“Friendship- my definition- is built on two things. Respect and trust.
Both elements have to be there. And it has to be mutual. You can have
respect for someone, but if you don't have trust, the friendship will
crumble."
(Mikael Blomkvist)”
―
Stieg Larsson,
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I saw the Hollywood movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo out of curiosity. Mainly because it was recognized by the Golden Globe and Academy Awards with a number of nominations including Best Actress in a Leading Role for Rooney Mara. And somehow I associated it with the film Red Dragon of the Hannibal Lecter Trilogy by Thomas Harris which I also got hooked on several years back. Plus this year is a Dragon year according to the Chinese calendar and I am a Dragon-born baby. Does my association even make sense?
Anyway, I saw the movie last week and I enjoyed it a lot that I started reading the book version by Stieg Larrson immediately after. And in just a span of 7 days, I have seen the movie twice and I am now halfway thru the 3rd and last book of the trilogy.
The story is an intricate maze of crime (murder and rape among others), homosexuality, computer hacking and other mumbo jumbo that will surely keep you reading until your eyes pop out. Seriously, the books are hard to put down! I am losing a lot of sleep over these books especially with the 2nd and 3rd installment because this is where the real persona of the lead female character, Lisbeth Salander, is slowly being peeled. She is initially viewed as a psychopath and declared as socially incompetent by the government. Then she meets Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, who discovers her photographic memory and her outstanding talent on computer hacking. Later on in the series, a whole dimension of Lisbeth Salander's complicated past will reveal a complex web of conspiracies involving the government that threatens to destroy national security. Yes, it is a lot to digest and there are also a lot of players involved that I had to stop once in a while and try to remember who's who and what they do.
Earlier, I mentioned that I saw the Hollywood version of the film. That is because there is an original Swedish version released in 2010. I have read a few reviews and all of them say that the Swedish film were really good. So addicted that I am, I am now trying to find the Swedish films (with English subtitles) to see it for myself. I love Rooney Mara's Lisbeth but some of the reviews say that Noomi Rapace's original version was equally good if not better. So we'll see.
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