Textual Analysis: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 

Within this Blog Post I will be analysing selected screen shots from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The first screen shot comes seconds into the opening, introducing the director, David Fincher. The shot is of a black sea, representing the descent into shame, a sea of troubles, a natural, unstoppable, inevitable force.
The black hue to the entire opening gives a negative undertone, the colourless opening revealing the conventions of horror, murder, death and evil. Key themes within this film.
The words 'DAVID FINCHER' are capitalised, larger to the rest of the title, giving David Fincher primary credit for the film, as he is the director and famous for  a lot of different films the film wants to make clear that this is a David Fincher film.

There is light at the top of the screen, off screen but the source is unidentifiable. White being a symbol of Hope, but, as we can see, the black tone is consuming all other colour within this opening.

 
 


The second screen shot is of the title of the film, even this is getting overrun by the oil, this domination of oil is a theme throughout this opening that is an allusion to crime, crime is everywhere in the world, crime is destroying everything also, as this is a crime thriller, my theory is believable and relatable.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an ambiguous title as we are unaware of this girl, we assume she is integral to the plot, maybe the main character, or victim. As this is the first time we are made aware of the film's title (apart from prior knowledge) it is important that representations and symbolisations are instant. The text is of white again, and it is being overlapped by the black oil, this infers to me that not only the film is full of crime, but maybe The Girl gets involved within crime also.



Even though the theme is the same, following this liquid, this is an entirely different meaning, before it was destroying structures, now it is running through a keyboard like a rives, an infestation of intelligence and at the professional work place, crime is infiltrating the online area also, not only physical crime but mental crime, crime involving knowledge and data.
As this is a change in concept, it is highlighting all the different areas where crime is involved, and there's a lot of them, shown by the plethora of situations involving this oil, this plague.
This is the first hint to location I receive as the keyboard is in English, and therefore, it singles it down to Europe or North America. I would assume Europe due to David Fincher being announced as the director.

The final screen shot is of a face being covered in oil and then a match being dropped into their eye, a visually discordant sequence, definitely. This highlights the realism of violence within the film and of society, the eye is a replication of the world, and the world is getting destroyed with the plague of oil and fire.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, according to my interpretation of the opening 5 screen shots is of crime throughout the world.

 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, to conclude, utilises colour and visually discordant sequences in order to create certain representations effectively to its desired destination, I think this destination was a foreshadowing of the narrative in the film, which is a representation of society.