduces the idea of natural selection and the food chain. Somehow this is handled without being cheesy, as Pierce comes across as a cop trying to both intimidate and reason with the teenage protagonist stuck in the middle of a terrifying and crumbling mess of a family.

There’s quite a few twists in the film, and even more moments where my heart was in my throat either from shock at what had just taken place on screen, or from a achingly tense scene. There’s one shot in particular where you know something is going to happen — and then it doesn’t. The movie is filled with encounters that turn out completely unlike how you would expect, and it’s for the better in almost every instance.

I feel like it takes the movie a while to kick into gear, but the last 45 minutes on the whole are close to flawless. It also took me pretty much until the very last scene for me to warm up to the main character. He seemed like a deaf and dumb teenage with a sullen look on his face most of the time; I guess that can happen when your mom dies. It’s very different from the lead performance in another foreign crime film released in the past couple of years, A Prophet, which is probably a superior film.

The Secret in Their Eyes

I haven’t seen many Spanish-speaking movies, but something about this one just felt Hispanic as hell.  The way love is handled and the flirting and the drinking — I can just see the world of this film reflected in my Puerto Rican mother. To be specific, this is an Argentinian film, and it’s also the odd man out here, as it was released in 2009.

It’s strange; I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, but I can’t find too much to say about it. I will admit it’s interesting how the movie works as two mysteries 25 years apart, one a murder case, and one  just a lingering sense of doubt. In an amusing coincidence, I was talking with a middle-aged female co-worker who said how she liked “epic” movies that took place over a long period of time, and also mysteries. It was like she described this film. I just remembered the soccer stadium scene that adds to the perceived scope of the film — and also the Hispanic-ness.

The ending does feel immensely clichéd, even though the events that lead up to it are very affecting. But it’s also an ending I’m sure this co-worker would eat up. Yeah, I’m spent talking about movies, I think. I don’t know how Roger Ebert does it.

I walked into Borders a few weeks ago to pick up the second book of the “Millennium Trilogy” — The Girl Who Played With Fire — and was surprised to see the new paperback prominently displayed right as I walked into the store. It was evidence that I don’t have a clue as to what is popular outside of the internet. Sure, it seemed pretty popular in the places I spend time online, but many times that hasn’t exactly indicated mainstream appeal or popularity. Even when I went up to the register to pay for the book (using my 40% coupon — the only time I’ll shop at Borders), the cashier said how much he loved the book and then started talking about the film adaptation of the first book and then I mentioned the American remake and by that time I’m sure the line behind me hated both of us; I seemed much more concerned about this than the cashier. Man, I knew the books (and film) were big hits over in Europe, but I didn’t realize they had already elicited such a fanbase over here.

So if you’re wondering, the first book is in the title of this blog entry: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. As for its myriad forms: there’s the original Swedish novel; then its Swedish film adaptation; and coming in 2011, its American adaptation. I experienced the first two practically back-to-back, and I’m still looking forward to the American version solely due to confirmation of David Fincher directing it. Yeah yeah, needless American remake — but the guy behind Se7en and Zodiac directing another dark, murder mystery film? Count me the fuck in.

And yes, that’s what The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is; it’s an exceedingly dark novel that delves into some of the most sadistic stuff imaginable, while also being a very entertaining crime mystery. It revolves around two main characters, Mikael Blomvkist and Lisbeth Salander. The former is a relentless, uncompromising journalist who believes his magazine Millennium is the last bastion of true journalism, while the latter is an introverted, cold, miniature whaif of a girl whose fashion sense is about as “punk goth chick” as it gets (see above). But the other side of Salander is a brilliant researcher who can be brutally vicious to anyone who wrongs her or someone she cares about.

Their paths don’t intertwine until about halfway through the novel, when they’re both pulled into an almost 40-year-old murder of a girl on a Swedish island. The body was never found, but the uncle of the girl can’t see it being anything but a murder. It was a high profile case due to it involving the illustrious Vanger family, but like most things, it was quickly forgotten by anyone not initimately involved or affected. The uncle, Henvik Vanger, hires Blomkvist to investigate, while giving him the cover of writing a history of the Vanger clan — but not until Salander shows up do the pieces truly start to come together.

It does take quite a while for the book to get to the interesting action, as a lot of the early-going is dry and filled with exposition, but it didn’t really bother me — which is something I can’t say its sequel. But that’s a story for another post.

It’s hard for me to say whether the book or movie is better, but if I had to choose I’d most likely have to side with the movie (a random observation: book:novel::movie:film, right?). Stieg Larsson obviously wrote the novels in Swedish so I really don’t feel right criticizing he prose, but 1) I have on good authority — @waxinthaksin — that any book translated in the past decade or so is probably pretty faithful; and 2) it’s just not good. But once again, it most definitely annoyed me more while reading the second book; there were some passages and lines in that that were just plain embarrassing. The books could also use a bit of editing; but hey, Larsson died before the trilogy was published, so maybe he felt the same way.

Meanwhile, the film adaptation of the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo streamlines everything about as perfectly as one could possibly hope. Some of the details are switched around, and there’s practically no mention of a few of the bigger relationships in the novel, but none of them are integral to the main plotline of the disappearance mystery. The film even manages to throw an extra bit of misdirection that I thought was a nice touch. But the best part of the film in comparison to the novel has to be the removal of Mikael Blomvkist’s pussy magnetism. I’ll just leave it at that.

While I thought that maybe the friend with which I saw the film wouldn’t be able to keep up with the much quicker pace compared to the more detailed and deliberate novel, he only asked me one quick question while watching. And after he walked out, I think he loved the film more than I did, possibly because he wasn’t comparing the two versions to each other the entire time. The film is brutal, tense, disturbing, but also immensely satisfying. I think Fincher has quite a bit to compete with. At the very least, I do think Fincher will make a better looking film. I just wonder if there are any high-profile actresses — because you just know that’s going to be required — that can play the role of Salander as perfectly as the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace did, while also fitting the diminutive frame described in the novel. As I read the second novel, any image I originally had of Salander was replaced with her performance.

I could go on about the second novel, but this blog post is long enough already. I did not enjoy it as much as the first, but it does have some interesting plotlines and definitely sets up the third novel — The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest — well. Too bad I won’t bother to read it until the paperback version comes out in the states. Fuck hardcovers. Unless it’s a Library of America hardcover — those are awesome.