Dissecting Rooney Mara’s Disturbing ‘Dragon Tattoo’ Rape
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Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
Rooney Mara is nothing short of amazing in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” There’s the slew of stuff she did to get in character: the piercings, the hair bleaching and dying, the tattoos. On screen, it comes together in a chilling, sharp portrayal of Lisbeth Salander, hacker extraordinaire, insane by her own admission and, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, a badass motherf***er.
Which makes that rape scene all the more disturbing.
Fans of Stieg Larsson know the story: Salander’s newly appointed, court-ordered guardian forces her to perform oral sex on him to get access to her own money. The really cringe-worthy stuff happens later, when Salander asks for another check (for food) and gets handcuffed, tied down, stripped and anally raped.
Mara told Vogue that physically, that scene was the hardest for her. “I got really beat up,” she said, and you see that in the carnation pink blotches blooming on her skin as she cowers in the shower afterward.
And yet, she wasn’t fazed. “I wasn’t really scared to do any of those things,” Mara, 26, told “Popcorn with Peter Travers” when asked about the rape and her preparation for it. “[But] I was hesitant to ride a motorcycle because it seemed very dangerous.” (She does that expertly, too.)
Mara told “Popcorn” that “Dragon Tattoo” director David Fincher, notorious for making actors do as many as 100 takes of a scene, mercifully called for only one take of the rape. But one take does not always a rape make. The revenge rape – in which Salander stun-guns her sadistic social worker, ties him to his bed posts, duct tapes his mouth, penetrates him with a large sex toy and tattoos “I am a rapist pig” all over his torso – took three.
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Try watching the original movie produced in 2009 by Music Box Films starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. All of their films, all three stories (Dragon Tattoo, Hornets Nest and Played with Fire) are available and excellently done. This “Americanized” version tries to be gritty and acting like it is the first, but the prior films are fantastic. Give them a look see. Bill
Posted by: Bill Thies | December 20, 2011, 3:41 pm 3:41 pm
Please correct your misprint. Lizbeth’s rapist was her court appointed guardian – not a social worker!
Posted by: jonahjob | December 20, 2011, 4:21 pm 4:21 pm
I usually don’t like American remakes, but the fact is the original three films, actually made for TV, are severely lacking in some areas. And don’t really capture many of the good aspects of the books.
There is plenty of scope to do them better.
Posted by: Moviemad | December 20, 2011, 6:52 pm 6:52 pm
Thanks for the warning…..I’ll pass now.
Posted by: JVB | December 20, 2011, 8:20 pm 8:20 pm
We can sure waste “Billions” of dollars in past and present years in dumb movies. I’ll bet they don’t make a half dozen good films a year. As for TV, it looks like they never made much, they show the same over and over and over and over, well you get it.
Posted by: inthegrumpyone | December 21, 2011, 3:14 am 3:14 am
Where did my post go !!!
Posted by: inthegrumpyone | December 21, 2011, 3:15 am 3:15 am
Wow…this sounds like a pretty disgusting film. Thanks for the heads up…I think I’ll go see anything but this film.
Posted by: Karen Lee | December 21, 2011, 6:52 am 6:52 am
As a rape victim, that part of the book was so hard for me that I almost stopped reading altogether. It is however a pivotal & crucial part of the entire story & to make a movie w/out it would loose something important. Do I want to see it on screen? No. May wait for the DVD so I can forward past it since I know the depth of it from the book. Conversely, the resulting vengeance seen will make every victim cheer & it is equally as horrendous. If vigilante justice were acceptable, Lisbeth Slander shows how to do it right.
Posted by: JCF | December 21, 2011, 7:28 am 7:28 am
Very true. My parole officer did horrible things like this to me so you can see what power does to a man – it turns them into something quite terrible and they take advantage of it all the time. Why do men have to be so cruel?
Posted by: Laura Bradley | December 21, 2011, 9:17 am 9:17 am
Wow. Rape and revenge rape. That sounds like such wonderfully entertaining stuff. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to watching Its a Wonderful Life again.
Posted by: Brian Levine | December 21, 2011, 9:44 am 9:44 am
” I’ll go back to watching Its a Wonderful Life again.”
I can’t help feeling you miss the point of “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
One of the darkest, and even sickest, movies ever made.
Posted by: Floretta | December 21, 2011, 10:31 am 10:31 am
I can’t watch stuff like that because it would give me nightmares. I don’t like to walk out of a movie shaking. I want to feel good and feel like that was money well spent.
Posted by: Louise | December 21, 2011, 12:08 pm 12:08 pm
When I saw the movie today, I actually left the theater for a few minutes to avoid watching that scene. I knew it was coming, and since I’d read about how gruesome and disturbing it was I figured I’d save myself the nightmares.
Posted by: Maya | December 21, 2011, 10:18 pm 10:18 pm
I have PTSD and didn’t really look into what this movie was about before going to see it. Bad idea, I left when that scene came up and I’m still shaken up from it and gt bad flashbacks. I’m not seeing another movie without having someone watch it for me first.
Posted by: Anne | December 24, 2011, 10:39 pm 10:39 pm
Some of us aren’t such delicate flowers as many of you seem to be. I LOVED the movie. I very much like an edginess to my entertainment. Not everyone needs Sesame Street entertainment to function.
Posted by: Lola | December 26, 2011, 11:58 am 11:58 am
I saw this movie completely blind, not knowing any of the story and especially not knowing about the rape scene. That particular scene made me physically ill – I seriously got sick to my stomach. Aside from that, though, the movie was fabulous. Kudos to rooney mara…she did a fantastic job.
Posted by: devon | December 28, 2011, 9:36 am 9:36 am
I watched the Swedish version last night, then saw the new one tonight. I think both are good films, but I felt that the girl who played Lisbeth in the Swedish version was almost too monotone…. detached. She was outstanding at the anti-social aspects of Lisabeth, but to me, she didn’t portray any vulnerability. Perhaps inflection and emotion that I would expect was lost in translation. But I thought Mara nailed it. I also appreciated the couple of scenes/lines that were added to provide more insight to Lisabeth’s vulnerability. And perhaps I’m just jaded by what takes place in the news every day lately (little girls found in dumpsters dead, raped – in some cases dismembered), but I thought the most disturbing part of the whole rape incident (hers, not his) was actually when they showed her from behind in the shower afterwards. I thought the actual rape scene was well done – captured the brutality, but left the more graphic aspects to the viewers imagination. Personally, I thought the cat scene was more gruesome and disturbing.
Posted by: N.O.L.A. | December 31, 2011, 1:33 am 1:33 am
I cant get enough of this movie, I keep returning to the theaters to watch again.. I wont stop watching until the next one comes out, and forget the other version, Rooney Mara is the only one I want to see portraying Lizbeth.
As for the rape scene, I had no idea it was coming so I was as surprised as the next person, even had trouble sleeping for a few nights, and it kept coming up in my thoughts upon waking too. But its definitely worth sitting through to see the rest of the movie.
Posted by: Sarah | January 4, 2012, 10:17 pm 10:17 pm
@Sarah:
I feel the same way. I’m reading the Girl who played with fire over the weekend and snuck off to a 9:45 Sunday night showing (making for a fairly painful Monday morning. . .) I like Noomi Rapace, I’m glad to see her career taking off in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Prometheus’ (Ridley Scott’s summer prequel to Alien), but it’s the Rooney Mara performance I just can’t shake – and also Daniel Craig’s generous performance. These two actors make the implausibility of the relationship between Lisbeth and Mikael not only understandable but essential – the investigation turns them into soulmates, and each person completes the other in a wonderful transformation. Their chemistry is simple and translates to the screen in a way that Norquivst and Rapace never got until the very, very end of the series.
Posted by: Rick | January 9, 2012, 3:38 pm 3:38 pm
Being a 16 year old who looks much older then I am, I got into the theatre to check the film out with my boyfriend. I hadn’t read any of the books and had absolutely no idea what to expect, so as you all know, when the rape scene occurred, I was mortified. I actually burst into tears in the theatre. That being said, it was amazingly done. The scene itself was horrific, but perfect. Mara did an incredible job and that scene ALONE should win her an Oscar!
Yes, the scene was disturbing as all hell, but it shouldn’t stop you from seeing this movie. I can’t stop thinking about it! Definitely want to go see it again!
And come on guys! There were so many old people in the theatre who all seemed to be able to sit through it!
Really worth checking out!
Posted by: Laura | January 31, 2012, 2:15 am 2:15 am