Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The: Original Extended Version (Blu-ray) (2009)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Menu Animation & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2009
Running Time	178:46 (Case: 180)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Niels Arden Oplev
Studio Distributor	Nordisk Film Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Michael Nyqvist Noomi Rapace Lena Endre Sven-Bertil Taube Peter Haber Peter Andersson Marika Lagercrantz
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	$29.95	Music	Jacob Groth

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Swedish DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English (Burned In)	Smoking	Yes, as a plot point
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     It is not going to surprise anyone who knows me or enough about me to hear that certain foreign cultures and languages interest me to a great degree. Most specifically, the alternative cultures of such places as Scandinavia or Japan, and how they compare to certain alternative cultures in places like the English-speaking nations. Now, I have a few things to rant about in conjunction with this film and disc, so please bear with me.

     One thing I find both disturbing and annoying when unregulated commercial interests attempt to "translate" a foreign piece of work into English is how far they go out of their way to lose the proper meaning. Låt den rätte komma in means something very different (and far more grown-up) than "Let Me In" ("right one" figures prominently in the real title). And in this pertinent example, Män som hatar kvinnor is not even in the same sport as "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (if you have not already figured it out, the words Men, Hate, and Women figure in the real title, as one would expect of Stieg Larsson). As a point of comparison, though, I have to cite my favourite mistranslation as partial defence of Dragon Tattoo. C'est arrivé près de chez vous means "Man Bites Dog" to some imbecile in a studio? ("This Has Happened Near You" is a far more evocative title in English, I am sure many literate people will agree.)

     Unfortunately, this casts suspicion all over the translations offered of the dialogue and the novel texts in this country. Far too often, the translation available here draws suspicion of Reg Keeland using the word(s) he thought locals might accept or like rather than the one that matches the meaning Stieg Larsson had in mind when he wrote the text. To draw a parallel example from my own writings, it is somewhat like saying "Surexi, meus parvulus, vestri malum es venia" means something like "please get better, this whole place loves you", as opposed to "Arise my child, your misdeeds are forgiven". And I cannot help but get the feeling this happens, and too often at that, with the subtitles offered on this BD.

     Anyway, on to the plot proper. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a journalist. More importantly, he is one of the heads at a magazine going by the name of Millenium, and he enjoys going after the worst white-collar criminals. Essentially, he is the kind of person our world needs more of. Early on in the proceedings, he is convicted of libel against a magnate who is so transparently dirty it obviously causes him and his staff some anguish. This is especially the case for Erika Berger (Lena Endre), his second in command whom he leaves in charge whilst he goes on a working holiday to sort out what to do. During Christmas with family, Mikael is 'phoned by a representative of the Vanger group. Speaking on behalf of its head, Henrik (Sven-Bertil Taube), the lawyer invites Mikael out to the Vangers’ estate on a coastal island called Hedeby that is accessible only by one bridge, where Henrik makes an interesting proposal. Decades ago, the one person Henrik would not mind leaving his partial ownership of the Vanger group to, a great-niece named Harriet, disappeared. Since then, someone has been sending him flowers from every part of the world, directed through an untraceable source. In exchange for significant pay and some help with his current legal troubles, Mikael is asked to investigate Harriet's disappearance. Henrik believes Harriet was murdered, but when Mikael asks if there is a major suspect, Hernik simply points to the other Vangers and says "take your pick". (Not quite like that, but you get my drift.)

     Meanwhile, a young woman with some very useful computer skills by the name of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is having some problems of her own. Having been declared to be in need of a guardian in order to be allowed to exist outside of a mental hospital, Lisbeth runs into trouble when her present guardian is hospitalised with a stroke. Her newly-appointed guardian, an impeccably disgusting excuse for a person called Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson), decides the previous guardian was too liberal with Lisbeth and proceeds to make her do sexual favours for simple access to her own money. After one ugly incident in which he makes her scream in ways that I have heard before and only wish I would never have to hear again, Lisbeth demonstrates that he has very seriously underestimated her through use of a taser, cables, his own sex toys, and a tattoo gun.

     These two characters intersect when Mikael manages to work out that Lisbeth is the one that the Vanger group hired to do a preliminary investigation of him, and that she managed to get uninvited access to his computer in the process. Mikael proposes to Lisbeth that she employ some of her research skills to help him determine exactly what happened to Harriet, a journey that takes them through some of the most heinous crimes committed in the area, and a way of relating to others that is truly outside of her comfort zone. And the truth about what really happened to Harriet is both uplifting and horrifying in ways that will make me remember this story long after I have forgotten many others.

     Stieg Larsson's characters are very distinct, and even the detailed descriptions he gives are very memorable. Michael Nyqvist may look a little different to Mikael Blomkvist, but he captures that sense of being a proxy for Larsson brilliantly. The real ace in the hole, however, is Noomi Rapace. Lisbeth Salander is described as being less than five feet tall and about ninety pounds, but aside from being noticeably bigger than that, Rapace nails the part. Like Heath Ledger or Jeff Bridges in certain roles, she does not just play the part, she is the part.

     Each novel in the Millenium series is about 500 to 600 pages in length when printed in the slightly larger paperback size. As a three-hour miniseries, serious cuts had to be made in order to fit the salient details of the stories in. I believe this work would have fared better in a HBO-style TV series, but as a story that is far too adult for the American studio system to accept, it works wonderfully. I highly recommend it.

     Sadly, there is the little matter of the disc…

Video

     Village Roadshow have been attracting complaints about the quality of their presentations for some time. I have myself been erring on the side of being as forgiving as I can, mostly because most of the transfers I have seen have not been that bad. I take it all back. Until Village Roadshow are out of business and forgotten (or in the more unlikely case, they get their act together), I urge consumers to boycott every Blu-ray Disc or disc of any kind that they release.

     The transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio within a 1920 by 1080 window. The transfer appears to have been rendered in a progressive format, but something seems to have gone very awry here. Frequently, when the camera is moving, half-frame motion blurs become visible. This is especially the case when the action is taking place in day time, indoors, or in well-lit areas. Given that there is no aliasing in the transfer, I am at a loss to explain this serious problem.

     When the camera is still or only moving slowly, the transfer is actually quite sharp. Not as sharp as should be expected of this source material (Super 35 converted to digital, see True Blood for a reference example of discs derived from this process), but certainly not a slouch, either. Unfortunately, as soon as there is a rapid pan or tilt, the image seems to be made up of two whole images that are moving out of sync with one another, which dramatically reduces the detail visible. For this reason, I am slicing the film-to-video artefact rating in half. Shadow detail is good, but not great. There is no low-level noise, but grain or compression-like noise do appear in the darker areas of the image to a small degree.

     The colours in the transfer appear pretty natural, with skin, snow, and blood tones appearing to be pretty accurate. Bleeding and misregistration are not a problem, although some minor undersaturation (probably deliberate on someone's part) appears at times.

     As previously stated, no aliasing is apparent in the transfer. Computer monitors are filmed on numerous occasions, as are televisions. Some moiré appears in the latter, as does minor filmed-screen artefacting in the former, but the computer monitors are amazingly clear compared to other examples I have seen of this element. Which is just as well since the content that appears on them is generally used to advance small parts of the story. Aside from the previously-described motion blur that accompanies every movement of the camera, there really seem to be no film to video artefacts at all. Film artefacts are also not evident. No artefacting from the AVCHD compression is really noted, either.

     Now we get to another complaint. On the previously released BDs of the theatrical cuts of the Millenium series, subtitles were a major issue. In words that were spelled with accents (the Swedish city name Göteburg, for example), the accented letters were represented by nothing but spaces. This was a problem because contrary to what some clowns on the 'net think, those marks are not just for decoration. They mean something. Going a bit Westward for my favourite example, take the Norwegian town of Bodø. To someone who knows no better, the temptation might be to pronounce it how they think it is spelled: Boe-doe. I tried to write a spelled-out description of how it actually sounds here, but in response to commentary that touches on that description, I will just provide readers with a link to the proper enunciation as on Wikipedia: here. So I think we can agree that Swedish characters like ö or ä are not the same thing as o or a.

     Which brings me to point two about the subtitles (yes, I know this is a lot of text about one aspect of the transfer, but I am sure we can agree it is an important one). Forgoing the usual encoded subtitle solution, this disc is presented with burned-in English subtitles. I am sure those who speak Swedish will find being unable to turn these off annoying. Making this more of a problem, words like "mamma" are rendered as a "mama" with the latter a represented by a boxed-in a with an accent that does not even come close to resembling the sound Lisbeth is making.

     Add all of this up, and I am sorry to say it, but Village Roadshow have produced such a serious loser of a disc that I cannot recommend it under any circumstances. It is an appalling treatment of the content. I can only recommend that when a film is being distributed in this country by Village Roadshow that consumers look for alternatives in other countries/Regions.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The one virtue that this disc has is the audio (where have I heard this before?…).

     There is one soundtrack offered on this disc: the original Swedish dialogue in DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, with no commentary or alternate mixes on offer (this is itself unusual for Roadshow discs).

     The dialogue is very clear and separated from the music and Foley. I do not speak Swedish, and I imagine that what Noomi Rapace is screaming during one scene I will not forget for the rest of my life would even sound barely intelligible even to someone who does. But the transfer poses no problem in terms of clarity. No audio sync issues were evident.

     The music in the film is credited to one Jacob Groth. There are some themes, such as when Henrik Vanger is opening the latest parcel containing a flower, where the music scores that elusive balance between haunting, gripping, and appropriately subtle. For the most part, however, the score simply does its job without being overly remarkable. The music in the credits sequences, on the other hand, is remarkably on-the-nerves.

     The surround channels are not worked especially hard in this soundtrack. For the most part, they support parts of the music, or the occasional environmental effect like passing trains or birds chirping. Sometimes, they are worked a little harder. Moments at the train station are the best example of that. However, the propensity of the soundtrack to collapse into the fronts during dialogue sequences, whether music can be heard or not, counts against it.

     The subwoofer occasionally perks up to support the aforementioned passing trains, or the occasional gunshot or car wreck. Of the three-hour running time, the subwoofer is given something to do for about twenty minutes. Maybe.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     There are no extras on this disc.

Menu

     The menu is very mildly animated, with pans across the graphics that were used in the series' credit sequences and DTS HD Master Audio sound that represents one of the score music's more effective moments. Options in general are very limited ("Play All", "Part 1", "Part 2"), and the number of chapters listed in these menus is, like the number of chapters in the feature proper, pathetic.

     As with another release I reviewed recently, this comparison only adds insult to injury. My comparison is based on this review at High-Def Digest. Now, granted, this review comes off as a little shallow due to the lack of a systematic approach to outlining the discs' performances in all of the aspects that matter (at the time I originally joined this site, we had a review template that outlined a detailed procedure that I still follow for the most part). That said, I do trust High-Def Digest enough to sing out if the kinds of artefacts I am describing in the video portion of my review are present in the Region A product. And the Region A disc is locked to Region A, likely at the asking of someone in Region B who felt their customers are not entitled to the best quality possible.

     I will make no bones about this. Män som hatar kvinnor is a great novel. This miniseries does the best it can to represent that within its relatively limited running time, but aside from its two main characters, it does not take long to get very swamped. On top of that, the disc it is presented upon is a loser, with numerous faults that should not have passed basic quality control protocols. And would not have done, I might hasten to add, at the big-name distributors such as Sony or Fox. If we still have a hall of shame here at Michael D's, then this is the second BD I believe I have seen that belongs there without any counterpoints that can redeem it. (And the two sequels are, if anything, worse in the primary complaints I have.)

     Village, can we talk frankly for a moment? I have faced a very uphill battle in making it known to people who are clearly too young to know the full extent of the horror unleashed by interlacing that the time of DVD is over. I have advocated for the Blu-ray Disc format so hard that even people whom I would not urinate on if they were on fire have taken it up. And then you go releasing garbage like this. It feels like a spit in the face. The day you go out of business will therefore be much like the day Toshiba announced they were giving up the ghost and retiring the HD-DVD format. I will cheer. On the basis of this and several previous discs from you that I have reviewed, you have only yourselves to blame for that.

     The video transfer is all over the place. The sharpness is at a cinematic level (mostly), but the rendering of motion will give many viewers headaches, and the subtitling should not have passed quality control. It is on this basis that I believe the disc deserves the lowest "distinction" this site can offer.

     The audio transfer is passable, but one could have rendered it as a 3.1 channel effort without losing anything.

     The extras are non-existent. And while we are on the subject, authors, the rule of thumb for a good disc is "one scene, one chapter". Not "one chapter every twenty or so minutes".

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall