The Spanish Prisoner

I recently saw all three of the films in the Millenium trilogy, which were released in 2009 in Sweden. These films are based on the bestselling novels by Stieg Larsson, who was a Trotskyist journalist in Sweden. These movies deal with issues of violence against women and of right-wing extremism.

The first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Oplev, is the most satisfying of the three, because it has the most tightly constructed story. A rich industrialist hires an investigative reporter named Michael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) to solve the 40-year-old disappearance of his teenage niece. Michael ends up being assisted by a computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who has a complicated back story that serves as a springboard for the next two films. The movie gradually builds suspense through the gradual accumulation of detail. It has some genuinely unnerving moments.

The next two films were directed by Daniel Alfredson. In The Girl Who Played with Fire, Michael has become the editor of a magazine called Millenium. He uncovers a human trafficking ring that involves members of the Swedish government. Meanwhile, Lisbeth is implicated in three murders. Michael is convinced that Lisbeth is innocent and that the murders are related to the human trafficking ring.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is the least satisfying of the films, even though it ties up loose ends from the first two. Lisbeth stands trial for murder, and Michael is racing against time to prove her innocence. in the middle of the film, a special government police forces suddenly appears like a deus ex machina to save them. Part of the fun of the first two films was watching Michael and Lisbeth battling their way through difficulties by themselves. There is also a subplot about Lisbeth’s deranged half-brother roaming the Swedish countryside killing people, which mostly jsut serves as a distraction from the main story.

I didn’t like some of the graphic violence in the first film, but after seeing the whole series, I have to admit it makes sense in terms of the over-arching themes and plot. I could nitpick about implausible details and lapses of logic, but I enjoyed the movies overall, especially because of their political overtones. Larsson implies that men with right-wing political views are inclined towards misogyny (this has something in common with Corey Robin’s “reactionary mind” thesis.). Think of Nietzsche and Newt Gingrich. The films also examine the corrupting influence of secrecy in government, a topic that has a good deal of relevance to the US.

The Descendents, directed and co-written by Antony Payne, has garnered high praise, but I was not all that impressed by it. It is a so-so family comedy/drama that aims for moments of emotional catharsis and falls short each time. Matt King (George Clooney) is a lawyer living in Honolulu. His wife, Elizabeth, is left in a coma after a motorboating accident. A doctor tells Matt that the coma is permanent and that according to Elizabeth’s living will they must take her off life support. Matt is left to take care of his two daughters, Alex (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), whom he has largely ignored up until now. Matt learns from Alex that Elizbeth was having an affair during the months before the accident. Matt becomes obsessed wit the idea of finding the man she was sleeping with, Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard). When he learns that Brian is on the island of Kaua’i, Matt goes there, dragging along his daughters and, inexplicably, Alex’s boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause), who says incredibly stupid things.

This film has a subplot that is slightly more interesting than the story of Matt’s stalking of Brian. Matt and his extended family of cousins are all descendents of a Hawaiian princess who married a white man (hence the film’s title). They have inherited a large tract of land on Kaua’i, which is held in trust. They are negotiating to sell the land to a developer, although some members of the family are opposed to this. Matt initially supports the sale, but he eventually decides against it. He realizes that he wants the land to remain pristine.

This film has some funny moments, but it also has overwrought “dramatic” speeches, many of them addressed to Elizabeth’s comatose body. (There are numerous close-up shots of Elizabeth’s face, the purpose of which is not clear to me.) This film might have worked better as a straight comedy, rather than as a “comedy/drama”.

In between scenes there are numerous shots of the beautiful Hawaiian countryside, with Hawaiian music playing on the soundtrack. Payne apparently thought that he should continually remind us that the story takes place in Hawaii. The effect is as though you were watching a travelogue. I was reminded of those old travel films I watched on Saturday afternoon TV when I was a kid. (And now we come to the enchanted land of Hawaii, with its happy natives…) One thing these shots do is pad out the film: it is almost two hours long. A feeling of exhaustion starts to set in towards the end. I began wishing that Elizabeth would hurry up and die, so the whole thing would finally be over. Does this make me a bad person? I prefer to think I am just a frustrated moviegoer.

Steve McQueen’s film, Shame, deals with the topic of sex addiction. I must admit I’ve always been skeptical about whether such a condition actually exists. However, I suppose if a person can become addicted to gambling, then it’s possible for someone to be addicted to sex.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is an executive at a company in New York. He engages in casual sex with prostitutes and women he meets in bars. He downloads pornography from the Internet. He even masturbates in the john at work. He seems incapable of having sex unless it’s impersonal. When, for example, he begins seeing a woman who works in his office, Marianne (Nicole Beharie), he ends up rejecting her.

Brandon’s life gets complicated when his emotionally unstable sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), suddenly moves into his apartment with him. The film implies that they had a traumatic experience in their childhoods, although we are never told what it was. When Sissy has sex with Brandon’s boss, David (James Badge Dale), Brandon becomes angry with her. Brandon seems to have a madonna/whore complex, which is no doubt related to his obsessive attitude towards sex and to his inability to have a relationship.

Fassbender gives a powerful performance. With his looks and gestures, he’s able to suggest complicated thoughts and emotions going on inside his character’s head. Shame contains graphic sex scenes; McQueen apparently wanted to make clear the joylessness of Brandon’s approach to sex. This film’s ending does not offer any redemption for Brandon. He seems trapped in his behavior. This is an interesting, if somewhat bleak, character study.

Sean Durkin’s first feature-length film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, is billed as a “psychological thriller”, which is misleading, for the film is actually a character study. There is suspense in the story, but it is never resolved.

The film begins with Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) running away from a Manson-like “cult” she has belonged to for the past two years. She moves in with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), and Lucy’s husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). The rest of the film interweaves scenes of Martha living with Lucy and Ted, and Martha’s life in the “family”. In the latter, she lives with a group of men and women who live on a farm in the Catskill mountains. The leader of the group is Patrick (John Hawkes), who spouts psycho-babble and plays mind games with the others. Female newcomers to the group are drugged and then raped by Patrick. One of the disturbing things about the film is how the group’s “family” feel masks a brutal male supremacy, and how Martha and the other women find ways to accept this.

To support themselves, members of the “family” sometimes break into peoples’ houses and steal from them. During one break-in, they kill the owner. This incident is apparently what causes Martha to leave, although the film is a little bit vague on this point.

Lucy and Ted are mostly kind to Martha, although they come across as emotionally cold. (It is implied that Martha joined the cult to get away from her family’s coldness.) It doesn’t help that Martha is unable to bring herself to talk about her experiences. She also begins to suffer from a fear that the “family” is pursuing her. Her behavior increasingly causes friction between her and Lucy and Ted, and it also creates strains in the latter’s marriage.

This film is well-made, and it has some powerful moments, but overall I found it claustrophobic and frustrating to watch. Because Martha never opens up to her sister about what happened to her in the “family”, they never interact in a way that is dramatically interesting. Durkin has said in interviews that he wanted to make the point that people who go through experiences with “cults” often have difficulty talking about them immediately afterwards. (Some psychologists and sociologists consider the term “cult” to be problematic. Durkin’s casual use of this word strikes me as a bit glib.) For all I know, this is true, but it’s a small point to make in a feature-length film. The story would have been more interesting if it took place over a longer period of time, and if it showed Martha finding some way to come to terms with her traumatic experiences.

I hope that in his next film Durkin is able to tell a more dramatically satisfying story.