It’s no new news that Trent Reznor had Karen O’s help in re-creating Led Zeppelin’s classic “Immigrant Song” for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” What’s fresh is the way David Fincher introduces it in the opening credit sequence to his adaptation.
Check out the very liquid, very dark animated video clip to the much-anticipated film.
I already have some feelings about the Nine Inch Nails’ frontman’s contributions overall, and those are to come. But the lo-rez version of this opening clip has nothing on the reality on the big-screen version. It’s visually abstract and then sensually sick as it rolls on, much like the movie itself. See it in the theater if you can.
The approach to “Immigrant Song” is especially poignant, a woman singing Robert Plant’s part, the lyrics literally about over-lording and imperialism. It’s a very masculine song, from it’s infamous riff and it’s rallying cry. Vikings, too, are also ironically associated with that good old-fashioned rote “raping and pillaging.”
And if you’re one of the millions who read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” at the airport, or saw its first Swedish adaptation, then you know the male-female gender roles and trades, also with themes of — well — raping and pillaging. “Immigrant Song” is appropriately undisciplined in a solitary gender mode. Its visuals are perfectly ambiguous.
“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is out next week, and is scored by Academy Award Winner Trent Reznor (TM).