-
The Killing
14 March 2011
Not being much of a thriller person, I, nevertheless, find myself, like everybody else, trapped by The Killing and by the sensible jumpers of Sarah Lund – funny interview that, worth reading and a good payoff. It is, superficially, just further evidence that There is Something Strange about Scandinavians. Wallander made it clear they were miserable, The Killing says they are warped. Not, of course, that one should read national character from TV detectives, we, for example, are nothing like Morse though perhaps we are a bit like Lewis, sort of hopeless and exasperated. What traps me about The Killing is not the identity of The Killer – though I am now pretty sure I know who did it – but the lighting and the establishing shots. Everything is shrouded in more or less the same gloom, whether it is day or night, and characters seldom turn on a light and, when they do, it seems to get darker. But the establishing shots are superb: headlights on gleaming streets, passing trains, shadows everywhere and a constant feeling of descending into a nightmare. They make Copenhagen look like anywhere but Copenhagen which is, in fact, a rather light, airy, elegant city , a sort of John Lewis of a capital – you feel nothing really awful could ever happen there. The Danish language doesn’t seem to be much like Copenhagen either – note how much more sinister the original title Forbrydelsen sounds than The Killing.5 Responses to “The Killing”
Leave a Reply
- Dmitri Nabokov
- For Marie Colvin
- Caption Contest 1
- The Crowds at Abbey Road
- Fox Talbot’s Dream Square
- Fred the Shred’s Head is not the Answer
- Smart Yeast Points to the Apocalypse
- Borgen: The Snowstorm Paperweight
- Debt is Gambling
- Dealing with the Dawks
- Jacobean Blood
- The Soul of Ron Mueck
- Extremophiles: Life on the Edge
- The Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, it is Certainty
- David Hare’s Rattigan
- Planet Hunting
- The Once and Future Tee-Mo
- The Truth of Islam
- Soul Searching
- Overthrowing Chomsky
14 March 2011 at 2:41 pm
“characters seldom turn on a light and, when they do, it seems to get darker”
This had me chuckling. The sort of phrase that would have once been worthy of a book of quotations but is these days worthy of a t-shirt.
14 March 2011 at 2:43 pm
I don’t know why I’m trapped by this one, it’s a bit of a soap opera. Too many episodes and characters – suspects – drop in and out like, well, like coppers do on Coronation Street. I don’t know about your guess but I had my eye on the removal man’s mate from episode three. I mean, how else would you explain his character? The boss’s mate – yeah, right. Vagn means killer whale in Norwegian, don’t you know. But there’s been a lot of heavy smoke and mirrors, and with four hours to go there’s still time for a completely new character to turn up late and have done the deed.
I was hoping they’d show more Inspector Montelbano. I believe there was a true representation of Sicilian national character.
15 March 2011 at 10:51 am
Vagn would be too obvious and they have very obviously been avoiding doing the obvious. As coppers go they do seem to be especially incompetent and Lund would be the partner from hell: I thought it was men who were supposed to be the uncommunicative sex, but Meyer spends his whole time updating Lund, whilst she just dashes out of rooms overtly not informing him of what she’s up to.
The one clear characteristic that stands out, though, is that the Danes don’t seem to be strong on a sense of humour or a sense of the ridiculous. Nor self-deprecation.
But I’m hooked.
16 March 2011 at 9:19 am
We will see but it’s like they say, if there’s a gun on the wall in the opening scene it’s put there for a reason. And we must have already been introduced to the killer, surely!
18 March 2011 at 6:01 pm
Isn’t the killer going to be the Mayor? Ooops sorry.
Anyway it’s compulsive – but haven’t you missed the humour? It reminded me of the classic Saragossa Manuscript with its endless narrative elaborations.
In the Killing or Forbrydelsen as I like to call it, suspects are thrillingly reshuffled episode by episode. It’s only now at Ep 16 that this is beginning to feel strained… But the baroque suspect shuffling has been a brilliant formalist achievement.