Change Your Image
eltechno
Reviews
The Music Man (1962)
Amazingly authentic
Just watched the movie for the xxth time—it has gotten to be a 4th of July tradition. I was first exposed to this musical when my older sisters were cast in a high school theatrical version back before this movie was released.
What's not to like? Preston is brilliant. Jones is the perfect example of how the perfection of human beauty is enhanced with a beautiful voice. It's romantic and nostalgic and wonderful.
But what makes Music Man so special is that it is based on a cultural reality. Iowa (like the rest of the Big Ten turf) is awash in an incredible band music tradition. Those amazing bands that play halftime music at Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio State don't fall out of thin air—they are supported by a feeder system. Music Man was supposedly about Mason City and I would be shocked if they don't have a first-rate high school band to this day.
But all these bands had to start somewhere. Someone had to convince folks that they should spend money to teach their children to make music. Now it is unlikely that someone as smooth-talking as Hill ever existed, but someone had to perform the job he did. And anyone who was promoting a band was very likely to be something of a showman—it comes with the territory. So while Hill was an exaggeration, real Hills existed.
Note here, this isn't a story of a con-man who got away with one. Because it doesn't matter if Hill knew a note of music. If this had really happened, there would be no downside. Suddenly, the town would have a bunch of new instruments and in love with the idea their town could make it's own music. The town probably had enough Marions so they could get basic instruction started. Besides, it would take at least five years before the town band could make music anyway, so no one could have expected Hill to actually form a boy's band during the summer. Guys like Hill were important but hardly sufficient. The great youth bands in Iowa would wait until her universities started cranking out qualified music teachers.
The idea that Iowa could have developed from virgin grassland to a society with roads, schools, and a successful export economy in only 60 years (1850 to 1910 when this musical was supposedly set) implies a LOT of plain hard work. It is also implies promoters. And the guys who brought music to the Midwest were the sort of people who didn't wait for permission to get something started. It's why the sensible librarian / piano teacher Marion recognized the promoter's value to the community.
There's a lot of truth in this wonderful, silly, beautiful movie.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Why?
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty popular at our house. The trilogy has been read and all the three Scandinavian film versions have been watched. So it was with both anticipation and dread we watched the Hollywood version at the local cineplex yesterday. We walked away feeling puzzled as to why $100 million had been spent to make a movie that had already been brilliantly made only two years earlier. So tonight, we watched the Swedish version again for comparison which only re-enforced our opinions.
The biggest problem with the new version is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It was filmed in Sweden. Larsson was Swedish. Etc. Yet the Swedish elements that give the story coherence have gone AWOL in the latest incarnation. I guess this is not especially surprising considering that director Fincher wondered in a Swedish interview after filming in the north how anyone could live in such a climate. If someone is actually confused about THAT, not much else about Swedish society is going to make much sense—especially the complexities that allow that society to not merely survive but prosper.
The biggest problem centers around the casting of Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Blomqvist is supposed to be a Swedish idealist working for a lefty Stockholm rag. In the Swedish version of the film, all the nuances of such a person fill every scene so well it sometimes provokes a laughter of recognition. Craig, on the other hand, seems utterly clueless about how to play such a character. The man makes a great James Bond—a Swedish intellectual, not so much.
Because Craig doesn't get his character right, the whole relationship between Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander never develops properly. This is a women who has a bunch of issues with men yet grows to trust and eventually love him. But instead of character development, we are left with the unspoken assumption of "what woman wouldn't have the hots for Daniel Craig?" While this is what makes Bond movies work, it is bizarrely out of place for this plot.
And then there are the missing details that were included in the Scandinavian version. The nature of the Vanger family Fascism. The hints at why Salander is so screwed up. The role of computers in their search for the bad guy and a believable explanation for how things got done. The details of how people actually DO cope with the cold—old Henrik Vanger knows how and when to wear an expensive parka in the Swedish version.
Of course, what is really missing from the Hollywood version is the politics of modern Sweden. Most people think of Sweden, if at all, as this lefty, sex-crazed, micro-society that was defined forever by the Social Democrats. What this picture misses is the role of the Swedish right wing. This may be the country of Gunnar Myrdal and Dag Hammarskjold, but it is also a country of wealthy industrialists with global connections and ambitions. The trilogy goes into extensive detail about this reality and this whole movie is about an industrialist with a bunch of Fascist siblings. Yet except for a few lines, this social tension barely makes an appearance in Fincher's telling. For example, in the Swedish version, we learn that one of the Vangers was killed fighting as a volunteer in Finland's Winter War with USSR. This detail explains volumes but it is missing in the Hollywood remake.
Fincher makes a good movie but he cannot get over the contradictions of making a movie set in Sweden that has been stripped of all Swedishness. What remains is an adolescent action movie with a real James Bond in the lead role. So a $100 million was spent to make a new movie with roughly 15% of the intellectual content of a brilliantly made movie that is only two years old. I suppose it makes sense. If you are making a movie targeted at an audience that is too damn lazy to read subtitles, I suppose it is a good move to eliminate much of the intellectual content of the books and the original movie.
Who knows—maybe this thing will make money. My guess is that in most markets—especially those where both versions must use subtitles anyway—the Swedish version will be far more popular because there is so much more movie. It has more details and that makes it more believable. In the end, that should count for something.