I don’t know anyone who voted for Pedro

I’m so rarely puzzled or let down by the great Andrew O’Hehir that it depresses me to say that his recent rumination on the question of “Is movie culture dead?” is probably the worst thing of his that I’ve read. In it, he bemoans the death of “film culture in the Susan Sontag sense.” Though he avers that movies are still relevant and talked about, he means film culture in that special way that the rest of us simply call “coastal elitism.” How else do you explain paragraphs like this? (And pay special attention to the last one. Emphasis mine.)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ☕ d. David Fincher, 2011

Last year, I published a review of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I also published a defense of remakes.  As my review of Män som hatar kvinnor made clear, I did not like the original film; as my discussion of remakes made clear, I have nothing against remakes in principle.  My fear was that David Fincher’s remake would essentially be beneath his talent, which would make it pointless primarily in the sense that an already-odious story was bequeathed an unearned aura of respectability by an artist that should, by now, have developed the sense to do better things with his time.  Since initially publishing those thoughts back in March 2011, another factor developed that I had not anticipated.

Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) ☕ d. Niels Arden Oplev, 2009

Confession time: the primary reason I’m logging my thoughts about the 2009 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (as it’s known in English-speaking countries) on my blog now is because I want to have a reference for later, when the David Fincher version comes out.  I’m one of those fascinated-by-the-process apologists who refuses to get my knickers in a twist every time a movie I like is remade.  Part of it is exhaustion.  It’s very tiring to get thoroughly worked up every time Hollywood decides to “screw up” a beloved “classic.”  Because it happens a lot.  Then there’s the fact that sometimes — once in a very rare while — the remake is superior to the original.  If not superior, sometimes interesting as a failure.  Or just interesting because it’s substantially different.  Or interesting to see how a film can be redone, nearly shot for shot, for no other purpose than the fact that lazy, American audiences are too stupid and lazy to read subtitles.  Or the fact that lazy, American studios and distributors don’t bother to market foreign or older films very aggressively.