Macro Analysis Of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

I am going to be writing a brief macro analysis of the film 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'. The macro elements that I am going to be focusing on are Institution, Genre, Narrative, Audience and Representation.


Institution - 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' is an independent film produced by Yellow Bird Films which is a Swedish film production company. A UK film company called Momentum Pictures distributed the Swedish film across the whole of the UK on 12/03/10, in various formats including DVD, blue-ray, etc. The distribution from one country to another country eventually got the film the recognition is deserved, and £378,434 was made in the opening weekend on 14/03/10.


Genre - 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' is both a crime and a mystery thriller. The reason I say that the film is a crime thriller is because it emphasizes action through a psychological aspect. Crime thrillers mainly focus on the topics of serial killers and murders, disappearances, chases, etc. 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' contains elements from all of these topics. For example, The chase scene when Lisbeth Salander is chasing a member of the Vanger family on her motorbike; and the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. The reason I say that the film is a mystery thriller is because it includes themes of investigation and enigma. Mikael Blomkvist, our protagonist is assigned a task by a man called Henrik Vanger just after he had been sentenced to three months in jail after losing his case in court. Mikael Blomkvist attempts unravel the truth behind Harriets dissapearance.

Narrative - The narrative of the film 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' is linear, because it runs in chronological order. However, some people may argue that the film has a non linear narrative because there are certain scenes where Mikael Blomkvist's flashbacks interrupt the continuous flow of the film. This is denoted when Mikael Blomkvist has a flashback of himself as a child. The film also has a restricted narration, which means that we have limited access to the narrative and know as much as the characters in the film do. This leaves the audience constantly on the edge of their seats and creates a tense atmosphere as the audience anticipate what happens next.


Audience - 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' caters for a niche audience who like to watch thrillers, in particularly crime thrillers. The people the film may appeal to are  people between the ages of 18 - 40. The reason why I say this is because the British Board of Film Classification gave the film an age rating of 18 due to disturbing scenes, nudity and bad language, and so the minimum age of a person watching this film should be 18. Also, because the main character, Mikael Blomkvist, who happens to be our protagonist looks roughly around 40 years old. Our other protagonist, Lisbeth Salander looks roughly around 20 (although she announces she is 24 in the film). People within the protagonists age range may feel that they can identify with these characters, and may find the film interesting to watch. The characters gender may also have an effect on what kind of people watch the film. However, I believe the target audience to be predominantly females within Libeth Salanders age range.


Representation - The two protagonists in the film 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' are similar in the sense that they are both investigators, but personality wise, they are very different. Lisbeth Salander, one the the protagonists in the film is represented in a variety of ways. At times she is represented as weak. For example, when she is being sexually abused by her mentor. We denote her being hit in the face and raped, which connotes her vulnerability. However, she is also represented as quite aggressive and comes across as an anti social and hostile person. Lisbeth Salander is an expert hacker which shows us that she is also very intelligent when it comes to technology.