Cold Case Hammarskjöld

"I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive." Dag Hammarskjold

In 1961 the secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, died in a plane crash on his way to negotiate peace for a nation torn apart by apartheid. Director Mads Brugger and co-investigator Goran Bjorkdahl in Cold Case Hammarskjold craft a fascinating documentary about that crazy world in which not only does he seem to prove a plot to kill Hammarskjold, he also suggests a military group, SAIMR, is responsible for spread of HIV as a way of eradicating blacks in Africa.

"Only the subject remains noble with this gallery of suspects: It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity." Dag Hammarskjold

This undeniably interesting doc seems to suggest rightly some of the blame for the death, but the virus motif was as recently as July debunked in part by the New York Times. At least the Times has scientifically cast doubt on any group's ability to spread clinically the virus in a whole population.

As Brugger deftly transitions from the plane disaster to the virus, more bad actors appear, and the Hammarskjold murder takes a back seat, albeit the death can be seen as a strategy to take out a major player in the anti-apartheid movement. Although the motives and characters seem to multiply dazzlingly, Brugger knows how to spin the facts into engaging drama.

See this challenging doc to bone up on your African history and gain some insight into how organizations like the CIA and SAIMR operate and get away with murder. Although Angel Has Fallen beats Cold Case cold in the box office races, it can't get close to beating a doc that keeps you guessing and sometimes really leaves you cold.

"Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away." Dag Hammarskjold

I really looked forward to seeing this doc, first half was actually pretty dull even though the topic is interesting to me. Of course, I already knew about the "twist" and, sure enough, when we got to that part, the film got much better and more interesting.

But the format of the documentary copied Icarus too much for me not to have alarm bells going off as I watched it. It just seemed...too much...and yet not quite enough.

The revelation in the second half, if it were to be true, would be one of the most monstrous acts any group of people have committed on another since WWII.

But how reliable is the one "witness' to all this? With no additional evidence, just fragmentary clues pieced roughly together, I cannot say.

That's why the framing of the film itself leaves me suspicious.

Mystery, murder, conspiracy; Cold Case Hammarskjöld has it all. It will draw you to the edge of the seat, make your jaw drop and most likely leave you in awe at the end of the film. If we accept that the goal of this documentary is to call attention to the matters discussed and portrayed in this documentary, then indeed it fulfills its purpose outstandingly. If however it is to be taken as a 'mystery solved documentary', like in the case of The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988) , then it fails miserably. Luckily the latter, in my opinion, does not seem to be the case. Therefore I can highly recommend watching this thriller of a documentary. Hopefully the story will receive a part two, because it needs one.

The first half of this documentary reads as a kind of sly, long con in which the film maker has somehow managed to get funding for a multi-year, multi location field trip. He can't believe his luck and starts off thinking much of the initial story is some kind of elaborate hoax.

Much to his surprise as he and the other investigator quite literally dig deeper they are rewarded by a much bigger story that is actually quite shocking.

However we can't quite be sure if the super witnesses are the real thing or actors playing a part. The secondary story seems to me to be the quite serious and deserving of a follow up.

The initial story around the death of the UN's Secretary general at the time does give us more context and that part of the story has quite rightly attracted a number of headline stories.

The secondary tall tales seem quite feasible but the tone of the overall expedition / documentary seem more mockumentary like. The format seems il suited to the secondary and more mysterious context and politics.

This is very much like that moment in Jaws where the character says - "we're gonna need a bigger boat" but he does recognise this but only in an oblique way.

This discordant contrast between the jokey tone of the initial story and the wider context makes it hard to know what it is that we have just seen. At times the style is very meta with Mads Brügger ( director & one of the investigators) unsure what to do with all of the revelations.

I personally hope that some other journalists or investigators follow up on this. If the director gets to film a part 2 I'm up for it.

Chutzpah is what defines the making of this movie! To be sure the basic facts about Hammarskjöld's death are historically accurate. And thereafter, everything is made up (or so I guess), spinal tap style. And all the conspiracy stuff after the 'exposition of the "facts" ' only helps to obscure the fact the "documentary" is made up. Smoke and mirrors, including very creative "intelligence" sources, from likely suspicious locations (my favorite is the South African Maritime Research Institute no one heard of!). At one level this is brilliant and funny. However, once you have figured out the angle of the script, it wears off quickly, like a one-joke movie. Still, a tour-de-force, in its own way. Alan Partridge would approve.