Death of Pilgrim (2013)
IMDb meta-data is 3 hours and 53 minutes in four episodes, rated 7.0 by 866 cinematizens.
Genre: Krimi.
Verdict: A slow burn.
One of the most thoroughly investigated murders in history occurred at 11:20 pm on downtown street in Stockholm on the night of 28 February 1968. While leaving a movie theatre with his wife, Olof Palme, incumbent prime minister of Sweden, was shot dead.
In this film a senior police officer nearing retirement agrees with a cabinet minister in his last term to review the case decades later, and so begins the research into the files, parking tickets, the few photographs before smart phones, the endless and contradictory witness statements, thought experiments to re-act the crime, timing of comings and goings, sifting the thousands of reports seeking the reward, sorting out the reliable from the unreliable, testing witness chains, and the growing feeling that someone has obstructed the effort when…. (where did parking ticket receipt go?)
Layered over all that is another investigation into neo-Nazi influence in the police and security services though it evaporates from the story. It is complicated, and yet it is also simple: Someone pulled the trigger.
It is full of references to unnatural practices with reindeers and Lapplanders to give it Swedish authenticity. Viewer discretion is advised.
In one marvellous scene a disagreeable police officer whose alcoholism has seen him relegated to manage a warehouse of lost property until he can be retired, realises the best place to hide something is….right there in the lion’s den. But will anyone listen to this slovenly sodden man? That is capped by the last lingering camera shot at the end. Stay with it. There is no padding in this production: every word, every look, every shot integrates into the story.
By the way, ‘Pilgrim’ was a Security Service codename for Palme.
In all it is brilliantly produced, directed, and acted, but sometimes hard to follow with the cross-cut timelines, and cryptic dialogue. Miss a title card with the date, and you are lost. Still such an uncompromising approach made this viewer pay attention.
For those who must know, the solution is banal. No vast conspiracy. Just one angry man who latched onto a chance opportunity, and had the means to do so.
By following a piece of string, I have been reading a lot about Sweden lately and was reminded that I had seen this series, so I went looking for it, thinking I could watch it again and get more out of it now that I know some of the context from the reading. I did and I did.