the guilty (w&d gustav möller, w emil nygaard albertsen)

The Guilty was much heralded in the UK last year, so it was with a certain anticipation that I finally settled down to watch it. People had told me that it was gripping, compelling, an astonishing manipulation of meagre resources. Essentially the film is a fine advert for the Aristotelian virtues of time, place and action. There’s always a frisson to be had from engaging with a film in ‘real time’, watching the clock tick down. It permits the spectator to feel complicit in the action: if you were to leave now, would this affect the narrative? Hence, the edge of the seat-ness of the movie. In addition it’s a wonderful riposte to the “show/ don’t tell” brigade - because all the action occurs ‘offstage’. The protagonist, Asger, works as a police response handler, (He’s no longer on the beat for reasons which become clear as the movie unfolds), tracking an apparent kidnapping. He is trapped in the passivity of his situation, as he attempts to influence events beyond his immediate control, at the end of a phone line. The script provides numerous twists as it unravels, keeping the audience guessing. We are in the same place as Asger; we share his information and his ignorance, and as a result we ride the rollercoaster with him. It’s skilful and effective screenwriting, even if the milieu ends up feeling something out of an episode of a cop drama series, which restricts the narrative potency to a certain extent. 

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Watching the film, it struck me that there might be another reason for its effectiveness. In a way, Asger’s situation reflects and captures the modern condition. We are all prisoners in our private shells today. Incarcerated by information we receive through our phones or our computers. We stare at screens which deliver terrifying information and search for a way to influence events from a position of passive ignorance. These events, as seen through the screen, are also deceptive. The heroic anti-establishment Assange becomes a stool pigeon of the Bannonite extremists. Our judgement is faulty, unreliable. Our impotence is repeatedly exposed. We could, like Asger, smash up the furniture in anger at the destruction of the rainforest or the contamination of the seas or the latest racist comment by a politician we have no way of ejecting, but this anger serves no purpose at all. Gustav Möller’s film is an excruciating metaphor for the tragic hopelessness caused by our modern technological servitude.