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Two “So wh…?” questions you may be asking right now…
1) So when is the Avenue returning with new updates?
Pretty soon as promised: in fact we can pin a date on it: Easter Sunday. Today is the 1st of April and for the rest of the month there’ll be one post every three days, so expect the next article on the 4th, then the 7th, the 10th, … and then your basic math skills should help you out to complete the cycle.
2) So why hasn’t there been a review of the third Millennium film?
Because the Belgian distributors in all their managing wisdom have delayed the film to mid May, mainly because the Millennium films aren’t Easter holiday material or something. Yes, why go and see something decent if you can watch the latest Jennifer Aniston vehicle? Oddly enough, the two-month long delay was considered press material and made it into several newspapers, proving only how popular the Larsson books are (but not popular enough to be shown around Easter then…).
This delay may just be the stupidest decision since they ditched Orphan in favour of Alvin and the Chipmunks 2. Granted, that is some kind of horror too… Anyway, see you in May for the review of Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest).
And see you on Sunday for the next brand new Avenue update!
The United States have their hard-boiled detectives and film noir types, but what have the Europeans set against that? Cranky old men in the UK and Scandinavia. Frost, Wallander, Morse… that sort of thing. Lately, the Scandinavians have been busy to ‘invent’ a crime subgenre that benefits from the European diversity. (In case you didn’t know: it generally means that directors need an investment from a couple of countries, countries that in turn ask the director to have a bit of their glorious country inserted into the movie. Thus the European thriller was often an artificial and convoluted creature.) In 2004 the Danish made a crime series (The Eagle) that detailed the maffias and corruption in several countries and for once the result didn’t seem contrived. The series starred von Trier regular Jens Albinus, had music from Jacob Groth and several episodes were directed by Niels Arden Oplev. The latter two helped create the first film of the Millennium trilogy: Men who hate women (a.k.a. Män som hatar kvinnor a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The signs were good and thanks to the international popularity of the books, there was no need for artifical funding by several European countries. Everyone was happy to honour Stieg Larsson and keep the books as Swedish as possible, so as not to upset the millions of fans.
versions of what Larsson hoped to be: an relentless investigative journalist and a ballsy person.) Blomquist is on trial for slander and she’s asked by a company to investigate whether he’s honest or not. They don’t meet.
There are many good things to say about Men Who Hate Women, but some deserve a special bit of credit. First and foremost the writers, who decided to make Lisbeth Salander’s character more prominent (but without betraying the nature of Larsson’s novel). Equally important is Noomi Rapace, who leaves a lasting impression as the gutsy but troubled Lisbeth Salander. And finally composer Jacob Groth, who went to Eastern Europe to hire the help of one of the biggest choirs, so the film would have a score that may be subtle but stands out. Despite the financial support of a lot of European tv networks it gave this film the feeling of a grand Hollywood production, whilst keeping the grittiness Hollywood films will never have.
Because yes, the title is not Men Who Hate Women without reason: what has happened (and happens) to Lisbeth and several other women is not the sort of thing you can talk about during the next family dinner. And unlike a lot of American films the violence isn’t glorified or beautified. No, it’s shown as brutal and vile as it is. At the same time, Lisbeth Salander isn’t exactly a princess herself: she is raped and takes revenge by returning to the rapist and tattooing a warning message on the rapist’s stomach. Probably not someone who’ll go topless to the beach next summer.
And hardcore fans of the film should watch out for the DVD, which is the extended version of the film (as shown on Swedish television). For the film, a subplot that wasn’t necessary was deleted, reducing the cinema version by 30 minutes. This puts Men Who Hate Women closer to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which did a similar thing and luckily not closer to a lot of other European films which could only get support from networks if they’d added extra footage (read: bonus fodder) so the networks could broadcast the film as a mini-series (thereby filling their schedules for two or three weeks, but reducing the film’s power – but it’s not as if networks tend to care about quality).
Millennium 1: Men Who Hate Women may be bold and brutal, but it’s good European cinema. The Americans, who are not too keen of the brutalness of the film, have announced they’ll remake the film in 2011. It’s already the least anticipated movie of the decade. Misogyny isn’t a fun subject and this film proves you can show it in a film, without reducing yourself to the level of the 80s rape revenge movies like Extremities. Mainly because most abused women aren’t Farrah Fawcett and fairy tale endings don’t always exist in real life. We may seem civilized but underneath this thin layer of manners lies a dark world. Thus spoke Stieg Larsson.
The human psyche is a wonderful thing to observe. And that’s exactly what happens in De Ofrivilliga, a Swedish movie by Robin Östlund, released globally as Involuntary (Happy Sweden). The movie exists of a couple of stories which are unconnected but share a similar theme. All the characters are affected, willingly or unwillingly, by peer pressure. An older man insists on being in charge of a fireworks display, but when things go wrong, he’s hit in the eye. Claiming it’s only a superficial wound, he demands the party must go on. Then there’s the tale of two young girls, who re-enact pin-up poses in their bedroom (thanks to the camera in their webcam), dance sexily at a slumber party (mimicking the scantily clad women in rap videos), harass an older man in the tram and end up totally wasted in the park. The third tale is set on a long-distance bus. An actress has taken this bus (it’s unsure whether she does so to save some time or because of money problems), but it’ll take some time before she’ll be home. At one of the stops the bus driver notices the curtain rod in the toilet has been torn off and he refuses to drive any further as long as the culprit doesn’t confess (s)he is the guilty person. The fourth story takes us to a 
weekend out with some lads. When one of them tries to have oral sex with another friend by way of a prank, the fellated friend doesn’t like the joke and calls his girlfriend. The fifth story features a elementary school teacher. Her first scene is pivotal as it features an experiment in peer pressure (the class has to contradict the choices of a volunteer and observe whether this makes the volunteering girl question her choices). But this scene isn’t why we’re observing this teacher. One day, after class, she notices a colleague slap an obnoxious boy quite hard in the face. The mother complains that her son came home from school with a bleeding ear, but the teachers merely observe how irritating the boy is and the teacher with the loose hands insists nothing has happened. The teacher now faces a dilemma: remaining silent or telling the headmaster who hit the boy, even though this last option may turn her into a social pariah.
The five stories are interwoven and the snippets are separated by a black screen for a couple of seconds. I’m not exactly sure if this was the best way to tell these stories, even if it’s a manner that is very much in fashion these days. Apparently Östlund made his film out of a couple of shorts he’d already made. What is good about this form of cutting is that you don’t need to tell the entire story: you can cut out an essential scene and then move to another story, which enables you to delete all the establishment and filler scenes.
on the one hand there’s the person who damaged the curtain rod and the question whether this person dares face public humiliation, but on the other hand there’s also the story of the bus driver, whose threat not to continue the ride if the culprit doesn’t confess may bite him in the ass: he may be blown the incident way out of proportion, but it also means he can’t crawl behind the wheel again if he doesn’t want to lose his face (and authority).
