Friday Night at the Arthouse: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or Men Who Hate Women)

Was in my favorite big city small town theatre (in a corner of Scottsdale) watching a lot of Men Who Hate Women, the Swedish movie based on the first of a trilogy of crime novels. The remaining two films should arrive later in the year.

Oh and what hate there was in the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the release title for the above movie. Without revealing too much of the story, I will begin by saying that you should see it very early in the day, so the rest of the day can be spent reprogramming your brain with happier, brighter thoughts. The unrelenting evil, involving multiple rapes and torture, brings you down low, and while you are comforted by the fact that it is all a mere movie based on a novel by now dead Swedish author Stieg Larrson, in the back of your mind you recall that there are actual fellow humans out in the real world capable of, and filled with, an unrelenting lust for evil. As surely as you crave some desired treat, someone, somewhere, has a twisted appetite and seeks satiation. And the thought just breaks you down in sadness. Where is the love?

In the lobby of the theatre a screen was showing a film in current release called "Babies" which documents the early lives of four babies around the world. I looked at the smiling faces, and wondered what combination of what can turn such cuteness, purity, baby happiness and funny willfulness, into the type of horror of a human that we see as adults. We grow hungry as we grow, and greedy, and sometimes warped. How do we travel from light to darkness, and so willingly?

Some lay this all--the evil--at the door of craziness as a means to set distance. "Those people are just crazy" we say, knowing we could never go so far, or perpetrate such acts. We say this under the light of history and the evidence of the nature of Germany during World War Two, when quite obviously the population was not massively crazy. Humans are capable of such variation in good and evil, ignorance and bliss.

In Dragon, both Nazis and the warping of religion play a role, though the film seems to indicate that evil is not in the end the application of some system, but rather, purely the choice of people to do wrong; it suggests you were evil before you became a Nazi, or evil before you sought Old Testament verse to justify visiting evil upon others. We see this in the movie because most of the men are simply evil, regardless of reasoning... there are appetites, and the men act on their appetites and inclinations in planned and random action.

Most people won't go and see a small film like this, and half of those who do might be horrified at the brutality. There was a group of women in the lobby castigating one of their group for choosing it. "Here we are thinking it's a family film," she joked, "and it's this crazy movie." I paraphrase here, but what most perplexed me was that they didn't seem to see past the violence, or connect it to some larger theme or real world reflection, and despite the heavy handed message that men are quite trashy to women. There conversation began and ended with movie choice, not movie meaning.

Seeing films this brutal is rewarding though not always a joy. You are released from Hollywood's recycled stars and locations and plot points, and taken inside new places. I was unfamiliar with all the actors in the movie and thus, and in addition to their actual acting ability, was transported into something real. The locales in Europe and the lack of typical Hollywood visual dynamics made for true storytelling, which is why I go to see a movie in the first place. I want to be taken away from my real world, or the fake real world I see on television each day, and into another real world with its own authenticity. But I also like my movies to warm my heart, and lead me forward with hope and faith, and to fight the darkness and decay.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo certainly transports you over its two hour plus running time. You may not be too thrilled with where it takes you along the way, but it's hard to leave the movie as a man without a renewed desire to treat humanity with a little more love.

(Here is a female perspective on the book the film was based on. It's quite accurate in its judgments).

Obama Gains Financial Reform Win

It's getting harder for Obama's critics to make a coherent analysis of his achievements. Early on he was labeled the empty suit, but his ability to get things done makes such a claim ridiculous, especially when you are simultaneously saying that he will bring diabolical change to the United States.

After a certain amount of do-nothingism and debate, and under the President's urging, the Senate finally followed up with its own version of financial reform. The complaint is that it is insufficient in all the wrong areas, but what cannot be ignored is that this is the second major legislative win for the president. He is doing something, if not exactly what his supporters and detractors want. This follows his health care reform, and if we add various peripheral actions--the nuke deal with Russia, getting his Supreme Court picks onto the bench--we cannot ignore his efforts to make a positive mark.

It's clear in both pieces of legislative victories (health, financial) that the average American remains a central part of whom he hopes to help. Republicans challenged the idea of a consumer protection agency, and also succeeded in getting a financial destabilization fund (financed by the industry) off the table in the Senate version of the bill. Amazingly, they pushed the lie that the fund was a taxpayer bailout fund, when in fact, the new version in the Senate bill, which requires the government to pay for liquidations of troubled firms after the fact is the purer stiff arm to the taxpayer. Hopefully in reconciliation, the House version takes the lead. President Obama's desire to have financial firms pre-pay for their own liquidation was laudable.

The trading of derivatives on unowned assets remained largely unchanged, and yet, one could argue that such bets on the housing market were a large cause of the financial meltdown. When the value of the bets surpasses the actual market in question, one wonders if such should be permitted wholesale.

But the fact that we do have a focus on consumer protection is testament to Obama's considerable efforts to actually touch people in their daily lives.

(The New York Times breaks down the details nicely here.)

We also wonder how long it will take Goldman to make its way toward the door and abandon its bank holding company status, since proprietary trading becomes more restricted under the new legislation under consideration. We've said this was long the likely path that firm would take, should the new laws allow it.

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In other news, we are pretty sure North Korea sunk a South Korean warship via missile, and exactly how you manage to handle this and paper it over should be interesting. Since we can't imagine them going to war, and yet can't imagine ignoring such an incident, we assume some verbal and diplomatic alchemy is on tap. One of those frying pan/fire, damned do/damned do not situations. South Korea promises prudence.