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Can any of my Swedish-speaking Friends tell me what the Swedish title means? Saw this last night at the Harvard Exit with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
holyoutlaw. It's a tough, brutal thriller, once again (like the first one) very much focused on the abuse of women by unfeeling men. I still feel that these movies flirt with exploitation. They are howls of protest against the abuse of women, and yet they don't shrink from showing some beautiful skin themselves. This time a lesbian sex scene between two hot babes was somewhat balanced by a brief glimpse of some middle-aged male (and female) flesh, it's true, but I have a feeling I know which scenes will be screen-capped for the internet.
Still, I have enjoyed both movies, and what is perhaps most compelling about them is the character of Lisbeth Salander, who is the "girl" of the titles -- genius goth headcase. She has a history of horrific abuse at the hands of men, and I have a feeling Larsson knew some women like her. I certainly do. Her character reminds me of the real people I know. There's a great scene early in this movie when she visits an old friend after leaving no word for a year or more, and he complains, "You treat your friends like shit." She gets up and leaves. She cannot meet people's needs on that level.
The three books that Larsson completed before he died are called a trilogy, and this one definitely picks up story elements of the first one. However, the first one wrapped its story up in such a way that it could have worked as a stand-alone, even though it left questions unanswered. This one doesn't work so well as a stand-alone, although that has some advantages. The first one was a revenge fantasy in which Lisbeth was a superhero performing righteous acts and getting away not only scot-free but with a bag of loot for her troubles. Here she pays a heavy price for her heroics, and it's unclear whether she has even achieved revenge, let alone justice.
This morning I was thinking about this movie in contrast to Winter's Bone, which is also a kind of crime thriller about the sins of the father and abuse of the mother, told from the daughter's perspective. The Lisbeth Salander stories are much more violent than Winter's Bone, but they are also much more fantastic in the sense of wish-fulfillment. Lisbeth has superpowers, at least compared to Ree -- she's a computer hacker, a kick-boxer, a vigilante who is able to turn the tables on forces with far more resources than herself, able to steal those resources to make use of them for her own purposes. But they are different kinds of stories, even if they are both character studies in their own ways.
holyoutlaw. It's a tough, brutal thriller, once again (like the first one) very much focused on the abuse of women by unfeeling men. I still feel that these movies flirt with exploitation. They are howls of protest against the abuse of women, and yet they don't shrink from showing some beautiful skin themselves. This time a lesbian sex scene between two hot babes was somewhat balanced by a brief glimpse of some middle-aged male (and female) flesh, it's true, but I have a feeling I know which scenes will be screen-capped for the internet.Still, I have enjoyed both movies, and what is perhaps most compelling about them is the character of Lisbeth Salander, who is the "girl" of the titles -- genius goth headcase. She has a history of horrific abuse at the hands of men, and I have a feeling Larsson knew some women like her. I certainly do. Her character reminds me of the real people I know. There's a great scene early in this movie when she visits an old friend after leaving no word for a year or more, and he complains, "You treat your friends like shit." She gets up and leaves. She cannot meet people's needs on that level.
The three books that Larsson completed before he died are called a trilogy, and this one definitely picks up story elements of the first one. However, the first one wrapped its story up in such a way that it could have worked as a stand-alone, even though it left questions unanswered. This one doesn't work so well as a stand-alone, although that has some advantages. The first one was a revenge fantasy in which Lisbeth was a superhero performing righteous acts and getting away not only scot-free but with a bag of loot for her troubles. Here she pays a heavy price for her heroics, and it's unclear whether she has even achieved revenge, let alone justice.
This morning I was thinking about this movie in contrast to Winter's Bone, which is also a kind of crime thriller about the sins of the father and abuse of the mother, told from the daughter's perspective. The Lisbeth Salander stories are much more violent than Winter's Bone, but they are also much more fantastic in the sense of wish-fulfillment. Lisbeth has superpowers, at least compared to Ree -- she's a computer hacker, a kick-boxer, a vigilante who is able to turn the tables on forces with far more resources than herself, able to steal those resources to make use of them for her own purposes. But they are different kinds of stories, even if they are both character studies in their own ways.
