I recently had a chance to watch a good movie, a murder mystery. Best of all, genealogy played an important part in the solution to the crime. Then, to make it even more interesting, the movie's producers are holding an online scavenger hunt where YOU could win prizes. Details are available at the end of this article.
Since the movie involves genealogy, I was offered a chance to see the movie in advance of its release date. The obvious hope was that I might write about it in this newsletter. After having watched this film, I cannot imagine NOT writing about it! It is that good. This is a movie plot that I will long remember. I would have written about it even if I hadn't been asked to.
Disclaimer: I'm not being paid to write about it. This is simply a good movie that I enjoyed.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title in Swedish: "Män som hatar kvinnor" - "Men Who Hate Women") is an award-winning crime novel by the late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson, the first in his "Millennium Trilogy." The novel won Sweden's Glass Key Award in 2006 for best crime novel of the year; as well as the 2008 Boeke Prize. The book has been on the New York Times' Bestseller list for weeks. Larsson was posthumously awarded the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for International Author of the Year in 2008.
The novel contains a genealogical table of five generations of a family in Sweden who are under investigation. However, the movie does not contain the genealogy table, and I struggled a bit to keep track of the characters. However, keeping track of this family's genealogy is vital to understanding the subtleties of the plot.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the story of a 40-year-old unsolved apparent murder of a 16-year-old girl. The story revolves around Mikael Blomkvist, journalist, publisher, and amateur sleuth. He is hired to see if he can solve the 40-year-old disappearance of the young girl.
Blomkvist soon teams with Lisbeth Salander, a violent and antisocial, but extremely intelligent, computer hacker and researcher who specializes in investigations of persons. The unlikely couple of Blomkvist and Salander form another classic detective pair where the hunters become the hunted. Together, they soon discover a long string of serial murders over many years, perhaps too many years to be the work of one person. Many family members are suspected, but nobody seems to know the truth.
Not only does the story involve genealogy, but it also involves computers. Amongst other things, you will see some nifty work in PhotoShop that reveals clues that had been invisible to the police 40 years earlier. Salander also spends a lot of time in the archives researching old events.
I have to tell you that I loved this movie. Once I started watching it, I was spellbound. That's saying a lot, as this movie has all the dialogue in Swedish but with English subtitles. It takes a lot to keep me interested in a Swedish movie with subtitles, but this one delivered. I loved it!
The movie includes sex, nudity, and violence. If you object to such content, this isn't a movie for you. You also will not want to take the children to this movie.
I won't spoil the ending, but I am going to give you some advice: if you have an opportunity to see this picture, watch closely as the characters weave in and out of the story. Then stay for the ending. You won't guess it in advance.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opened in Scandinavia in February-March of 2009. So far, more than 2.5 million people in those countries have seen it. In Norway and Denmark, it is the most viewed Swedish film ever, and in Sweden total admissions are above one million. Not bad for a country of roughly nine million. It will appear in American theaters on March 19th.
If you have a chance, see this film. You won't forget it. A list of theaters where it is being shown may be found at http://dragontattoofilm.com/now-playing/.
For more information about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, go to www.dragontattoofilm.com.
Here is an announcement from the producers of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:
Join the Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT - an internet wide scavenger hunt tied to the feature film launch of bestselling book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Win great prizes – free movie tickets, books, movie soundtrack, posters and more. To join the contest, start at the beginning of the HUNT by visiting www.dragontattoofilm.com/contest for full details and the first clue. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is in theaters near you starting March 19th.
THE NEXT CLUE:
Work it! If you’re a working mom like blogger Aliza Sherman, this is the site to visit for community, advice and the occasional film review (cough, cough) from a mom’s perspective, in this case an Entrepreneur Mom.The Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT ends on April 1, 2010.
