Perhaps my contrarian tendencies are fulminating again: whereas for many commentators this second instalment in the initial native-made adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” marked a point of parting between casual viewers and fans, I must confess I enjoyed it more than its predecessor, the popular and interesting, but near-fatally confused, 2009’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which made Larsson’s novels immeasurably more famous and has now earned itself a big fat Hollywood remake. …Played With Firelacks the fascinating motif which rescued the original from being overripe trash: hero Mikael Blomkvist falling under the spell of a dichotomous contrast, between the haunting, long-lost ‘60s blonde, constantly gazed at in longing and mystery through photos and films, and her lethal, damaged, vengeful spiritual descendant, Lisbeth Salander. But in its place is a story that dovetails the themes Larsson was trying to dramatise with far more integral effect, the acting is better focused, and director Daniel Alfredson’s (brother to the currently more famous Tomas) handling is tighter. This episode is beset by rotten edits, but avoids expositional and camera gimmicks, and Alfredson maintains, for the most part, an unobtrusive approach, and actually proves superior in drawing out the material’s basis, which, whilst dressed up in contemporary fashions and techno-geek terms, is nonetheless based squarely in a deeply carnal sensibility that’s practically medieval, depicting as it does apotheosis through physical and moral suffering. The film’s many characters, and Lisbeth in particular, can only truly find actuation in violence, whether it’s being inflicted or received, in a tale that circles inwards towards a study in Oedipal rage conflated with a socio-political inflation of the same rage.
In short, these films are not really such polar opposites of the Swedish film industry’s classic Ingmar Bergman template as one might think at first, and this is also their key deviation from the template of lefty Scandinavian social-realist crime fiction, even if Larsson and the filmmakers never quite realised it. More ties to the classic Swedish dramatic tradition of intense portraits of the human experiential crucible are sustained by the presence of the great Per Oscarsson, in his last role before his untimely death, star of the canonical 1966 adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, as Lisbeth’s former state guardian, a compassionate man who’s been left part-paralysed by a stroke and completely excised from official interest in Lisbeth (as opposed to the attentive Blomkvist). His presence, and the way it is utilised, elucidates an interesting idea, that the welfare state is only good for your welfare when guided by principles and people of decency, and it can be turned into another apparatus of controlled social narcotisation. …Played With Fire trots in far fewer cornball bestseller cues than its predecessor, although plenty still slip by, with a new minor hero who’s a mixed martial arts enthusiast, an arch-villain who’s a former KGB agent, and a hulking offsider who’s one of the most striking monstrous goons since Jaws in the ‘70s Bond movies. The series’ basic conceit, of trying to conflate state and corporate paternalist behaviour with a more intimate, personally violent version of the same thing, is both calculatedly paranoid and more than a little reductive, and yet it’s also coherently conceived and executed, at least insofar as Larsson’s tales offer up characters who constantly, conveniently illustrate the matters at hand: abusive officials of state, medicine, and law enforcement whose conspiracies hamper justice and victimise society’s vulnerable members.
Here, Lisbeth becomes the fall guy for a neatly composed coup of conspiracy by secretive villains, who try to kill several birds with one stone. She is set up for the murders of two young, likeable characters, Dag Svensson (Hans-Christian Thulin) and Mia Bergman (Jennie Silfverhjelm), who are so young and cute and idealistic when introduced you just know they’re bound for a sticky end. That pair were working with Blomkvist’s Millennium Magazine to expose a sexual slavery ring whose operations had been patronised by many high-ranking officials, and Lisbeth’s main foil from the first film, Bjurmann (Peter Andersson), the creep of a state-appointed guardian who raped her and then had the tables turned. The connection between the two crimes requires following disparate trails of evidence towards a common source, lurking in Lisbeth’s history. Lisbeth’s return from her sojourn abroad as a tarted-up multi-millionaire sees her better tanned and distinctly healthier in affect, but no more soothed and relaxed in mind. Lisbeth is a distinctive variation on an old kind of hero, one who practically transcends mortality through her steadfast refusal to be defeated, a point vividly illustrated in the finale when she literally crawls her way out of a premature grave.
Noomi Rapace’s performance is better judged this time around, clearly illustrating the disparity between Lisbeth in motion and in rest, a creature of brilliant instinct who knows exactly what to do when facing down hulking thugs and evading law enforcement, but for whom the everyday world and everyday emotions are faintly perplexing, even upsetting, in their lack of scale and clarity. Her sometime lover and helpmate Blomkvist spends most of the film unfortunately stuck in a holding pattern of fending off the police and trying to grasp onto the elusive Lisbeth’s furiously flittering coattails long enough to aid her. But at least this time around Blomkvist’s day job is more important to the plot, which also far more fluently combines Lisbeth’s traumas and motivations with the compulsory abused females subplot, here being the victims of the sex slave ring which finally proves to be being orchestrated by Lisbeth’s scarred Russian thug father Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), and her hulking half-brother, Ronald Niedermann (Mikael Spreitz), who provides the muscle. Meanwhile Blomkvist contacts Lisbeth’s kickboxing instructor Paolo Roberto (Swedish martial arts celebrity and occasional film actor Roberto playing himself, sort-of), asking him to help make contact with Lisbeth’s French sometime-girlfriend Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi) who’s prone to showing off members of the police force and journalists with extreme prejudice. In an amusingly violent set-piece, Niedermann kidnaps Miriam, and is chased down by Roberto, whose practised pummelling of the nerve-addled beast works no effect, and Roberto gets solidly beaten up instead.
The Girl Who Played With Firebears traces of some apparent influences on Larsson, in particular Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004), reproducing that tale’s pattern of an inevitable, inward circling drawing Lisbeth into a confrontation with a corrupt father figure/abuser, and a burial alive that she improbably escapes. This second entry is certainly not faultless: there are some woefully long bows drawn in the story, it’s slow, and, like its predecessor, the visual lexicon is however not that of the cinema but television. I’m not sure if some fine exemplars of clunky dialogue, like Blomkvist’s defensive salvo at the Jewish cop Bublanski (Johan Kylén) heading the investigation targeting Lisbeth, “She hates men who hate women,” are a by-product of clumsy translation or were bad originally. The episode tosses in another of the series’ signature moments where Lisbeth, this time entirely transforming herself into a wraith of vengeance with a pancake-slathered face with one blood-red smear for extra cabalistic effect, ties up and tortures a man whose thoughtless exploitation of women supposedly justifies Lisbeth getting her own rocks off with such behaviour. This served to not make me cheer, as is intended, but instead made me realise how narrow and contrived the series’ moral schema is. The notion that Lisbeth may be a version of what she hates presents an interesting idea, but not one this series’ basic revenge fantasy exploitation is interested in, or capable, of exploring.
What it does explore, however, and explores well, is that combination of fascination and revulsion towards physical violence and sexuality, and how strangely fluid the two can be. Alfredson’s calmer, meatier direction helps draw this out. Towards the start of …Played With Fire there’s a strikingly carnal, bracingly tender interlude between Lisbeth and Miriam. Unlike in the first film, Lisbeth’s bisexuality isn’t just a throwaway gag, but a part of her complex identity, and Rapace gets to show at several junctures throughout the film, including here, an edge of befuddled vulnerability to Lisbeth, rather than mere alienated fanaticism. One seemingly off-hand scene carries enormous weight, in which Lisbeth decides to grant Blomkvist access to her apartment via remote control, a metaphorical access into her life she’s never allowed anyone. The film pulls off one nice moment of ironic brutality, as Lisbeth bests two seamy bikers employed by Niedermann, and is next glimpsed riding down the highway, having appropriated one defeated foe’s bike and apparel, in her element as a highway-cruising bad-ass and wearing her enemies’ apparel, like a victorious, unreconstructed tribal warrior. It’s a brief interlude of liberation for Lisbeth, in between flashback nightmares and her final passion and resurrection where she actively conflates Christ-like parallels with Viking myth. As storytelling, the Millennium series is barely choate and often clumsy; as neo-mythology, it’s something much more interesting.
