[A Pleasurable Headache] Justice is Compromised
News
I'm now free of COVID after being plagued for about a week and a half. The first few days were the worst, with the mother of all headaches along with a plethora of flu-like symptoms. At time I was verging on hallucination as tiredness and exhaustion seeped in too.
Thankfully, the only real fallout has been the fact I missed the submission window for an anthology I very much wanted to try my hand at. Many more than me have not been so lucky.
Hunt for a Killer - The police procedural meets the brutal and the mundane
The latter parts of my COVID recovery were spent watching the latest in a long line of Scandinavian crime series, Hunt for a Killer. The scripted series follows the events of a real-life case in Sweden involving the disappearance and subsequent murder of Helen Nilsson, who was only 10 years old. Before the culprit was caught the investigation spanned almost three decades, intersected with another murder case, and a complete change in the structure of the Swedish police itself.
There has been a propensity in many a modern procedural to make the lead investigator as much as a draw as the investigation itself. The Killing, The Bridge, the BBC's own Luther are all prime examples. Even some of the more traditional Scandinavian series such as Wallander give us broken, weary men who manage to clutch victory even as their personal lives fall apart around them.
Hunt for a Killer takes a different approach, one that has won it a number of plaudits and glowing reviews, but I don't think it's execution will be for everyone. I can only describe the narrative approach it employs as 'stripped back'.
The personal lives of the trio of investigators are rarely touched upon. We do not see them at home dwelling on cases long gone, failing to repair a relationship with an estranged child or dealing with some alluded to trauma. There are snippets of course. One investigator carries his child during a meeting. We see another arrive home to a prepared meal (with none of the implied marital strife that often accompanies such scenes).
It brings to mind Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of The Day of the Jackal. That movie is shot using a documentary like approach, with little in the way of fancy camera setups, tricks or cinematography. Instead the onus is on the chase for the assassin. The main investigator's home life is only briefly seen. Instead, we watch as he begins to piece together the clues using teamwork and a disciplined and persistent approach. The thrill and conflict come from the investigatory dead ends, the near misses and the satisfaction of watching an amazing competent person do their job (watch any Michael Mann film for more of this).
Hunt for a Killer takes this template and expands upon it. Years literally pass in between scenes, something that only increases pace as the narrative nears its conclusion and every false lead is pruned away through sheer persistence. We see suspects come and go ("Perverts and paedophiles! Lurking in every bush!" as one of the investigators laments at one point). We see similar cases be investigated, go nowhere, or throw up yet another suspect or kink in the current working theory.
When Hunt for a Killer unshackles itself from this understated format there are moments of genuine revulsion and terror. One particular scene shows an intruder entering a house in the background, whilst his potential victim listens to music in the foreground of the shot. It's simple but effective, with multiple layers and rooms of the house all in frame, but absolutely terrifying. The entire sequence then culminates in one of the most horrifying and piercing screams put to film.
There is a sense of darkness lurking beyond every locked door, as the investigators pursue their leads, of an epidemic of violence towards women simmering below the surface that no one dares speak of. When they are held up to the light, the perpetrators of the crimes come across as pathetic. Echoes of men. Husks hollowed out. Blank automatons who have no idea why they do the things they do. They are misfits lurking at the edges, only creeping towards the warmth and the light when stalking those in it.
Instead, the real villain in Hunt for a Killer is bureaucracy. The Swedish police at the time of the murder and the years that followed were going through a period of upheaval and reorganization. With it came different priorities. There's a political element to the narrative too with one particular official frustrating efforts at almost every juncture. But the same man is all too eager to claim the glory when things are going right.
There is a real sense in Hunt for a Killer that justice is compromised. A mother's grief is weighed against departmental budgets and found wanting. As the closing episodes play out there is a real tension as manpower, lack of funding and reality close in on our trio. We wonder if answers may never be found.
The closing scenes are characteristically understated but still hit home emotionally. A simple face to face, a pair of clutched hands across a kitchen table, and a whispered 'thank you' become so much more. After all, we have seen every defeat, every victory, and walked every patch of darkness it took to get there.
Hunt for Killer, at time of writing, is on BBC iPlayer for those of you in the U.K.
Links
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
https://restlessdreamsbook.com/2022/03/21/splinter-cell-chaos-theory
Game critic E Smith discusses my favourite game soundtrack of all time, Amon Tobin's score for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. He (rightly) points out the disjoint between the flowing, kinetic soundtrack and the often farcical attempts at grace by the player.
Elden
DEEP HELL have an excellent post (part of a promised series) on Elden Ring. The posts take the form of a fictional travelogue. They are very well written and speak to the game's brushes with the baroque and the weird as well as its almost impenetrable lore.
Thanatos Triumphant
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/thanatos-triumphant
New Mike Davis is always worth a read. Here he touches on the current state of U.S politics and the emerging influence of China.
How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oligarchs-bought-london
The always excellent Patrick Radden Keefe on the truly shocking (but wilful) complacency in allowing Russian oligarchs to financially compromise the upper echelons of British government, media, and culture.
"Belton even makes the case—on the basis of what she was told by the former Putin ally Sergei Pugachev and two unnamed sources—that Abramovich’s purchase of the Chelsea Football Club was carried out on Putin’s orders. “Putin’s Kremlin had accurately calculated that the way to gain acceptance in British society was through the country’s greatest love, its national sport,” she writes. Pugachev informs her that the objective was to build “a beachhead for Russian influence in the UK.” He adds, “Putin personally told me of his plan to acquire the Chelsea Football Club in order to increase his influence and raise Russia’s profile, not only with the elite but with ordinary British people."
Family Units
https://logicmag.io/beacons/family-units/
Julian Posada at Logic Magazine looks at a topic that has been discussed previously in this newsletter - the invisible labour of the modern tech industry. The story follows a family in South America who struggle to make ends meet by annotating data through crowd-sourcing platforms.
Said data is then incorporated into training the machine learning algorithms at the centre of so many facets of modern living. The families, paid in crypto-currency, often struggle to make the minimum value of $10 needed to be able to withdraw the money from their online wallet.
I'm off to replace my fingers with Allen keys as I assemble by weight (and then some) in baby room furniture, see you in two!