Truth And Justice In The Movies: "Unbroken" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

            This movie taught me a few valuable lessons, especially after listening to director David Fincher’s commentary track. I love mysteries, especially the classics  that are old fashioned, linear, following a detective uncovering clues to crimes as they occur or those of the cold case variety. A rich and powerful family concealing their dirty secrets. Scenes are salted with juicy suspects, and there is an enormous amount of exposition required in order to be fair to the viewer so that we experience what the detective does.

            The genre is more difficult to carry off than a straight thriller, in which we share the culprit’s point of view as well, and the tension comes not from anticipating a whodunit reveal, but in the hero vs antihero chase. The viewer need not think too much to figure things out; just sit back and veg out while the bodies pile up.   

            The straight mystery genre has retreated in recent years because filmmakers have no confidence that audiences have patience or willingness to concentrate long enough to solve complex puzzles. The genre includes long periods of relative inaction, which the best filmmakers used to fill with character and something called “suspense.”

            But today’s action films jettison suspense and resort to characters derived from comics and video games whose traits are so familiar, there is no need to develop them further. The only mystery left is how many henchmen are going to be wasted on route to the violent CGI laced climax.

            The mystery genre has gone the way of the western and the musical comedy. It barely survives on TV, in formula police procedurals and gimmicky quirky takeoffs of the Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes models.

            Added to those hurdles, Steven Zallian’s script adapts the first of Stieg Larsson’s Swedish best seller series of books which already had been translated into many languages, including English, and also made into a hit film in Swedish. The book and film was much admired and the solution of the mystery had been widely told. The lead characters, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist, had already become “iconic” characters and were repeated in Larsson’s sequels. 

            So Fincher had many problems to solve.

            He doesn’t solve all the problems. In fact, he adds another one. The casting of Stellan Skaarsgard (Ronin) as one of the suspects was a problem for my enjoyment of the mystery. He is too important an actor to be a minor character. This is a clue that any devotee of the film genre should see. I was able to discern quickly that he was the killer.

            The Harriet mystery runs up against a similar problem. Harriet is presumed to be dead and we are told that the aim is to find out who killed her. But she disappeared forty years ago, and no body was ever found. In this genre this always raises the probability that we are being deceived: she is not dead, but is one of the other characters and that other secrets are beneath the disappearance.

            A third problem lies in the need to make the plot relevant to today’s concerns. Sexual abuse (all abuse but particularly, of girls or women) is a popular cliché of modern crime films. Sex perverts / serial killers are also rampant in today’s mystery-thrillers. The character of Lisbeth is iconic because of her attraction as a sort of superhero to girls and women. She is damaged as a victim of incestuous sex abuse and we know, while watching her suffer additional abuse, that she is going to have her revenge.

            We know more about her than any other character and she is an extreme symbol for empowered young adult females and a warning to anyone who isn’t. At 12, she killed her tormenting father and since, has been a ward of the courts until, at 23, she has become a far more complex character. She is “different” looking – punkish, gothy, facial piercings, and of course tattoos.

            She wears her anti-social almost autistic attitude with a brooding arrogance that teenagers adore. She is intelligent, gifted with a photographic memory, and techno-hip nerd genius who can hack into any computer or security system to gain access to data she needs to solve the case. Of course she hates authority, macho males, judgmental adults.

            She is bisexual but defensive, closed off emotionally, and fiercelt private. She has a tenacity borne of rage and obsession about justice and retribution. This makes her a worthy heir of the Sherlock Holmes brand of sleuth.

            Salander’s character is so fully formed and fascinating that the other characters are mere sketches. Even Blomqvist, played by Daniel Craig, a male actor with great presence, is almost reduced to a sidekick, who must be saved by her. This in itself is something of a breakthrough in fiction.

            The “damsel in distress” is no more. GONE GIRL took the femme fatale to another level. DRAGON TATTOO now eliminates the manic pixie dream girl.

            As in Batman, there is not enough oxygen for Commissioner Gordon or anyone else to fascinate viewers. The best superheroes face a supervillain. Batman has The Joker and Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger showed important that was.

            A problem with the sort of superhero who is supposed to be existing in a real world — rather than a Gotham or Metropolis — is that real world crimes like sexual abuse are too real. These predators are not trying to take over the world like a Bond villain. They do not come from other galaxies or times or mythologies. They are not foreign terrorists with beady eyes.

            In real life, the abusers may be our priests, bosses, teachers, neighbors, or even close nurturing loved ones we trust and need.  

            Batman trumped Superman by acknowledging his dark side in seeking vengeance rather than the lukewarm ideals of “truth, justice, and the American way.” Now, Liam Neeson (TAKEN) kills the abductors of his daughter. He is the follower of Clint Eastwood (DIRTY HARRY) and Charles Bronson (DEATH WISH). These also spawned movie franchises that traded on the populist revulsion with violent predatory criminals that dominated the law and order demands the 1970’s and 80’s and continue to provide answers to such fears and wishes.  Salander satisfies the modern audience’s lust for revenge against male victimizers of women.  

            One reason for the popularity of these revenge movies is the widespread belief that justice is denied in the real world. Media saturation assures us that our justice system can’t prevent or punish these predators. This is not a new phenomenon. The gangster movies of the 1930’s were “torn from headlines” about real life criminals like “Scarface” Al Capone, Bonny and Clyde, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson.

            Villains of literature often represent current social nightmares. Grimm’s tales codified the fears of town dwellers about dangers lurking in the forests. Victims of the early flickers were often the familiar ones of stage melodramas, landlords who held the mortgage and leered at the maiden with an offer to save her family by yielding to his lust.

            Immigrants who lived in crowded tenements and others who were moving from the country to the city found plenty of other predators there. The rich, the powerful, the reckless playboys, the factory foreman; all were sources of villainy that the moving pictures exposed as sexual predators.

            In the early 30’s, the era known as “pre-code,” the early talkies revealed a new kind of woman, one who overcame the label of victim by using her sexuality to survive and even to dominate her would-be predators.    

UNBROKEN

            After so many recent movies that revel in the violent pleasure of serving the cold dish of revenge, it would seem that a film that prizes forgiveness of even the most heinous crimes might be refreshing and uplifting.

            But, sorry, not this one. 

            As I watched it, I knew I was being led into hatred of the villains (particularly the lead villain (Corporal Watanabe), and now, after being told to forgive, I do not feel redeemed. Rather, I admit to resenting being deprived of the satisfaction that the revenge films accords. But I don’t feel guilty about that feeling in this particular case and I’ll explain why.

            Unbroken is an Angelina Jolie directed film of the Laura Hillenbrand best seller about Louis Zamperini, the Italian-American 1936 Olympic runner, B-24 bombadier, survivor of 47 days on a life raft and two plus years as a POW in Japan.

            Eschewing the usual disclaimers (“based on” . . . etc.), Jolie opts for a bold claim that it is “A true story” - period - as her preface.  My research suggests that the phrase is accurate . . . as far as it goes.  She shows the details of his ordeal at sea in vivid detail, which is disturbing and impressive as a document of the man’s will to live. But that is merely a first act to his sternest test: the years of his captivity, including unending sadistic abuse and mistreatment by Corporal Watanabe, the evil camp commandant who wants to break him.  The dramatization ends with the liberation at the war’s end, and Zamperini’s welcome home to his family.

            The character traits that allowed him to survive are laid out clearly enough in flashbacks to his youth. A child who is naturally stubborn, introverted, and contrary, he fights bigoted school boys and is on the way to reform school until his older brother convinces him to try the track team. To impress girls, Luis agrees, and then finds he has a talent for long distance running. His brother adds the element of discipline by pushing him to levels beyond his apparent limits.

            His running style is a metaphor for his character, or at least good training for his coming crises: to come from behind in distance races after his opponents have exhausted themselves. He is able to draw upon a reservoir of strength to endure tremendous pain.

            In the prison camp, he is given another key piece of wisdom. When he expresses his hatred for the tormenting Japanese sadist and desire to kill him even if he would be executed for it, a fellow prisoner tells him that his job is to survive; that will be your victory, your revenge. 

            A brief epilog tells (not shows) us that after the war he became a Christian and turned from revenge to forgiveness. It shows the real man at age 80 running in a race in Japan. He lived well into his 90’s. We are told (not shown) that Watanabe escaped punishment by evading capture and then obtaining amnesty.  We are informed that he refused to meet with Zamperini later in life to accept his prisoner’s forgiveness. We are meant to infer that his captor was the broken man.

            My own cursory research expands on these facts. While not controverting any of the claimed “true facts,” the facts which were not included in the film include some which might have challenged the intended theme and thus made a more meaningful movie.

            Apparently, after the happy ending depicted in the movie, the courageous and mentally tough Zamperini suffered from nightmares for many years, part of what we would now call post traumatic stress. He survived that, too, by finding religious faith. He became a part of Billy Graham’s Christian crusades, lecturing about his ordeals. Through his conversion, he decided to forgive his tormentors in order to find peace. He claimed that some of the prison guards he later met and forgave became Christians as a result. He lived a long and useful life.

            The epilog of Watanabe’s journey, however, would not fit into such a nice Hollywood ending. He was interviewed later in life, when Zamperini’s story was being told to the next generation in Japan. Like the Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele, Watanabe had come from a wealthy family. After years in hiding, he had become respectable, wealthy, comfortable.

            When interviewed in the mid 1990’s, he was unrepentant about the harshness of his treatment of American prisoners, asserting his mantra that they were enemies of Japan and deserved no better. He owed no apology and did not seek forgiveness. He thus justified his cruelty and denied any sense of defeat.

            I think that might have made a better story. Certainly, it is one that would have elicited more interest — for me, at least. I have been fascinated by stories involving the frustrating search for Nazi war criminals to prosecute. I hate the fact that leaders of nations and churches abetted the crimes, concealed the criminals, and conspired to deny justice to victims and escaped even societal censure. They not only survived. They went on as if nothing happened, while their victims lived with the nightmares and sense of guilt that the criminals never faced.

            I am appalled by the arguments that excuse those who committed such heinous crimes as soldiers following orders. I don’t understand how amnesty can apply to such crimes or how a statute of limitations can estop prosecution for murders of hundreds, thousands, or millions, when it there is no limitation in law for punishing a murderer of one person.

            I spent a lifetime defending accused murderers and specialized in finding arguments against executing them as punishment for their crimes. Yet, I never argued as a matter of principle or morality that no person ever deserved to die for crimes. The issue for me always depends on the individual, the motives, the procedure for finding the truth, the rules and evidence and fairness of the system devised to make the decision.  

            One self-truth I have to admit is that I am Jewish. The Holocaust is very personal to me. When I am forced to see the proof of the worst crimes ever perpetrated, I cannot deny that those responsible — and I mean ALL of those responsible — should be prosecuted and punished by their execution.

            The purpose is not revenge, not a biblical notion of an eye for an eye, or as a matter of lynching from hatred and rage. My purpose would not be as a deterrence. It is really a simple matter of justice.

            And so I would not forgive Sargent Watanabe. Even if forgiving him provides closure for his victim and even if giving him amnesty serves the purpose of Japanese – American politics. Not even if he did express remorse. To me, his crimes are unforgivable and civilization should demand that he forfeit his right to exist.