Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Great Scenes: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Opening credits often unfold, if at all, over a series of establishing shots these days.  There used to be a greater focus on creating artistically interesting or meaningful sequences, such as Saul Bass's classic work for Alfred Hitchcock.  More recently, there have been some exciting examples - Casino Royale's comes to mind - but one would be hard-pressed to come up with a modern example as stunning and thematically resonant as the credits sequence that starts David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Trent Reznor and Karen O.'s thrilling cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" plays over a series of images that marry the abstract and the concrete, paying clever homage to all three titles in Steig Larsson's trilogy and hinting at the gruesome but beautiful darkness that is to follow.

If you find the film too violent to see in its entirety, you at least owe it to yourself to check out this amazing sequence (which reportedly elicited applause at an Academy screening).

No comments:

Post a Comment