Efterskalv

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival (IFFR) 2016. I sat down fully in the mood to sympathize with John, given the synopsis. Our education has taught us that there is always a time to forgive and forget. Apparently the village is not ready for that, maybe just not open-minded enough. They want to uphold their defiant attitude, and don't offer John the slightest leeway to let him show he has learned from the institute where he stayed for several years. But it is easy for us to say from our comfy chair. My perspective changed gradually throughout the developments of the story.

At first, on his positive side, John does not defend himself from physical assaults or threats. Against his basic instincts he shows a strong will to prevent any cause to be expelled from school or sent back to jail. It takes some time for us to understand why he is stonewalled by his class mates, while the past is gradually revealed in bits and pieces. Yet, the unwelcoming attitude of the villagers seems overly harsh from the very outset, all things considered.

On his negative side, John's wish to return to his former school is challenging everyone involved, and it can be deemed ill-advised to begin with. Moreover, his return and non-acceptance by his peers also influences domestic relationships with his father and brother. There is no mother, and it surprised me that we don't get to know how this came about. Maybe it was irrelevant for the plot anyway. On the other hand, it could have made the story less one-dimensional. In the given situation the father has to cope on his own. A mother, of even a step mother, could have added some extra flesh to the domestic situation and the interactions with the outside world.

Later on, my attitude towards John changed to the negative side, along with a similar but more abrupt attitude change by his girlfriend. It happens all of a sudden, in a scene that clearly demonstrates John as a loose cannon and hot headed. In a later scene at the school canteen his girlfriend stated "you scare the hell out of everyone here", at the same time keeping him at arm's length, even unwilling to jointly eat their lunch. Another important protagonist is the school director. She seems a bit soft and very politically correct in the beginning. However, further to the finale, she demonstrates a firm position and a clear policy. She is not understood by everyone around, the majority of whom did not want to blame the fellow pupils, everyone being all too hasty to easily shift all the blame on John.

All in all, the synopsis had put me on the wrong foot by maneuvering me in the theoretically correct position that there always comes a time to forgive and forget, better late than never. The dramatic developments along the story line caused a change of (my) heart, and the script as such did a fine job of triggering this drastic 180 degrees change. On the other hand, the underlying reason that John does not receive a warm welcome is a bit one-dimensional, more than strictly necessary. I think that an elaborated domestic situation could have made a more colorful picture, for example by adding a (step)mother to include a bit extra tension due to some triangular father/mother/son controversies.

Auteur Magnus von Horn has created something that is quite deeply troubling to watch here as we follow the struggles of the young "John" (Ulrik Munther) as he returns home after a period of incarceration. Whilst we are uncertain as to quite what he did, we do know that he was locked up for two years and that his return home and to school is being treated with pretty universal disdain by his small, tightly-knit, community. What now ensues is a delicately presented evaluation of mob rule. Initially using more psychological tools like shunning before that particular pot over-boils and heads inevitably towards more extreme and dangerous behaviour. Munther delivers a really quite poignant performance here as does Mats Blomgren as his distraught and increasingly conflicted father "Martin" and the assembled supporting cast who offer up an effective degree of animus and toxicity that resonates more as the story asks questions that we know cannot be answered straightforwardly by anyone. I did wonder, on the plausibility front, if the absence of the police or other authorities to keep an eye on this young man either for the protection of himself or his community didn't quite ring true, but perhaps their omission from the thrust of the story managed to further illustrate just how brutal even the most ostensibly civilised can be when their wagons get circled. Not an easy watch, nor a conclusive one, but worth an hour and an half.

We, the "good people", believe (from religious or pure moral, humanitarian reasons) that crimes and transgressions should be forgiven (at least if the criminal shows signs of remorse), prison should not punish but rehabilitate, everybody should be given a second chance, etc. etc.

What this movie does is to stand those beliefs on end. The protagonist, John, has committed a murder. His punishment is extremely lenient; he has spent two years in a rather comfortable detention center for minors. He is released and returns to the small town where his family lives and to the school that was the scene of the crime. Naturally, he faces rejection from his fellow students and from the townspeople in general. Even more disturbingly he does not reveal any obvious hint of remorse or even understanding of his crime and shows sociopathic tendencies (obviously, rehabilitation did not work). Thus the people who reject him (especially the family of the victim), although superficially in the wrong are more justified than the "good people."

This is the first feature film by director and writer Magnus von Horn. He has put the tale on screen impeccably; there is no sentimentality, nothing is missing, no scene is prescindible. Acting is first rate; in particular Ulrik Munther brings John to life chillingly. Cinematography by Lukasz Zal fits the action perfectly. A movie to watch.

This is a film, which struggles to make clear what it wants to be. It is also riddled with inconstancy's which leaves the viewer wondering just what they are being offered. The first part, the arrival, John arrives home from an unspecified period of time, in an unspecified institution, his monosyllabic part of the overall script, quickly lead this watcher to wonder if they might be better off leaving the viewing and reading a newspaper? Moving onto the next part, which fails significantly to clarify the muddy mist, which has descended over the screening. Whilst the action improves significantly, with the arrival of some form of normality, the lack of any relationship between father and son is slightly clarified by the arrival of granddad, but remains boring. The final segment of the film is no clearer than the rest, but at least by then we do have a fuller idea as to just what is going on, but only just. I understand that the film maker, was making an analogy of Swedish Society and the problems that unchecked immigration is bringing Sweden and there way of life. But there are far better ways of getting your message across, that migration is a massive problem and is causing no end of problems between Swedes and uncle tom cobly and all.

Sadly, this debut is very mediocre and Magnus' skills to handle work on a film set are even poorer. The film is a wasted potential of a good idea. Magnus Von Horn has little to offer as a filmmaker.