On Fårö, I envy the dead seal
On Sudersand’s beach by the north Fårö lies a dead seal. It looks like a Christmas ham. A few kilometers away, Bergmanveckan arranges a conversation between two debuting directors: Gustaf Skarsgård and Alex Schulman. They look like they inherited their movie props.
Earlier this week, the government presented a “new political direction for a stronger film country”. The bill contains zero of the real proposals (reduced biomoms, a state culture fund, taxation of streaming services) that the previous film inquiry launched. Bogeries such as diversity and equality are scrapped. Instead, the watchwords are breadth and tradition, something that the men on stage of course represent.
At this point the team makes the country’s film workers realize that they live in a toxic relationship with their government. They give their hubby everything he demands, dump the chicks and fix gym cards, and are met with nothing but silence and coldness.
Those who distribute the film money have long tried to sext up the minister by washing bullets on celebrity projects. Film i Väst’s co-productions at this year’s Cannes festival were, for example, about “new long-awaited Johan Falk films”, a Sigge Eklund-documentary about Ruben Östlund and precisely Gustaf Skarsgård’s upcoming directorial debut, which of course is about Ingmar Bergman.
Unlike the seal, Fårö shines with color: a shiny party tent, an audience dressed in unison in pastel blue – a color white people pick up as soon as the sun comes out. Alex Schulman, podcast colleague of the aforementioned Eklund, has matched his smile with the tent. The director and the moderator Andrea Östlundex-wife of the aforementioned Östlund, who famously advised the aforementioned film investigation, praises the gentlemen for their beautiful hands.
Of course I have great respect for Alex and Gustaf. It’s their deed I can’t stand. On at least five occasions they mention the word “pain point”, because that’s how real auteurs talk. They “explore” things – preferably a low-key abuse that in reality took place during three guys’ weeks in 2006 – and call their works “Middle Space” or “Archipelag”. That’s fine Philip Roth’s wrong, or possibly Bergman’s: Riktg Konst™ SHOULD be about half-failed creators (preferably photographers or directors) who are loitering around sloppy and sleazy.
At one point, Gustaf Skarsgård tells us that you have to “search for the wounded, scared child in man”. I myself am looking for a way out, but there is no such thing here, not on Fårö, not this decade, not anywhere; it occurs to me that I envy the seal, which incidentally also runs out of options.
Kristofer Andersson is publishing manager, podcaster and writer at Aftonbladet Kultur.
