If you haven’t heard the story of Stieg Larsson, allow me to fill you in—it’s a doozy. Larsson was a Swedish journalist and human rights advocate who edited Expo, a quarterly dedicated to rooting out far-right and racist organizations operating in the country. It was a high-stress position—death threats were a regular feature—and Larsson died in 2004, aged 50, of a heart attack.
Surprisingly, though, Larsson’s legacy has largely arisen from how he spent his down time. It turned out that at the time of his death, Larsson had finished three unpublished crime novels and was partway through a fourth. Taken together, the three finished works formed what came to be known as the Millennium Trilogy, named for the Expo-like magazine helmed by Larsson’s fictional alter ego Mikael Blomkvist. Published posthumously, they became a worldwide phenomenon, garnering critical praise and bestseller status. Naturally, they were also adapted into films.
The Girl Who Played With Fire, now playing at Northampton’s Pleasant Street Theater, is the second in the series. Again teaming Blomkvist with the troubled technophile Lisbeth Salander—the pair tracked down a killer in the first installment—Larsson’s story centers on the double murder of a pair of investigative journalists about to expose an extensive sex trafficking ring operating between Sweden and Eastern Europe. Salander’s prints are found on the murder weapon, and she disappears before Blomkvist can come to her aid. As they each try to uncover the true culprits, disturbing details of Salander’s dark past come to light, forcing the unlikely heroine to confront her own demons.
At first blush, Larsson’s work sounds a bit cartoonish—a puffed-up version of a primetime cop show. But consider this: the punk hacker Salander is actually based on an even more famous Swedish figure. Here’s Larsson, quoted in the New York Times: “My point of departure was what Pippi Longstocking would be like as an adult. Would she be called a sociopath because she looked upon society in a different way and has no social competence?” Clearly, there’s more to his stories than the flash and bang of must-see TV.
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Real life investigation is the subject of Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time, showing in a free screening at the Media Education Foundation this Friday at 7 p.m. Veteran filmmaker Danny Schechter (In Debt We Trust) opens his film with the high-profile conviction of Bernie Madoff, then argues that such front-page shenanigans only help hide the deeper problem: that some of the nation’s largest financial institutions are regularly playing fast and loose with trillions of dollars. Schechter talks not only to journalists and whistleblowers, but also to some of the white-collar criminals responsible for the current financial crisis. For more info, visit northamptoncommittee.org.
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And finally this week, a crime classic returns to the big screen when Rear Window arrives at Amherst Cinema for Sunday and Wednesday shows. Screening in a newly restored 35mm print, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 work is a claustrophobic masterpiece that, for my money, outdoes Vertigo, that other Jimmy-Stewart-is-obsessed movie Hitch made just a few years later.
Here Stewart plays “Jeff” Jeffries, a news photographer laid up with a broken leg. Stuck at home, he trains his telephoto lens onto the apartment block across the courtyard and witnesses a murder. Or does he? See it and find out, and be reminded of why we gave Hitchcock his own adjective.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
