Hacker Cinema
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Män som hatar kvinnor
2009 · Film · 152 min
Part of The Millennium Collection
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
Swedish thriller based on Stieg Larsson's novel about a male journalist and a young female hacker. In the opening of the movie, Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged publisher for the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case brought by corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Nevertheless, he is hired by Henrik Vanger in order to solve a cold case, the disappearance of Vanger's niece
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6 comments on Hacker News
Hollywood undoubtedly has more money, but you genuinely have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the quality of what gets made.
So many things that hollywood produces are remakes of foreign movies, except with an order of magnitude more money poured in and palate-switched for american audiences. (which, due to the sheer volume of content that comes out of hollywood- becomes the default international palate).
The entertainment industry in Sweden (girl with the dragon tattoo, a man called Otto) and the UK (the countries I have lived in) is undoubtedly very strong, even comparatively poor (not intended as a slur here) India is quite famous for its bombastic action movies.
Russia too, has some of the most thought provoking movies that I've ever seen. Leviathan and Durak- they even have your "fun" action style movies (Brat and Brat 2 for fantastic examples).
To say that Hollywood produces more and thus sometimes better, and that other counties make slop betrays two things:
1) Hollywood steals vigorously from other countries.
2) Other countries produce works that do not translate well for american audiences.
As a fan of the "Millennium" Swedish TV miniseries, with a fantastic Noomi Rapace as the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo[a], I found this piece fascinating.
I knew very little about "Scandinavian Noir," and in fact didn't even think of it as a genre until reading the OP.
Now, I want to read the "Beck" novels and also watch its Swedish TV/film adaptions, if there are any.
--
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(miniseries) -- In my humble opionion, the Swedish TV adaptations of Stieg Larsson's books are much better than the Hollywood movie adaptations, which tend to be much flashier and have more special effects but don't feel or bite quite as hard as the Swedish TV miniseries.
Talk to an older Swede.
If you're young, and talk mostly to young Swedes, it's a different story.
Actually, one of the reasons that this may be 'contentious' is because of 'startup culture'.
When I say 'business' - you might be thinking 'startup'.
Surely - it's 'cool' among young people to be at a startup, doing some cool thing like 'games' or 'music'.
But the attitude towards most business, by that I mean what is really 99% of the private economy is still pernicious.
Cultural example - do you know the film 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' - the Swedish version? The film is about the follies and evil of an old Swedish noble/industrial family. In the film they are all portrayed as bad, they hate each other, they are greedy, one is a rapist/murderer. Arguably this could be 'populist' anywhere, but it's I think anecdotally relevant for a Nordic country. Across Europe 'business' remember, is the 'bourgeoisie' - i.e. one of the 'offending' classes of 'the revolution'. The view that 'rich people' are basically entirely get their wealth from the economic enslavement of the 'working people' is a cultural epitaph there - and across Europe, to varying degrees.
The idea that people can 'create things of value' an 'exchange them' and 'create jobs' - was not widely held. Wealth was a 'zero sum game' - some had it, other did not and that was it.
As further indirect support, I'll offer the rise of the Social Democrats during the early 20th century, who had enormous power (near total) and influence for decades - and become so entrenched that the were almost de-facto the nature of Swedish/Nordic (and to some extent European) political culture. This did not happen quite as much in the UK, and certainly not in Canada, Australia or the USA.
During the 1980's-1990's they underwent a series of reforms to undo some of the 'socialization of the economy' (same time as Thatcher, Reagan). Same thing happened in Germany in the 1990's, but on different terms.
Anyhow - 'startups among young people' - surely. And surely nowadays the government 'gets' that startups are 'good'. But the cultural aversion to 'big business', I believe, still exists if you factor in all generations, government, institutions etc...
> MUBI has spent years cultivating that audience with a selection of artsy, obscure films that don't usually appear on Netflix or Hulu. (It originally launched under the name "The Auteurs," before rebranding in 2010 as MUBI — a play on accented pronunciations of "movie," and after a city in Nigeria.) On Monday, the titles available on the company's US site included Bernardo Bertolucci's 1970 classic The Conformist, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, by Chan-wook Park. Occasionally, it features more mainstream movies like Sin City, currently available on the French site, though the majority are far more obscure. A new title is added every day as another drops out, meaning that only 30 films are available for streaming at any given time.
In defense of Netflix (not that the "Goliath" in this comparison needs defenders)...but "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" has been available on streaming Netflix for, as far as I remember, the time that I've been a customer, which was basically when streaming started. "Mr. Vengeance" is the first in "The Vengeance Trilogy" that includes the more well-known "Oldboy" [1] and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance"...I think the entire trilogy has been on Netflix for years (including the regrettable American remake of Oldboy, but can't fault Netflix for having it...)
Even as Netflix's blockbuster selection has faded (with the ending of the Starz deal, and in comparison to HBONow)...I've never had a complaint about their selection of the most well-known and recent foreign indies. "Let the Right One In", "The Hunt", "Force Majeure", The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy...though sure, they could always have more (and obviously, I don't know enough of the foreign scene to know all of the gems that they don't have).
But I imagine the problem for Netflix isn't that they do a shitty job of curation...but that the deals end up not being financially valuable to them, as it was in the Starz case. Ang Lee's movies ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Lust, Caution") were long-time selections, but I've just noticed they are no longer available for streaming.
edit: if you liked Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is definitely worth checking out. But whereas Oldboy was entertaining on top of being emotionally extreme...I'd argue "Mr. Vengeance" is much more of an artistic achievement, but at the cost of being "entertaining". In fact, I get a little ill at the thought of re-watching it, even though I own it on DVD.
[1] http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005 -- Ebert's review here is so glowing that not only did it get me to seek out Oldboy, but it changed the way I think of foreign movies in comparison to Hollywood.
I think you'll find a bunch of stuff on the pirate bay. Off the top of my head I can think of these Scandinavian shows and movies that are all at least decent if not great:
Trollhunter // The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (trilogy) // Let the Right One In // Cold Prey [Fritt Vilt] (trilogy) // The Bridge [Bron/Broen] 2 seasons // The Killing [Forbrydelsen] 3 seasons // Kon-Tiki // Dead Snow // Headhunters // Easy Money [Snabba Cash] // Norwegian Ninja
IIRC, the UK's existing pornography laws make a distinction between, for example, partial nakedness (page 3 of the sun - not regulated) and sexual nakedness (what you think it is - regulated, restrictions on who can buy, what a licensed shop is, etc). There is also a separate rating above 12, 15, 18, which classifies films as subject to pornography controls or not. Internet sites are completely unregulated compared to video tapes/DVDs, under these laws, which is why they're updating them.
I suspect that films (girl with the dragon tattoo springs to mind) would not be subject to it because they aren't presenting the rape as sexual; it is seen as a crime in the film, which isn't primarily a film about rape/sex (obviously I can't speak for all films.)
The grey area and line drawing are a problem with laws like this, though, as several people have pointed out - I am sure there are films (horrible ones that I haven't seen) that come close to glorifying rape, or depicting it as desirable/sexual - whether those would be part of the law would be up to either parliament to specify, or up to the courts to decide later in case law.