I first saw this Swedish film a couple of years back. I had been watching the other Swedish series ‘Wallander’ on TV and while looking for information about it we came across the Stieg Larsson trilogy that was turned into films. Recently the English version was released and I also acquired the novel itself. I know it might sound strange that I am kind of reviewing all three together – 2 films and the book.
This story starts as a couple of different strands – one where a financial journalist, Mikeal Blomkvist, has been found guilty of libel. He is unable to divulge his source as he finds that he has been supplied with fake evidence. The other strand is Lisbeth Salandar, who is an IT geek and an extremely talented one. She is employed by a security company that also takes on private investigations into people’s background. Lisbeth has been profiling Blomkvist for an industrialist. On the basis of this report Henrik Vanger, the industrialist, offers Blomkvist a job to find out what happened to his great niece. Harriet had disappeared at the age of 16 over 40 years ago. He is convinced, along with the inspector who handled the case of disappearance, that she had been murdered and most likely by someone in the family. The background to the case that Blomkvist lost is discussed in detail in the book and not in either of the films. It provides a better understanding of the whole case and why Blomkvist was unable to defend himself. The 3 month jail sentence was carried out in the Swedish film and of course in the book.
The story is actually very dark and not a comfortable watch / read at times. Blomkvist takes up Vanger’s job offer and the cover he is to use is that Vanger wants him to write the family history. There are boxes of records that have been maintained by Vanger and both he and Inspector Morell cannot seem to forget the mystery of Harriet. At first Blomkvist does not find anything which points to new evidence or even a new line of thought. There are snippets of newspaper cutting, police notes, diaries and pictures which all point to in effect a closed room mystery, as the island was cut off due to an accident on the only connecting bridge for nearly 24 hours, at the time of Harriet’s disappearance.
Meanwhile Lisbeth is shown to have problems with her new legal guardian as the old one had a stroke. The book gives a detailed description of Lisbeth’s current situation and the fact that the new guardian begins to use his position of power to sexually abuse her. While I might not agree with her response to it morally I would applaud her courage to defend herself. In this book it becomes clear that she is a troubled young lady who has no one and relies on no one but there is not enough of her background to actually know why she is like this. She is certainly gifted and talented with photographic memory, ability to see the wider picture when confronted with complex data but with limited social skills.
Eventually Lisbeth’s and Blomkvist’s path come together and he has to hire her to do some investigating with regards to finding out what Harriet was up to when she disappeared. By chance he finds the real meaning of the list of names and figures which have so far been thought of as phone numbers. This starts them into a totally new line of inquiry and is much darker and violent than anyone anticipated. The Swedish film was much more true to the book than the English version. Both the films did hold me in one place and we never even paused the film to have a quick break. The book was actually a lot longer than the films as the thoughts, feelings and background to every player in this drama has been superbly described by the author. I have seen the other movies of the trilogy in Swedish and also will be reading those books and then write the reviews. The ending is unexpected and again the details are much more elaborate in the book with a change of fortune for Blomkvist and Lisbeth to some extent.
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