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The “Lena” bit was off, yes.
As a Finn – living in between Sweden and Russia – I would say Mara’s accent was A LOT more Swedish than Russian.
I think it’s dumb to say Rooney sounded Swedish. As an American living in Sweden for 5 years I can tell you it was pure Russian. She even tries to say the name Lena once and says it completely wrong. And yeah Wright was even worse with her Russian accent with hints of Irish, if they were smart they would have done what Craig did. At least it was more believable than Russian.
@ Jared
Come on, she’s said countless of times that she’s not very outgoing, that she’s shy and that she had always been a bit of a loner. Yeah she might not be good in interviews (for whatever reason that you think) but I don’t know how that makes her ungrateful and I don’t know how you can say that she doesn’t appreciate the position she’s in.
I disagree, she is far more interesting than jennifer lawrence for example who has taken on this blonde buddly hollywood persona who stars in xmen films.
Mara has a tough road ahead. She comes off as extremely cold and distant in every interview she has done. Check out Letterman and/or her NPR interview. Lets not even get started with that Allure hot mess of an interview. If she wants people to not equate her as being a “trust fund baby”, she should probably ACT a little more grateful. I mean, come on… you’re a supposed actor- fake it, even if you don’t mean it. That’s the difference between Mara and Olsen. Olsen, who could easily be categorized as having an “in” thanks to her famous sisters, is clearly someone who is so grateful and enthused to be in the position she is now in. I already can’t stand Mara.
Yeah, some try the accent, some don’t even care, but Mara nails it. Sure, it’s weird when only two actors are believably Swedes (Mara and Skarsgård).
What ALWAYS annoys me in films is if characters pronounce people’s names differently. It’s jumps at me like a deadly mistake EVERY time it happens. And from the clips shown in the full video of the above interview, I was already annoyed by the different ways the actors said “Mikael” and especially “Hariet”. Shouldn’t someone have told them (Fincher, most likely): This is how the name should be said.
I know it’s a little thing, but DAMN! I remember watching “The Messenger: Joan of Arc”, and the girl who played Mila Jovovich as a child called her sister “Cathrine” in French. And later, Mila called her sister “Catherine” in English. How did this happen!? Same with “Hannibal Rising” – the young Hannibal calls her sister “Misha” with a Russian accent (Miisha). And the older Hannibal calls her “Misha” with an English accent (Mesha). DAMN! It’s suppose to be the same character – therefore they are supposed to say the names in the same way!
I know I will have a hard time with “do-as-Swedish-an-accent-as-you-feel-like” execution that seems to happen in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Did Craig refuse to do an accent at all, a la Clark Gable in “Gone with the Wind” (WAIT? So Lisbeth IS the new Scarlett?? Haha!)? Americans probably don’t care, but living in Europe, surrounded by endless accents, people are gonna notice. I am, and I am sadly already annoyed. It just doesn’t seem thought through – it seems lazy, whether it’s the actors’s or the director’s fault.
You’re so right, Niles, about the dark-tinted lighting. The Swedish version was so delightfully candy-hued, like an Amy Adams rom com!
In seriousness, it sounds like you haven’t seen the film, so it’s not fair to compare the two, and impossible to prefer one over the other. You should see it first. Like or dislike Fincher, he is not much of a copycat. And it’s absolutely possible to take a primary version and make an offshoot that feels like a thoroughly original product. ‘The Departed,’ for example. This film is an even better example.
I think this movie is going to be way too Hollywood, too much hype involve. It’s obvious that they took the original Swedish screenplay and creating “their own” film. I think it’s b.s. to be honest that they say it’s so “original”. There’s nothing original about something that’s already been created. I actually prefer the Swedish version over this one. This just looks like a copy cat with a lot of dark tinted lighting.
I like that some of them went far to make the film authentic, but I still will not see it! No remakes for me.
Mara hasn’t yet come out of the Lisbeth character because she is awful in interviews. Robyn Wright instead was wonderful. It was a strange roundtable and Fincher is always so unscrutable! I wished Skarsgaard had participated more because he can be really funny. Charlie Rose is the master though.
Thanks, Tero. Your insights should put to rest any questions of authenticity. You know that few details get past DF.
We have to remember the number of American remakes of European and Asian films that don’t even bother with keeping the original setting. They snatch the plot and throw the rest in the dumper. Sometimes it works (The Departed) and sometimes it doesn’t (Diabolique, Breathless, Birdcage).
Yeah, Fincher was dealing with a well-know trilogy as well as a film, but he still could have reinvented the setting, a la The Ring, Magnificent Seven, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and still had a commercial success.
I should also add that most of my relatives live in Stockholm, and Mara felt more native Swede to me than any of them Swedish Finns who have lived there for decades.
Wright did something of her own (have no idea what language that was supposed to be, haha), Craig said only one word in “Swedish”, and it failed (sounded like a Finn saying it). Outside Stellan (who has that naturally) I think they’re all pretty British/American non-Swedish accents. They even used the “ch” sound on words starting with “sk” or “sj” (like in “sköna” or “sjö”).
Mara – on the other hand – goes quite deep. I was very impressed. I have many many Swedish friends and when I hear them speak English, it’s very close to that. You can tell that Mara lived in Sweden for weeks before shooting. She talked with Swedes in English and got the accent there. She felt like a Swede, more importantantly like someone from Stockholm.
I saw a few familiar locations in the movie. This is common for people who live in NYC or LA and stuff, but it’s pretty cool to see them from this part of the globe. I don’t live in Sweden, but they show you the map a couple of times in the movie. I live a couple hundred miles away from the “island” – on the coast of Finland. So I have been to Stockholm a lot.
It was not Americanized anywhere. I was looking into all the details. The Christmas looked Nordic, not American. The daily currencies were kronas (naturally), but I’m not sure about the temperature. If I saw correctly they show that it was +2 degrees in the meter, but supposedly cold outside. For a Swede +2 Celsius would be a t-shirt weather, so I guess they were trying to imply that in Fahrenheit and then it would be like -17. That you could call cold, but that’s everyday in Winter. We are used to -30 Fahrenheit even, but that’s for only a few days a year. Lapland is different (they have that all the time).
Based on the trailer, it seems the women in the film (Mara and Wright, at least) have “faux” Swedish accents while the men just speak with a British accent. I haven’t seen the film, but is there a reason (or explanation) for this? Just seems lazy or inconsistent to me. Seeing it on Wednesday though, and I can’t wait. 🙂
Ugh, this is so pretentious. Let’s see how the movie actually performs. Scarlett O’Hara, my ass. For one thing, being that unattractive will ding the endurance of the character. (sorry, I’m from the East Coast so flipping over a Mara girl seems kind of old Hollywood, Wasp-aspirational bullshit)