Breaking down David Fincher’s cinematic language: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
“Cinema is the poetry in motion, it embodies a language, within it are the specific vocabularies and sublanguages of the lens, composition, visual design, lighting, image control, continuity, movement and point-of-view blends in”. It is up to the filmmaker to decide whether to compose a clear and informative prose or create a visual poetry with this language. Christian Metz (1975) regards cinema as different from other forms of art because it stimulates the vision of missing objects by the execution of “vision, sound and syntagmatic” arrangements all at one. Every film maker is engrossed in the challenge of telling a story with the camera by meticulously framing out everything that camera gets. Fincher’s specific way of using the technology to communicate the vision falls in line as his reputation as a perfectionist. Labelled as the “feel bad movie of Christmas” The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a masterpiece which stands tall with Fincher’s immaculate directing style and breathtaking visuals hailing the film as the most underrated in Fincher’s filmography and an effort on par with his best work. “Deception” is Fincher’s real trade mark with his engagement in the visual goes out of his way to render appealing experience to the spectator. According to him, his “visual effects in his story, are not there to be recognized, not there to impress, but to immerse” (interview in 2010)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was set up by the Sony Pictures produced by Scott Rudin and screenplay by eminent writer Steven Zaillian inspired from the novel in the same name among the trilogy published in 2005. The tale is on two “sleuth-hounds” starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, striving to solve a four-decade-old murder mystery while fostering an alliance. It has a two-tiered thread with one following Mikael as a journalist who has recently lost a high-profile law suit against a wealthy industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom and another along the ‘cyber-punk heroine’ Lisbeth. She is introduced initially as bold female detective who is a state ward because of her sombre and abusive past life, while her guardian exploits the freedom over her by forcing her into sexual act for providing money for food and other necessities. TGDT, retires from the “Single protagonist” stories and it repudiates from traditional Syd Field’s three act paradigm by taking up five acts. In a three-act paradigm first part will be the introduction to the story and characters, second will be where conflict arises and in third resolution occurs but here, this progress is depicted through five acts. Where subplot is the subject, it often seems like it switches characters revealing the unconventional storyline and other abnormalities in the novel. With several threads, it could convey a complicated narrative that enables us to get to know a leading character other than the hero in a deeper way. Each act, performs an important role as it contain elements not seen in typical films. But by insisting that each act has the key elements, it never only shows a series of actions, but rather reveals a tale.
Mise en Scéne, taking roots from French meaning “setting the stage” is basically everything that contributes to the visual presentation or overall ‘look’ of a scene in a play or a film. The components which contributes to this are Actors, Location, set design, Lighting, Shot, Blocking and Camera placement, composition, depth of space, film stock, costumes etc. A proper and systematic pre production work is a must to create striking visuals and appealing sequences. While untangling the cinematography of Fincher, it is essential to look up for camera angles, lighting, framing and all other minute details which effectively locks us in to the behavior of the characters. The story is set in a place near Hedeby island, near Hedestad where most of the action in the film takes place. The great films like Apocalypse Now or say Avatar place good emphasis on the visual world which includes location, sets, wardrobe, sounds but the more emphasis has to be given to cinematography. The term has got roots in Greek meaning “writing with motion.” It is the technique to add layers of meaning to the content of the film — -dialogue and action. Taking cinema as a language, we should know; what is the structure of that language? What are the figures of speech or cinematic language that we can use to tell our story visually?
“It takes titanium and aluminum and steel and glass and lasers to do one thing- impart feeling to everyone watching the film and that’s the magic of cinema” — David Fincher
Tools of Cinematography
1. Frame
Frame conveys a great deal on the characters and their mental state. It is also a question of composition, rhythm and perspective. If we look at the opening shot (figure1) from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this is the first time we get to see Mikael who is almost invisible from the wide and distant shot which emphasizes his depressed state and sense of defeat and frustration. Here, he is out after knowing that he lost the case against the industrialist Wennerstrom. Without a word being said, we know a great deal about this person, his world, and social situation, all of which are fundamental to the story by placing him in the lower part of the frame. The shot (figure 2) is the world questioning his actions and scrutinizing over his fate and his refusal to answer them is clearly shown here, after which he becomes a small object in the large frame. The film is presented in his preferred 2.40:1 aspect ratio and the shooting of the image in full-frame and later added to a widescreen matte in postproduction. This method helps him to compose the frame exactly the way he wants and Red epic (camera used) to capture minute details or re-composing the shot without any loss of quality. Without some of the flattening objects that spoil the process, this technology also provides improved image stabilization.
2. Lens
“It has got the ability to alter our perception of the physical world”. Each lens has a “personality” which adds a flavor and inflection to the image. The two kinds are long and short lens; long lens compresses space and a wide lens expands and distorts space. Have a look at the wide lens shot (figure3) where Lisbeth is returning home from his new guardian Nils Bjurman who abuses his position and rapes her brutally. The symmetrical frames are repeatedly used in the film where there is some bad happened or going to happen. The next shot is a wide shot of the officer and person in their office room talking about Lisbeth, the short compresses our perceptions towards a confined space ‘the room’.
3. Light and Color
Lighting is not only a ‘strong compositional element’, but it also conveys a great deal of emotional tone and tell us something about the mental state of the character. It may almost seem like Fincher took notes from ‘Gordon wills’ a renowned cinematographer on godfather films, who took reputation in the name ‘Prince of Darkness’. He would often take lighted scenes under exposing the actors often not showing any light in the actor’s eye. But Fincher would often take it a step further by barely lighting in actor’s face at all given the subject nature and tone of most of his films. In most cases Fincher using ‘kino flo’ lamps to retain the mystery is highly appreciable. In (figure 5), Mikael is led to a room through a dark corridor by Henrik Vanger towards a room having major evidence about the murder he is appointed to work upon. This dark scene is followed by a ‘kino flo’ lighted room where the light directly hits on both of their faces and what we get to see first is the reaction of Mikael to what he saw in the room. This is another technique used by Fincher which makes the onlooker jump off the seat eager to know what he saw in the room(figure6)
Chiaroscuro which is Italian for light (chiara) and shadow (scouro, same Latin root as obscure) in which gradations of light and dark establishes depth perception and creates visual focus (below).
Fincher is never a ‘color director’, the signature aesthetic steely color palette of blue, green and teals evoking the sharp Swedish landscape with even warmer tones of cold yellow is maintained here as well. When Henrik Vanger recalls the story of Harriet and the day she disappeared, the ‘past’ is in yellow tone to create that visual effect (figure7).
The rest of the scenes are graded with uniform shades, either green, blue, brown or red.
5. Movement
The word ‘emotion’ has ‘motion’ in it and hence movement is a powerful tool through which the texture of the scene will be imparted to the audience; indeed, movies are one among the art forms that employ motion and time. The movement of the frame by the camera gives the audience the magic of going along the narrative of the film. For this movement, the camera angle, height, distance to an object together contributes to the composition of the shot. This mobility of the frames can be achieved by a talented director with skillful use of tools. Camera pan, camera tilt, handheld cameras, zooming, dolly shots, cranes are the foremost common ways of making movements with camera’s lens up or down, right or left and allows the characters to be followed throughout the frame. In Fincher’s style, he has the camera exactly match the velocity and direction of the moving character in the frame. When the character stops moving, camera stops too and starts again as they start moving. He believes that the way a someone moves, plays a key part of who they are and what they won. In figure 10, Mikael is running in fear of gun shot through the forest and it is shot as if we, the audience also are moving along with him. (Figure 10)
To catch the fluidity, he places the camera in the sync with the body and as a result we gained this almost implicit connection with his characters and by the way he purposefully, gradually and accurately stages them, David Fincher is hijacking our eyes.
Sound effects
The background score for the film is composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with cover track “Immigrant song”, “Is your love enough?”, all of them were nominated for Golden Globe Awards in 2011. In particular scenes of action, the natural sounds are heard most commonly like footsteps, hustle
bustle of city etc. to increase the audience appeal and real life like. A part of Fincher’s craft lies in his ability to imagine the possibilities of audio effects and when to use it effectively.
Adding visual metaphors
One of the significant outcomes of filmmaking is retaining the curiosity and the mindfulness of the viewers. In order to achieve that, every time they do a shot, they are taking a small piece of that scene and puts everything back together in a particular order so that the audience could get it clear in their heads. They are dividing up the scene into small parts; to use a term, they are deconstructing it. The process involved in this area is called editing. It’s completely up to the editor on how we are able to see a film at the end of this process. In the scene where Mikael is meeting Lisbeth for the first time, they are shown to be standing in opposite sides of a wall. This is one of the fantastic scenes in the movie where the editing is such that we get to know both of their mental state, especially Lisbeth’s reaction to Mikael (since she was appointed to have an investigation on him even before Mikael is given responsibility for finding out the mystery)
Fincher edits with the audience in mind. When something is noticed by the individual, viewers see what they are seeing. When a character makes connections in their head, we are able to follow their train of thought, through the purposeful composition and editing. (also referring to example shown in POV). He supposedly used the process called “Split Composition Time Remapping” in almost every scene in this movie. Composition refers to the way elements of a scene are arranged in a frame. ‘Split’ is the adding of
multiple layers while editing these frames together. Time remapping is manipulating the timing of individual events within the frame. The cross-cutting is also deployed by Fincher that can greatly improve the quality of any film. It cuts together different acts to highlight moments within the plot framework that take place concurrently. By the resolution part where we are shown how they are throwing light upon the person in the dark, this technique is being used. Both of them are far apart by their work milieu but one and other are both arriving in the same conclusion.
Parallel cutting is another tool utilized to create the desired effect. It is the process of alternating between two or more scenes that happen simultaneously in different locations within the world of the film. After
the first brutal rape on Lisbeth by her guardian, she enters into the elevator and yells and screams out of frustration. In this scene, she is shown as trapped in a rectangular frame (elevator). The same scene is recreated after they switch roles as she takes her revenge by taking him down in his knees by threatening to kill him and tattooing on him “I am a rapist pig”. He is shown as “trapped” in the same position as she was before. This is undoubtedly one of the thrilling shots in the film.
Visual Detailing
Director brilliance in this movie is achieved through the wide variety in shots, camera techniques and visual details. Those visual elements carry the story forward and supply important visual clues about the subtext and tone of the narrative. Set dressing also remarkable in all of Fincher’s movies. In this movie, he has experimented a lot on symmetrical arrangement of things. Those are shown in instances where there is some kind of tension is developing or some kind of tight and uneasy air spreads in.
While taking notes on visual elements, Fincher has given constant reinforcement of social etiquette with alcohol and with drinking or having food together. Every character meets each other by exchanging drinks. When Henrik meets Mikael for the first time, drink is poured onto his glass even though Mikael refuses at first. Also, when Lisbeth and Mikael see each other for the first time, Mikael is offering her food and they both dine together. So, it appears almost as if, this food metaphor is forced onto us repeatedly. The other ‘character’ in the film is a bridge in front of the mansion, which is shown in the film almost twenty times reiterating its significance in the movie. Lisbeth is googling things, looking up for Wikipedia etc. since he astray from hiding them intentionally.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was never a commercial success but this was one of the films which saw Fincher at the peak of his punk and technological explorations. It is necessary to understand that the quality and experience rendered by a film could never be equated with its commercial success. As the audiences are always programmed to tales with a tidy resolution, they get uncomfortable when story breaks away from that formula. But when a story isn’t beholden to any narrative conventions and when we are willing to be uncomfortable, we get to have new experiences.
