A Song for Europe

A profoundly gripping, albeit faintly sinister downbeat drama about the actions of Steven Dyer (David Suchet) a somewhat naïve, increasingly frustrated salesman for the large multinational drugs conglomerate based in picturesque Basel, Northern Switzerland, Dyer, acting on honest, seemingly altruistic motives, only semi-covertly hands over secretly photographed, profoundly incriminating company files to an independent organisation currently planning a thorough investigation on the gross business practices of the larger, more powerful corporations in the common market, exposing the myriad dirty deeds, corporate malfeasance, and all manner of financial skulduggery, and very soon Steven, and his family suffer the grievous consequences of his actions, with Dyer uncomfortably finding himself incarcerated on a serious charge of industrial espionage, which he angrily refutes to little avail; now frustratingly trapped within a plainly corrupt, and wholly biased Swiss legal system, facing the stark, existential nightmare of a further 20 years imprisonment! At this juncture in this enjoyably stolid TV movie, the already intense narrative becomes a rather glum, increasingly bleak affair, as Dyer's relatively carefree bourgeois existence is crudely demolished, and director John Goldschmidt's superbly written, if admittedly dour, agitprop drama takes an altogether darker descent towards its edifying, and witheringly grim conclusion. Overall 'A Song For Europe' makes for consistently engaging, singularly humourless entertainment, having much to recommend it, including the wonderfully sympathetic score by Carl Davis, the dazzlingly wholesome Swiss vistas are blissful to behold, and David Suchet's masterful performance as the ingenuous, if a little near-sighted whistle-blower made for a fascinating protagonist; his stoical struggles against an oppressively Kafkaesque, bureaucratic injustice made for rivetingly unsentimental drama.

First impressions with movies are not always correct as I found with this obsure film that there's hardly a single decent professional review for in the known web-a-verse. My first viewing six months ago left not much impression at first, and indeed I was largely underwhelmed. I just registered one reviewer who said he'd tried to watch this but kept falling asleep, as is the effect I imagine quite widely. But hang on...! Perhaps it was the general atypical mood of the work, it's solumnness, solemnity or just the titanic David Suchet playing this admirable but unlikeable protagonist Mr Dyer that stuck with me like a barb and I had to give it another shot and was well-rewarded. Yes there is a docudrama style in that the exposition is rather pedestrian and painfully along factual lines, but there is art within this little TV movie that sets it apart. First off there's the orchestral score, haunting and nicely balanced which covers the inevitable cracks in this thrifty production. We have full-centre a great performance by Suchet, and writing that is careful not to polish out the broken, oddly imperious personality of Mr Dyer, and eventually one begins to see more than a simple case of good guy verses the rest and question some of the protagonist's decisions especially in respect of his family life. The viewer's impression of dullness in the story is in a way warranted as there's hardly world-shattering stakes involved, no obvious mortal danger, no sex, but this true life tale does unfold with really tragic personal repercussions that takes the movie in a yet further level of melancholia as if it wasn't grim enough from the start. This is not a feel-good movie obviously, but is still oddly compelling in it's seriousness and sense of import way above its standing. Now I think about it there is not the slightest attempt at humour. There's also for me some cultural interest along the way with that mid-eighties hardness and big money obessions, maybe the begining of the end of too-big-to-fail businesses, not to mention those clunky phones and monitors, the ubiquity of the ashtray and all that eirie florescent lighting. But perhaps the determined character lies in the unrelenting nature of the story-telling, the bravery in serving up such unsympathetic characters and The integrity of a lack of any easy redemption. Notwithstanding the fleeting views of stunning Swiss scenery, this is a movie of in a maze of countless colourless offices and corridors and I imagine Kafka would have given it a salute. In the end, there remain real existential questions that are left for the viewer: what was the story really about? Was there any point in any of it? Was it worth it?