I read the first two books of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy a couple years ago and I’ve just started the third. Why did I wait so long to crack open the copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest gathering dust on the bookshelf? Because, even though the first novels were entertaining, the lack of editing was too distracting – I kept getting pulled out of the story by redundancies and unnecessary exposition. What made me pick up the third novel? The latest movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
David Fincher does a great job of directing but it’s the work of the screenwriter, Steve Zaillian, that makes this 158-minute movie a thrill to watch. Zaillian cut what wasn’t essential to the story and left in the elements that make the novel so entertaining. (The script also makes one significant change that I won’t go into here lest I spoil it for you.) With the fat cut away, the story emerges leaner, meaner – and better.
The movie reminded me that Larsson created a fantastic character in Lisbeth Salander.
Characters grab our imagination when they work against our expectations, and this is certainly the case with Salander. She is petite and young and we expect her to be vulnerable yet she is fierce; she is (apparently) mentally incapacitated yet also brilliant. Above all, though, is the fact that this character so brutally treated by powerful male villains uses her strengths to get back at her tormentors in ingenious ways. This is a female action figure no one had seen until Larsson gave her to us. The screenwriter pared the story to its essentials, thereby letting Salander shine more brightly, but it was Larsson who imagined her into life. Back home from the movie theater, I decided that for a character like Salander, I could put up with poor editing. After all, no book is perfect.
I’m about halfway through Hornet and despite glossing over several passages of unnecessarily detailed background, I am enjoying it. However, the best thing about this trilogy, our tattooed heroine, has spent over two hundred pages lying in a hospital bed doing basically nothing. I hope Larsson gets her out of bed soon. But I have no doubt that even if he doesn’t, a good screenwriter will.
For more on the Larsson/Salander phenomenon, see
- Is the Hoopla over Stieg Larsson Undeserved?
- The Author Who Died and Left a Story Better Than His Blockbuster Novels
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