The Simple-Minded Murderer (1982)

With The Simple-Minded Murderer Hasse Alfredsson showed that his abilities reach far beyond comedy. This is a frightening movie, in several ways. Stylistically, the film proved to be far more diverse than I expected it to be. Alfredsson boldly tries out different styles - to capture different atmospheres - realism of a fairly traditional vein is intermingled with the supernatural (along with operatic music!). What works so greatly is that there is no tired distinction between fantasy/reality, but, rather, the supernatural is also, in its own way, real. The film also draws parallels between historical situation in a way that to some may feel strange, but I appreciated his ways of explicating a theme in the movie by suddenly bringing in a completely different time. Somebody has compared the film with Derek Jarman's work (!) and that makes complete sense to me: here you have a similar break with traditional forms.

Sven (good performance by Stellan Skarsgård) is seen as retarded because of a speech defect. He is exploited by some kind of industrialist. He sleeps in a barn and is forced to work hard. As he befriends Anna, who is dependent on her wheelchair, he gets to work for and live with Anna's family. But the industrialist does not like this new arrangement and sets out to revenge. The story is told in bits and pieces, with flashbacks. Somehow, this seems to be a fruitful approach to the material, and heightens the sense we often get of different levels of reality.

One could say that The Simple-minded murderer is about the nature of evil. Without shying away from melodrama (which is both good and bad), the film is built like a morality tale. The industrialist symbolizes an almost absolute sense of evil. He is evil not because of some petty interest he seeks to further, but rather, the evil things he does has no specific purpose. Admittedly, Alfredsson sometimes reverts to all too familiar clichés about evil: we see the industrialist gorging himself together with his pals, engaging in all kinds of debauchery (which, however, is depicted not as exotic and titillating but as very, very boring) - I mean, this association of debauchery and evil does not help us understand anything.