Rooney Mara Evil Genius

Tonight I finally watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I loved it. Rooney Mara is incredible. Totally worthy of her Oscar nomination. Move over, Tilda Swinton.

Without getting into a comparison between this and its original Swedish language version, haven't read the books or seen the films. Fincher's remake was my first intro to this pulpy story. For the record, I don't particularly care to "study up."

Rooney Mara | The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

It pisses me off when I hear people say this was a "paint by numbers" exercise because it takes so much talent to do what Mara does here.

In the film she plays Lisbeth Salander, a kickass anti-heroine with a gollum physique and a traumatic past. She is incredibly good at what she does. Victimized, vengeful, vulnerable. Together with Fincher, Mara has made this character a cinematic icon, a character to be worshiped.

For the most passionate response to the character and Rooney Mara's performance, look no further than Sasha Stone's review of The Girl With The Dragon Tatttoo.

As realized here by Rooney Mara, Salander seems only part human. She’s done what she can with what little of her there is but she’s hardly there – a streak of black ink across the cold, geometric blondes of Sweden. Black hair reaching down in harsh shards over eyes, which beam out strangely like the lonely predatory eyes of owls, pinning what they want through the dark. Her skin has been stitched, tattooed, bruised, sucked, clawed at, beaten, punched, kissed. She wears the traces of those disassociating sensations like she wears tattoos – they can seduce or intimidate, depending on what she wants or needs. But she learned early on that need was not a useful emotion so it got buried. She trusts no one. She makes up her own rules as she goes along and can find out anything about anyone — Salander can penetrate every layer.

Rooney Mara is not a good movie star in the sense that she doesn't show any flare for the press except for a general demeanor that's a cry for help. "Get me outta here" her attitude suggests, like a signal from a flare gun.

The pain of having to deal with questions about the piercings, the tattoos - and men, like Letterman, who constantly underestimate you, manifests itself in interviews as cool, aloof and borderline arrogant. She is still in character it seems.

What her attitude expresses to me is total confidence. There was no doubt in her mind when she decided to tackle the role, and then, never wavered when the role demanded so much from her. She's really saying "I got this."