2011 In Review

I don't really have a top ten list of films for 2011 because I don't feel like I saw a complete sample of things that came out - I missed A LOT of movies that I wanted to see.  But several things did come out that, if I had a top ten list, would most likely have made the cut:

X-Men: First Class and Captain America, both two of the finest super hero movies the genre has turned out since, well, ever.

Drive, which won't get nearly as much awards press as I want it to.

Hugo, which I liked a whole lot more than I expected to, due to an unfortunately misleading trailer.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a movie which manages to be more exciting than both the original source material and the first adaptation.

Margin Call, which I tried to write about but had difficulties I can't really articulate; it's a wonderfully sharp piece of writing and acting that I maybe didn't really understand completely?  There's a lot of financial business that I didn't get, but it's a testament to the power of the actors that it didn't matter.  Check it out if you get the chance - I don't understand how it didn't get a wider release, with the surplus of powerhouse names in it (Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany).

Maybe Moneyball?  I didn't write about this one, either, because I have a problematic relationship with it.  I want to recognize the wonderful writing and excellent performances (especially by Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman), but...it didn't resonate with me the same way it seems to have with the rest of the world.  I just didn't feel like there was enough of a story to fill the whole time slot - all the bits about Pitt's family life felt like padding to me, and didn't really add anything in terms of emotional development.  I wish it had been a really tightly-focused 60 minute film, concentrating on the baseball aspects of Pitt's character's life rather than a weakly-written relationship with a daughter I didn't care about.  The fascinating moments of this movie are the negotiations and the game itself, not the private lives of the characters.

If I get the chance to see more 2011 films before the end of January, I'll do a list for you guys.  Otherwise, what's above is pretty much my greatest hits of things I actually saw.

My biggest hope for 2012 in terms of film is simple: MORE.  ANIMATED.  MOVIES.  Is it just me, or was 2011 COMPLETELY LACKING in good animation?  I'm not sure I realized it until I watched the Golden Globes on Sunday, but to follow 2010, a year which gave us Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, and Tangled with a spat of sequels and poorly reviewed items that disappeared almost as soon as they hit theaters seems...sad.  I hope Pixar delivers with BRAVE, is all I'm saying.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

At this point you've probably at least heard about David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, if not seen or read it for yourself.  I don't honestly have anything new to say about the film itself in a reviewer's capacity - it's really good, and has been adequately covered by the professionals.  But I do want to weigh in on the film's cornerstone, Rooney Mara's portrayal of the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander.

In an article titled "Girls on Film: Softening and Sexualizing Lisbeth Salander," the author, Monika Batyzel, claims that Fincher has essentially removed the teeth from Salander; that because of American film tropes, she is a softer, less effective character than in either Larsson's original text or than Noomi Rapace's portrayal in the Swedish adaptation.  I disagree - I think that Mara's Salander is more true to the text than Rapace's, and I found it to be a much more interesting and powerful performance.  I also disagreed when everyone was claiming that the poster with Mara naked on it devalued Salander; read my opinion on that (which informs this one) here.


(Mild spoilers follow.)


Batyzel observes that "Fincher removes the suffocating, repetitive sense that Lisbeth is prey. Bjurman starts off warm and seemingly logical. In comparison, Lisbeth appears like a rude, antisocial child spurning honest help. Mara’s version snarls before he gives her reason to."  Here Batyzel and I disagree because we read the first scene between Salander and Bjurman very differently.  Maybe it was because I knew what was coming, but I found Yorick van Wageningen quietly menacing; his soft, slow way of speaking is patronizing and controlling.  And Salander is a character who has learned from an early age that the unfamiliar is nearly always dangerous, and unfamiliar men especially so.  It is appropriate that she reacts this way from the start because Bjurman is an unknown.  She has no reason to be nice to him.  (She reacts similarly when Blomkvist pays his first visit to her, hiding a tazer in the waistband of her pants.)  The "suffocating, repetitive sense that Lisbeth is prey" is saturated in every aspect of Mara's being: unlike Rapace, she shrinks and skulks around, makes hardly any eye contact, and only accedes to being touched when she initiates it (at which point she becomes ferociously dominant, keeping control over the situation).

I happen to think that Fincher and Mara's Salander is a closer match to the original literary character than Rapace's portrayal.  In the books, she is described as childlike rather than boyish, genderless more than anything else.  Her hardness comes from that deceptive delicacy - Rapace is literally all ropy muscle and menacing stares, but I find Mara's fragility and her frustrating refusal to meet the eye of the camera more emblematic of Salander.

Lisbeth Salander is already a sexualized character.  Larsson is never shy about showing that - she has a lot of sex with various partners, and treats it in a very matter-of-fact manner; she's just as brusque about it in the book as she is in Fincher's film when she comes in Blomkvist's room and strips off her pants.  Perhaps the biggest indication that she is not as alienated from her body as Batyzel wants to think comes in the second book, when she decides she likes the fake boobs she's been wearing so much that she gets implants.  Her relationship to her body may be occasionally problematic, but she's certainly not afraid of it, and is aware of her appearance and appeal to others.

The last thing in Batyzel's article I want to address is this: "In a pivotal moment in the book, Lisbeth says: “I’m going to take him” and runs off as Blomkvist tries “to shout to her to wait.” In Fincher’s film, she asks him for permission, and only acts with his blessing. Perhaps we can accept the changes in how Mara presents Salander. But it’s unacceptable to take a woman made into a phenomenon because of her solitary strength and particular moral compass and drive, and turn her into a romantic girl saved and guided by a man."  Mara delivers this line (a simple "May I?" with a jab of her chin towards Stellan Skarsgard's retreating figure) in such a wry fashion that it's almost comical; she's deferring to the fact that technically Blomkvist hired her and thus defines the parameters of what her job entails, but there's no submission in her tone.  And let's not forget that this comes immediately after she herself saves Blomkvist with an incredibly satisfying golf club to Skargard's jaw.  She's no waif that needs saving; if anything, she's checking that Blomkvist is going to be alright left by himself after she goes after the villain.