‘Hammarskjold – Fight For Peace’: Rotterdam Review

Dir: Per Fly. Sweden. 2023. 114mins

Celebrity diplomat Dag Hammarskjold’s fame rests on his tenure because the second Secretary Common of The United Nations and his controversial dying in a airplane crash in 1961 (as detailed in 2019’s hit documentary Chilly Case Hammerskjold). Per Fly’s well-heeled biopic largely focuses on his remaining weeks, emphasising the beliefs that drove Hammarskjold and the forces that gathered towards him. This measured, respectful drama ought to join with an older demographic and has already secured seven Swedish Guldbagge nominations together with Greatest Movie and Greatest Actor for lead Mikael Persbrandt.

Makes accessible the world of politics, betrayals and vested pursuits wherein Hammarskjold was working

Director and co-writer Fly (The Inheritance, Monica Z) shortly conveys a way of Hammarskjold’s significance on the world stage all through the Fifties. Black and white newsreel footage paints him as fearless in negotiating the discharge of American troopers captured by China throughout the Korean Battle, averting a conflict over the Suez Canal and revealing a steely dedication to champion decolonisation in Africa. ’Simply go away it to Dag!’ grew to become a mantra for some world leaders.

There’s a crisp magnificence to the storytelling that seeks to match Hammarskjold’s persona. The manufacturing design from Niels Sejer conjures a world of gleaming limousines and shadowy, wood-panelled rooms the place males decided the affairs of the world. Hammarskjold is commonly seen working into the night time with solely a desk lamp and his ideas for firm.

Hammarskjold himself is a determine from an age when diplomats wore bow-ties and dapper fits, and would possibly nonetheless hope to make the world a greater place. Mikael Persbrandt portrays him as a exact, orderly man who has created a assured, unflappable public persona. The masks covers the eagerness and righteousness that fuels his diplomacy, but additionally conceals his interior life. Hammarskjold lives in an opulent New York condominium that he shares together with his pet monkey Buck and is attended by a loyal butler, additional encouraging the echoes of a bygone period. It’s the lifetime of an aesthete utterly devoted to his work.

The movie honours that life but additionally makes an attempt to dig a little bit deeper into Hammarskjold’s isolation, loneliness and the sacrifices he made. Fly makes use of the journals Hammarskjold stored that had been solely made public after his dying; right here, we discover a man who wrote poetry and punctiliously examined his achievements and failings. Fly additionally introduces the determine of Peter Levin (Thure Lindhardt), a buddy from Hammarskjold’s previous who makes an attempt to rekindle their acquaintance and provide him a love he has denied himself. Hammarskjold asserts he’s not homosexual however there’s a sense of him as a Gatsby and Peter because the one who received away.

Fly makes accessible the world of politics, betrayals and vested pursuits wherein Hammarskjold was working. He spotlights the best way Belgium plotted to retain its monetary pursuits within the Congo, and the way even seemingly pure allies failed Hammarskjold in his hour of want. The actions of Belgian-backed Congolese politician Thshombe (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) and the UN response masterminded by Hammarskjold grew to become a battleground wherein the politician was keen to stake his life.

The final half-hour of the movie have the intrigue and tempo of a political thriller, though we already know the result. Fly and co-writer Elf Ryberg don’t have any hesitation in depicting Hammarskjold’s dying as a political assassination, refuting the official model of the time. Whereas the movie is a generally sentimental celebration of a heroic determine, the choice to delve deeper into his persona makes him a extra rounded, human determine and his loss all of the extra shifting.