Fincher Narrows Choice For Salander
Of course, one of the advantages of being in Stockholm right now is that I can see many of the locations where Stieg Larsson set his ridiculously successful Milennium trilogy of novels. (The books overhauled Stockholm’s image in roughly as dramatic a fashion as “Sex and the City” re-tooled New York’s.) I’ve already started my own version of the tour, helped along by a map from The Stockholm City Museum. Just as I started wandering round these sites today came this encouraging report about the casting in Hollywood’s remake of the series. (A fine Swedish-language version, starring Noomi Rapace, pictured, as punkish computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, already exists.) The director, David Fincher, has already cast Daniel Craig as the main male character, Mikael Blomkvist, which is just fine, since his Swedish interpreter was not ideal. What’s encouraging today is that Fincher has apparently narrowed down his choice for Lisbeth Salander to four relative unknowns. An unknown is smart because it will allow audiences to believe the actress more as the character than as a star playing the character. Noomi Rapace was relatively unknown even in Sweden when she was cast. In an ideal world, Fincher would re-cast Rapace in the English-language version, because as I’ve brayed before and will keep repeating till proven otherwise, there’s no m-fucking way that Fincher’s choice will be better than Noomi. And, oh, I buried the lead: apparently, Fincher offered the part to Natalie Portman and she turned him down. Thank God: the closest Miss Nat got to a Salanderish role was in “V for Vendetta.” She was perfectly okay but not vicious or emotionally imploding enough even in that pic to put her in Rapace’s league.
