The Girl in the Spider’s Web
There is a door, a way out of darkness; and while no one promises it is going to be easy, we can always walk away
Director:
Fede Alvarez
Lead Cast:
Claire Foy, Lakeith Stanfield, Sverrir Gudnason, Sylvia Hoeks, Christopher Convery, Stephen Merchant
Screenwriters:
Jay Basu, Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight, based on a novel by David Lagercrantz, with characters introduced in the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson
Producers:
Eli Bush, Elizabeth Cantillon, Amy Pascal, Scott Rudin, Søren Stærmose, Ole Søndberg
Editor:
Tatiana S. Riegel
Musical Director:
Roque Baños
Cinematographer:
Pedro Luque
Genre: Crime, Drama
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Location: Sweden, Germany
Running Time: 1 hr 55 min
Technical assessment: 3.5 ★★★✬✩
Moral assessment: 3.0 ★★★✩✩
CINEMA rating: V14
MTRCB rating: R13
The girl who rights wrongs is back. Computer-hacker and vigilante Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) steals a software called Firefall that can control where and when every nuclear missile in the world strikes. Swedish computer programmer Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) hired Salander to hack the US National Security Agency server to get Firefall when he realized he created a monster. But a crime syndicate called The Spiders is also after the program, which is encrypted with a password no one can decode, especially with Balder dead. Now protector by default to Balder’s son August (Christopher Convery), Salander is pursued by US security agent Ed Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), the Swedish police, and The Spiders, even as she gets help from journalist and former lover Mikael Blomkvisk (Sverrir Gudnason). But the Spiders seem to know how to hit where it hurts the most: they bring the battle home, to the place Salander ran away from as a child because of her abusive father, leaving her sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) behind.
In this film, we’re a spectator looking from above on Lisbeth and Camilla or watching them from afar as they exhume the hatred and anger of the past. You saved other people, but you never came back to save me, Camilla said. Then our gaze closes in on Lisbeth: Because you chose him (father). The scene is skillfully done, set in the blinding white of snow. While The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) was so much about Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvisk, here it’s all about Foy’s Lisbeth Salander. The downside is that Gudnason’s Mikael is muted while Salander’s character unfolds: the terror she suffered from a father who abused her and her sibling, her bond with sister Camilla, and the person she has become — a vigilante who brings down powerful men who take advantage of women. The Girl in the Spider’s Web is a story of inner conflict, and credit goes to Foy, Convery as August, and Hoeks as Camilla for showing us what goes on inside them without saying much.
The film is an allegory of the suspense evoked by doors and the unknown that is behind them. Some open the door and take the leap, like Lisbeth who jumped from the balcony of their home. Some don’t, like Camilla who is always standing by the door but never moving forward. There are two kinds of fathers in the film: the first is Balder, August’s father, who rectifies a wrong. The second is Lisbeth and Camilla’s father, the pedophile and psychopath who never reformed. There are also two kinds of evil propelling the story: one is megalomania which threatens the life of the planet itself, the other is the hidden crime of incest which scars the victims almost beyond redemption. The film is dark — Lisbeth’s vigilantism of killing abusive men is savage, and the end does not justify the means — but it also gives hope. There is a door, a way out of darkness; and while no one promises it is going to be easy, we can always walk away. — MOE
