Since I wrote my last review of his work, the Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indriðason has achieved a slightly unusual milestone, courtesy of the politics of his homeland. The new Icelandic Prime Minister is one Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who holds an MA degree in the work of the novelist, which may well make Arnaldur the first crime novelist to have been studied academically by a senior politician anywhere in the world.
All of this is a side-note to 2012's Outrage (originally published in 2008 as Myrká), of course, which is itself a somewhat peculiar novel even by Arnaldur's customarily austere standards.
The action begins with a rather enigmatic prologue, in which a man prepares himself for a night on the town. It's clear that the unnamed man is up to something sinister, and by the time he's found himself talking to a young (unnamed) woman, we begin to realise that his aim is the use of a date-rape drug of some description.
But all is not as it might seem, though. As the dead body is found, it emerges that it's the man who has been killed, with no sign of any woman nearby - only a woman's shawl, with a strange smell which Detective Elínborg recognises as tandoori spices. Moreover, we learn rapidly that the man's bloodstream is full of rohypnol, all of which points to something much more complex than first thought.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a case for Detective Erlendur, that gaunt, irascible character familiar from the rest of Arnaldur's novels. Strangely, Erlendur is completely absent from this novel, having travelled to the east of the country in an attempt to reconnect with his roots. The investigation, therefore, is conducted by Elínborg in the main, with Sigurður Óli providing some level of support.
The effect of this is somewhat bizarre to the reader, as Erlendur is as synonymous with Arnaldur's work as Wallander is for Henning Mankell or Hercule Poirot for Agatha Christie. While Mankell wrote a number of non-Wallander novels, and Christie had a small group of "starring detectives" (as well as trying her hand at a Poirot investigation in which Poirot himself stays at home), it is still a jarring realisation that Erlendur is absent and we're really getting the "B-Team" doing the investigation. Talented author though Arnaldur is, Elínborg and Sigurður Óli have never really been fleshed out as three-dimensional characters before, and remain similarly underdeveloped by the end of the this case. We know a bit more of Elínborg's private life, but I'm not convinced I really "know" the character the way I do Erlendur.
Arnaldur's novels almost always involve motives arising from the relatively distant past, and Outrage is no exception. Elínborg moves between the unnamed fishing village where the victim was born, the drug-dealers of Reykjavík and even the suburban town of Akranes in the quest to resolve this murder - and to try and clear up an unsolved disappearance from half a decade earlier.
The victim - Runólfur - gradually emerges as a thoroughly objectionable figure, and it is to Arnaldur's credit that he's able to change the focus of the novel from "justice for the victim" to "justice for other victims", as the logic of investigating Runólfur is all but openly questioned by a number of characters.
As in the best Scandi-Crime, Arnaldur holds up a mirror to his society and isn't at all concerned about showing things warts and all. Prescription drug abuse and a willingness to minimise the impact of sexual assault are both shown as "norms" in Iceland. So, too, is the clash between traditional society - such as Runólfur's mother, who is known in her village for never having been to Reykjavík - and the hyper-modernity of the capital.
On occasion, this leads to some genuinely amusing moments. Elínborg's interviews with an elderly woman who is terrified of electro-magnetic waves and who provides an important clue are sensitively-written but still very funny. The same, in fact, can be said for the way in which the woman's clue is revealed to actually be a clue.
That being said, some portions of the solution appear to have been phoned in, as the saying goes. The final use of the "tandoori shawl" clue feels a bit padded out, as well as being slightly too reliant on coincidence to be plausible. In Arnaldur's defence, though, it's possible to argue that the genuine lack of Indian cuisine in Iceland could produce a situation like the one Elínborg discovers.
In customary fashion, Arnaldur's conclusion leaves as many questions as it provides answers. Having read a number of this series, it's a technique which works very well, as the entire point is that "life goes on", rather than everything having been wrapped up neatly and "closure" provided to everyone involved. It may be slightly disconcerting to readers encountering the Reykjavík CID for the first time, though. These novels are an acquired taste.
Not exactly Arnaldur at the peak of his powers, but a good read nonetheless. I continue to live in hope that the earlier pair of Erlendur novels will see an English translation someday. 4 stars.
[NOTE: In accordance with Icelandic names, all Icelanders here are properly referred to by their first names only]
Tuesday, 19 December 2017
Tuesday, 12 December 2017
"The Snowman" film review
While this is a blog of book reviews, I feel that it is important to devote some attention to the recent film adaptation of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman. In my review of the novel, I indicated that the promise of the cast of the film was very high. Sadly, however, those expectations don't appear to have been borne out.
The Snowman is, to be entirely honest, a deeply frustrating film. There is no reason why - given the material, the actors and the director - it shouldn't have been one of the best films of the year, and yet it routinely drops the ball when it has the opportunity to do something genuinely spectacular.
My first problem with the film is that it falls into the common trap of letting all the actors use their natural accents, rather than getting them all to sound Norwegian. I suppose in some regard this is because much of the filmgoing public doesn't necessarily know what Norwegian accents sound like, but it actively destroys the realism of the plot. As a result, Michael Fassbender plays Hole with his Irish accent with overtones of something generically Scandinavian (I have a great deal of respect for Fassbender as an actor, and it is gratifying to see that he's at least made an effort here). Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Rakel with a French accent, which is bizarre, and Val Kilmer's Gert Rafto has an American accent, which is a complete waste of time. In Kilmer's defence, Rafto is from Bergen which has a very distinctive accent for most Norwegians, but I doubt that Kilmer's American tones are what they would have expected either.
Secondly, the film dispenses with a number of the subplots in the original novel. The complex motivations of Katrine Bratt, for example, remain almost entirely unexplained and her ultimate fate is radically different to that in the novel - so much so that I'm not sure how the mooted sequel (which I honestly doubt will be made now) would have worked.
Yes, there are certain aspects of Snowman's plot which require the written word, rather than the camera shot, to maintain their tension, but excising nearly 75% of a character (JK Simmons' Arve Støp moves from a key figure to a peripheral distraction) in the name of the visual makes no sense at all.
Thirdly, and most damningly, the film really doesn't know what genre it wants to be in. The novel is a thriller, and a very tense one at that. The marketing for the film presents it as something closer to an urban horror film with a slasher-esque villain. Just as so many Hollywood comedies overplay their hands by having the funniest bits in the trailer, the same is true with this film's jump-scares, for the simple reason that there actually aren't a great many in the original plot (one or two are invented for the screen, but that's another story).
Having eviscerated Nesbø's plot and made a mockery of the setting - much of the film was actually filmed on location, which further makes the accents bizarre - it emerges that Thomas Alfredson really didn't know what to do with what was left as a director.
Alfredson has previously directed the recent version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and can clearly handle complex plots, so the fact that he clearly phoned this one in is baffling. He's on record as complaining about a lack of time to prepare overall, as well as to do all the shooting he wanted to in Norway. While both of these may well be valid points, the fact that he's come out and said as much sounds remarkably unprofessional. A good director should be able to overcome such difficulties, rather than use them as excuses.
Again, the bones (or most of them) of Nesbø's original plot are there, and there's some particularly good acting in parts. Sadly, this doesn't add up to a particularly faithful re-creation of an absolute classic of recent crime fiction. I'm tempted to say that it works on some level, but while I'm glad I saw it, it really doesn't work at all.
The Snowman is, to be entirely honest, a deeply frustrating film. There is no reason why - given the material, the actors and the director - it shouldn't have been one of the best films of the year, and yet it routinely drops the ball when it has the opportunity to do something genuinely spectacular.
My first problem with the film is that it falls into the common trap of letting all the actors use their natural accents, rather than getting them all to sound Norwegian. I suppose in some regard this is because much of the filmgoing public doesn't necessarily know what Norwegian accents sound like, but it actively destroys the realism of the plot. As a result, Michael Fassbender plays Hole with his Irish accent with overtones of something generically Scandinavian (I have a great deal of respect for Fassbender as an actor, and it is gratifying to see that he's at least made an effort here). Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Rakel with a French accent, which is bizarre, and Val Kilmer's Gert Rafto has an American accent, which is a complete waste of time. In Kilmer's defence, Rafto is from Bergen which has a very distinctive accent for most Norwegians, but I doubt that Kilmer's American tones are what they would have expected either.
Secondly, the film dispenses with a number of the subplots in the original novel. The complex motivations of Katrine Bratt, for example, remain almost entirely unexplained and her ultimate fate is radically different to that in the novel - so much so that I'm not sure how the mooted sequel (which I honestly doubt will be made now) would have worked.
Yes, there are certain aspects of Snowman's plot which require the written word, rather than the camera shot, to maintain their tension, but excising nearly 75% of a character (JK Simmons' Arve Støp moves from a key figure to a peripheral distraction) in the name of the visual makes no sense at all.
Thirdly, and most damningly, the film really doesn't know what genre it wants to be in. The novel is a thriller, and a very tense one at that. The marketing for the film presents it as something closer to an urban horror film with a slasher-esque villain. Just as so many Hollywood comedies overplay their hands by having the funniest bits in the trailer, the same is true with this film's jump-scares, for the simple reason that there actually aren't a great many in the original plot (one or two are invented for the screen, but that's another story).
Having eviscerated Nesbø's plot and made a mockery of the setting - much of the film was actually filmed on location, which further makes the accents bizarre - it emerges that Thomas Alfredson really didn't know what to do with what was left as a director.
Alfredson has previously directed the recent version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and can clearly handle complex plots, so the fact that he clearly phoned this one in is baffling. He's on record as complaining about a lack of time to prepare overall, as well as to do all the shooting he wanted to in Norway. While both of these may well be valid points, the fact that he's come out and said as much sounds remarkably unprofessional. A good director should be able to overcome such difficulties, rather than use them as excuses.
Again, the bones (or most of them) of Nesbø's original plot are there, and there's some particularly good acting in parts. Sadly, this doesn't add up to a particularly faithful re-creation of an absolute classic of recent crime fiction. I'm tempted to say that it works on some level, but while I'm glad I saw it, it really doesn't work at all.
Jo Nesbø - "Phantom"
Hary Hole again intends to disappear at the end of The Leopard, but the Norwegian capital clearly has a hold over Jo Nesbø's famously dark detective, as 2012's Phantom (Norwegian: Gjenferd, originally published 2011) opens with the scarred and newly-metallic-fingered Hole returning to Oslo. Hole has changed, though, as he is now definitely no longer a Norwegian policeman, and has in fact been working in what might be termed "debt collection", or perhaps "standover tactics" in Hong Kong, a development hinted at towards the end of the earlier novel.
Oslo, too, has changed. The police no longer turn a blind eye to drug dealing in certain parts of the city, and in asides we learn that the more "traditional" drug of heroin has been replaced by something known as "violin". Hole's adversaries from The Leopard - Mikael Bellman and his loyal underling Truls Berntsen - remain in their police careers, with Bellman re-assigned to head the division focusing on organised crime, which appears to focus on a criminal known only as "the man from Dubai".
So what's brought Hole back from the Orient this time? He initially requests permission from his former boss to investigate the murder of a young junkie, Gusto Hanssen. This is an unusual request, since the case appears to be straightforward, and a suspect has already been arrested. There is, of course, more to it than that - Oleg, the son of Hole's former girlfriend Rakel - is the arrested suspect. While mother and son had left Norway after the events of The Snowman, it emerges that they have returned, and that Oleg has gone off the rails, falling in with drugs and petty crime. Hole, perhaps unsurprisingly, blames himself and simply can't believe that the boy he knew a few short years before could have killed someone else.
On meeting Oleg - in a particularly touching series of scenes - it is revealed that the young man blames Hole for his troubles as well, and much of the early plot of the novel is played against the need for the father-son relationship (such as it was) to be restored.
Hole's investigations into the murder take him further into the new underworld in Oslo, uncovering a complex web of political and personal corruption uniting crime, the police and the government, and where it is never entirely clear who is using whom. In many ways, this investigation owes a lot to the classic noir fiction from the USA more than half a century ago. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to have seen Sam Spade or any of the other key figures of that style of fiction conducting inquiries.
The weakness of the novel, to be honest, is the sheer complexity of this corruption. Nesbø relies quite heavily on a "narrative" from the deceased Gusto Hanssen to explain some of the more abstruse points, as it gradually emerges that this may not have been a "regular" murder of a junkie or drug dealer. Unfortunately, Hanssen's exposition of the plot doesn't always keep pace with Hole's investigation, and the former detective is left more than once chasing up a red herring which the reader already knows the resolution to.
This isn't always a problem, due again to that self-same complexity. There were just as many points where I was grateful that Hanssen would explain something Hole's narrative had hinted at - or vice versa. All of this probably militates against the novel being good "beach reading", a comment I find slightly ironic as I in fact did read this during a holiday at the beach.
Perhaps more than many of the Hole novels, Phantom requires an awareness of the past incidents in Hole's chequered career. His delicate relationship with Rakel plays a considerable role in the plot development here, as do the favours he had earned during The Redeemer. Moreover, the experience of reading the earlier instalments will demonstrate whether Hole really is the detective the reader wants to follow. Nesbø again pulls very few punches, and has no qualms about putting his man into some very tough situations, both physically and ethically.
4 stars overall, for a very complex plot which somehow holds together.
Oslo, too, has changed. The police no longer turn a blind eye to drug dealing in certain parts of the city, and in asides we learn that the more "traditional" drug of heroin has been replaced by something known as "violin". Hole's adversaries from The Leopard - Mikael Bellman and his loyal underling Truls Berntsen - remain in their police careers, with Bellman re-assigned to head the division focusing on organised crime, which appears to focus on a criminal known only as "the man from Dubai".
So what's brought Hole back from the Orient this time? He initially requests permission from his former boss to investigate the murder of a young junkie, Gusto Hanssen. This is an unusual request, since the case appears to be straightforward, and a suspect has already been arrested. There is, of course, more to it than that - Oleg, the son of Hole's former girlfriend Rakel - is the arrested suspect. While mother and son had left Norway after the events of The Snowman, it emerges that they have returned, and that Oleg has gone off the rails, falling in with drugs and petty crime. Hole, perhaps unsurprisingly, blames himself and simply can't believe that the boy he knew a few short years before could have killed someone else.
On meeting Oleg - in a particularly touching series of scenes - it is revealed that the young man blames Hole for his troubles as well, and much of the early plot of the novel is played against the need for the father-son relationship (such as it was) to be restored.
Hole's investigations into the murder take him further into the new underworld in Oslo, uncovering a complex web of political and personal corruption uniting crime, the police and the government, and where it is never entirely clear who is using whom. In many ways, this investigation owes a lot to the classic noir fiction from the USA more than half a century ago. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to have seen Sam Spade or any of the other key figures of that style of fiction conducting inquiries.
The weakness of the novel, to be honest, is the sheer complexity of this corruption. Nesbø relies quite heavily on a "narrative" from the deceased Gusto Hanssen to explain some of the more abstruse points, as it gradually emerges that this may not have been a "regular" murder of a junkie or drug dealer. Unfortunately, Hanssen's exposition of the plot doesn't always keep pace with Hole's investigation, and the former detective is left more than once chasing up a red herring which the reader already knows the resolution to.
This isn't always a problem, due again to that self-same complexity. There were just as many points where I was grateful that Hanssen would explain something Hole's narrative had hinted at - or vice versa. All of this probably militates against the novel being good "beach reading", a comment I find slightly ironic as I in fact did read this during a holiday at the beach.
Perhaps more than many of the Hole novels, Phantom requires an awareness of the past incidents in Hole's chequered career. His delicate relationship with Rakel plays a considerable role in the plot development here, as do the favours he had earned during The Redeemer. Moreover, the experience of reading the earlier instalments will demonstrate whether Hole really is the detective the reader wants to follow. Nesbø again pulls very few punches, and has no qualms about putting his man into some very tough situations, both physically and ethically.
4 stars overall, for a very complex plot which somehow holds together.
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