Novels, television series and movies belonging to the thriller or police investigations genres, coming from Northern Europe, have conquered in the past two decades the interest of the amateurs of these genres. It was a matter of time before one of these films crossed the thresholds of the national selections and of the nominee juries to reach the top list of the Academy Awards. That’s what happened with the Danish film ‘The Guilty‘ (the original title is ‘Den skyldige’), which reached the short list of the nominated films for the best film award in a foreign language, after having gathered many awards at festivals like Sundance or Toronto. Danish films are, of course, always serious competitors, but it is the first time that a thriller reaches the final of the race, and ‘The Guilty’ is far from being just another Scandinavian thriller.
Unlike in many other series or movies in the genre, there are no endless frozen snow-covered landscapes or any urban jungle of the Scandinavian metropolis in which violence is hidden behind the quiteness and apparent calm of the inhabitants in the film co-written and directed by Gustav Möller (at his first feature film!) Better said, we do not see them, as a violent story does exist in the film but it happens outside, while the camera is always in the same room of the police telephone dispatcher. This is where police officer Asger Holm, suspended from his usual activities as a street cop, gets the calls to the police emergency number, has to sort them out and act, in most cases distributing the cases to police stations widespread in and around Copenhagen. As the action progresses in real time, the audience begins to know Asger, not a model policeman, not always playing according to the rules, a man who can make mistakes, who quickly judges people at the other end of the line and who has to make life and death choices in a matter of seconds. Are his decisions the best? Are his appraisals about those with whom he speaks accurate? As time passes, the case gets more complicated, and the questions get a more general character, the kind of questions we can ask ourselves in everyday life. Do we sometimes make rush judgments? How exact is our first impression of others based on our experience of life, but also a few words exchanged with an unknown (or a few lines read on the Internet to generalize a little)?
I confess that I was stuck in the chair and I watched captivated this movie that fascinated me as much as a good action thriller, one with the most spectacular effects, gun shots and car chases. Surprising twists in the plot and thrill elements exist here as well but they take place outside, while what we see is happening in the neutral space of the police station. For 99% of the time we see Asger, his phones and his computer screen. He listens, talks, makes judgments, takes decisions. The quality of the film certainly owes much to Jakob Cedergren‘s exceptional performance. The actor is in close plan for almost the whole movie, he lives into his role under our eyes that captures every expression of the face, every eye movement, every tremor of the lips, every drop of sweat. The emotional quality of ‘The Guilty‘ even exceeds the boundaries of cinema. It could be just as well a play, it could be a short story or a novel. It is, above all, a shared human experience, a meditation about prejudices and empathy, about the price of mistakes, and about assuming responsibilities. When the hero finally comes out through a lit door, we, the spectators, go out with him from another universe where we have been transported for 85 minutes.