Introduction:
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo follows Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, and his investigation in finding out what happened to Harriet Vander, a girl who disappeared 40 years ago. He recruits the help of a computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander, and together they uncover the real truth and immense corruption behind Harriet’s disappearance. I will be exploring the connections and/or similarities between Polanski’s Chinatown and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by referring to specific examples and direct quotations. Chinatown and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo share many similarities and connections between the plot, setting, characters, themes and techniques whilst also displaying certain differences.
Plot:
The plot in both films are similar but different when looking at certain aspects. Both stories revolve around uncovering the truth and discovering what’s really happening underneath the surface. In both, the lies and the betrayals quickly pile up. The way the truth is revealed is quite similar, but the cause of events that take place proves to be different in many ways. Lisbeth Salander says to Mikael “Everybody has secrets, the trick is just finding out what they are.” This quote sums up the importance of discovering the bitter truth behind people’s intentions in the film. Both films follow an investigator and his investigation into a twisted and puzzling murder, but in saying, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo follows two investigators which adds a deeper
In the novel A Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt, the readers are taken through a journey of one woman through her life’s highs and lows. Through the eyes of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, readers can truly understand the life of a working woman during this time period. Although life may not have been easy at times, Ning Lao shows the determination and passion she had for her family and for their lives to be better. The life of a working woman is never an easy life but adding in the social rules and opium addiction that effected each part of Ning Lao’s life made it much more difficult.
First, the plots of both works need to be discussed and explained how they are different. The stories of both works have basically the same
The setting of a story has a ponderous influence on the reader’s perception as it often justifies a character’s behavior. In Saboteur, the story takes place in communist China as witnessed by the concrete statue of Chairman Mao in the middle of the square. During this period, the communist leader Mao Zedong was ruling with authority and transforming the society based on a Marxist model. The author states that “the Cultural
Asians have been invisible in Hollywood lead roles. There have been many situations where another race has played an Asian role. When Asians do land a lead role it is very common to see pay difference between other ethnicity lead roles. Asian’s are very fimilar with service roles and not lead roles in films. Asian actors are still only a one percent of Hollywood’s leading roles. “According to a study that University of California, Los Angeles did out of the top 100 films in 2015, 49 of those films did not consist an Asian character and zero leading roles went to Asians (Levin 2017).” Asians seem be invisible when auditioning for lead roles.
Both stories tell touching, and quite frankly, heart breaking stories about what types of sacrifices must be made for the greater good. While both of these books are extremely similar in resolution, both of them share a multitude of systematic differences, especially when it comes to central women characters.. The Pearl is
Maltese Falcon, L.A. Confidential, and Chinatown are all considered a classic for noir films. Even though these films are not actually "black film" they are a Hollywood crime drama. Not all of them are in the Hollywood's classical film noir period from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. The Maltese Falcon is more like a classical noir film than the other two movies. Maltese falcon has all the traits a noir film should have. Like fatalism, the femme fatale, the male protagonists, shadows, gloomy, urban, corrupt, etc. Maltese Falcon is a story about a detective Spade whose night changed rapidly when a gorgeous women by the name of Miss Wanderly walks into his office. Spades partner, Miles and a man named Floyd Thursby are dead. Brigid represents the femme fatale as an independent, sexual, and destructive women. Brigid was in a romantic relationship with Thursby, who before his death was married to Miss Wanderly. Spades blamed for the death of Miles so he could be with Archers wife whom he had been having an affair with. That is when Joel Cairo comes into play, he offers spade $5000 for the falcon, which he doesn't have but plays along with to go deeper into this investigation. Through out this entire film Spade plays all parts, and every angle. Which is easy for spade being the anti-hero he is. playing by his own rules, but also seeming as if he knows everything that's going to happen. In the end we find out the corrupt truth that Brigid killed Archer and Thursby killed
Tracy Tzu, a Chinese professional woman, in the film, “Year of the Dragon (1985)”, was depicted as sexy and a woman with a seductive figure. In the movie, Tracy Tzu is shown moving around, sexily, showing her body to Mr. White who frequently visits her house. The Hollywood films characterize the Asian American women as sexy people, with seductive bodies, and mysterious actions. The Hollywood productions have been able to show the Asian American women as suppressed people, and groups which have been marginalized in the entire American society. The Asia American women have been depicted as people who cannot do anything on their own, where the roles they play in the Hollywood film show them as hopeless, people without a focus, people who only rely on the mercy of the mighty Western people among other issues.
The first theme that I would like to address regarding The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the violence against women included in it. I think that this is one of the biggest themes because it is very important and also plays a huge part in this story. For example, the author states that “finally the boy punched her in the face; it split open her lip and made her see stars” (Larsson, p.229). This quote I think is important because not only does it show another example of violence towards women, but it also shows that Lisbeth Salander has been subjected to
When you analyze the characters of each story you see many similarities. Each of the characters set a certain composure around many but many also know about what happens when they are behind closed doors. There is a mysterious outer and a horrific core.
David Fincher’s adaptation based “The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo” on the international bestselling psychological thriller novel of the same name by the late Stieg Larsson. Director Fincher has created a dramatic film, and it was extremely eye catching. From the opening moments, the trailer and the characters led viewers into the serious air of a crime drama. At the beginning of the film, there is a loud soundtrack of the electric guitar. While the vocalist is singing, a girl in the background is screaming with fire images and this made viewers think the movie was about crime and sex.
“Blomkvist studied her. She was barely four foot eleven and did not look as though she could put up much resistance if he were an assailant who had forced his way into her apartment. But her eyes were expressionless and calm” (Larsson 361). This scene from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is when Mikael Blomkvist, a famous journalist in Sweden, first meets with the hacking genius, Lisbeth Salander. Mikael pretty much describes her as an underdog in society, but what he doesn’t know is that she is one of the smartest and toughest woman he will probably ever meet. I would love to have somebody like Lisbeth as a friend because she is intelligent, knows that women deserve equal rights, and is not afraid to fight for what she believes in.
Many women today are getting biotics and surgery to keep their bodies looking great according to how Hollywood precedes women. This social issue is effecting American women the hardest by allowing them to go overseas and get certain surgeries that are not allowed here in the United States. Larsson’s connection to this issue might be harmless but it probably didn’t help young women reading this book. Like many other author’s Larsson isn’t the only author that betrays women in a bad way.
Employing household names, rather than less known actors, Jia reduces the possibility for audiences, especially the Chinese, of jumbling up the interviewing with acting. In other words, the intention of docuficiton is not to gloss over the conflicts between the natural and artificial, but to highlight the difference and to show the self-conscious “about mimicry in representation” (Deppman 205). The quality of self-reflexivity is most explicit in the case of Gu Minhua, played by veteran actor Joan Chen, who was given the nickname, Little Flower, because she resembles the heroine in the one-time popular movie, Little Flower, which in reality was starred by Joan herself. Later comes the scene where Gu Minhua is watching Little Flower. The juxtaposition between the character/actress and her representative work further parodies the boundary between the fact and fiction, and the authority of one single voice in the process of conceptualising the time-space. In the context of China, it confronts the hegemony of “revolutionary realism” since Mao era till today, referring to a powerful delusion to justify the Chinese past, and to generate political passions for the present and future (Donald 273). The revolutionary realism is similar to the Aristotelian drama in Brecht’s sense, which provides a “hypnotic experience” by alluring spectators to empathise with the heroic characters. The instructive theatre, by contrast, disentangles the audiences from the dramatic plot through
Films that are classified as being in the film noir genre all share some basic characteristics. There is generally a voice-over throughout the film in order to guide the audience's perceptions. These movies also involve a crime and a detective who is trying to figure out the truth in the situation. This detective usually encounters a femme fatale who seduces him. However, the most distinctive feature of the film noir genre is the abundance of darkness.
Many themes are depicted in these movies, and yet, the topic which has been most discussed is the exploration of identity. I will discuss in the following of my paper on three Hong Kong movies I pick, Full Moon in New York (Dir. Stanley Kwan, 1989), Her Fatal Ways (Dir. Alfred Cheung, 1990), and Comrades, Almost a Lover Story (Dir. Peter Chan, 1997) as reference to illustrate my idea into a deeper level.