Wallander: Faceless Killers

Our favorite pallidly pale detective is back in new episodes of Wallander.  If you don't follow Mystery! (the exclamation mark MUST be included) on PBS religiously, Kurt Wallander is a Swedish inspector who is sad and lonely and grumpy.  What keeps Wallander going?  His daughter and his job--not necessarily in that order.

In Faceless Killers, an old farmer and his wife are murdered.  Before she dies, the farmer's wife whispers something to Wallander, but he doesn't know what it was.  Friend?  Foreigner?  His colleagues leap on the latter, despite Wallander's objections, igniting a spate of hate crime.  Meanwhile, Wallander pursues two other possible leads: the fact that the farmer had a large amount of cash, now missing; and that he had a mistress and son his wife didn't know about.

This was a pretty good episode, although once again the soundtrack is OUT OF CONTROL.  Don't need to be hit over the head with the desolate landscape of Sweden/Wallander, kthanx.  But I do like how Wallander worked his way through the mystery and also the personal journey he goes through in the short course of the 90-ish minutes.

One of the things I found really interesting about this episode was the white horse.  The horse escaped from the farmer's stable when the thieves broke in to search for the money, and appears to Wallander like a vision out of the darkness several times during the course of the episode as it wanders, wild, through the fields. 

White horses are often associated with myth and legend--Odin, for example, rode an eight-legged white horse named Sleipner.  But in this story I think the white horse is more like Captain Ahab's white whale: in one way an unobtainable prize, in another god itself.  For Wallander, the white horse represents the sense of justice that keeps him going and that underpins his dedication to his job (and really his life, since his life is his job).  Throughout the story, Wallander pursues justice for the murdered farmer and his wife, but at what cost?  One large enough to make the justice obtained not worth the pursuit?  When Wallander faces the white horse for the last time, he has his answer.

This is hardly light-hearted television viewing, but it is interesting and well-done, and Kenneth Brannagh is simply brilliant as Wallander.  I can't wait to see what happens in the next installment!

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Wallander

I really love mysteries.  And according to Alan Cummings, Kurt Wallander is the most popular fictional detective evah... or something like that.  I wasn't really paying that close attention.  What I do know is, Kurt Wallander is a Swedish detective trying to solve a series of grisly murders involving beheading and scalping in the new Mystery! series on PBS.

I know what you're thinking right now.  You're thinking, "But Tasha, I thought Swedes were the most non-threatening people in Europe."  No, you're getting them confused with the Swiss.  However, I do have to agree there seems to be a rather high level of crime going on in the Rembrandt-esque landscape that makes up Wallander's district (fyi:  Rembrandt was not Swedish).

Here are some other things I learned about Sweden on this show, aside from the fact that they like to murder each other:

• Swedish people talk with British accents.
• Have you ever wondered if Swedish homes all look like the inside of an IKEA store?  Well, apparently they do.
• Does anyone else find the scarcity of trees to wood used in houses ratio alarming?  And did anyone else start humming Norwegian Wood at some point?  No?  Well, okay then.  I didn't, either, I was just wondering, of course....
  
• Lawn ornamants should never consist of florescent tube lighting.  Really, what was that guy thinking?
• While in the US, a psychological profile of "white male, appears to be normal" is usually considered helpful, in Sweden it only causes confusion.
  

In all seriousness, though, despite the fact that I obviously know very little about Sweden, I really loved the first episode in this series and highly recommend it.  Kenneth Branagh is absolutely great as the depressed and occassionally inarticulate detective who obviously feels very deeply, but has difficultly expressing his emotions.  For example, here's what he sounds like in a phone conversation with his daughter:

Daughter:  Maybe we can go to see grandpa later?
Wallander: *long stretch of silence* Erm--
Daughter: Okay, then.  Well, WHATEVER, Dad! *hangs up*
Wallander:  Gr--I--mmmm--wha--GAAARGH!

That sounds like a conversation with my dad, except I don't hang up on him.  I actually found the relationship between Wallander and his daughter to be rather odd; it didn't feel like a father/daughter relationship at all.  He also has the most annoying ringtone in the history of the world. 

Really the best thing about the series so far is Branagh.  The shots were occasionally overdramatic, as was the score (which was sort of hit-and-miss with me--sometimes brilliant, sometimes completely distracting), and I guessed who the murderer was right away; but overall, it was a great, enjoyable episode, and I look forward to seeing next week's installment!

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