Cold Case Hammarskjöld is a documentary by a Danish filmmaker, Mads Brugger, who uses the circumstances surrounding the death of the titular UN General Secretary as a way to explore his interest in conspiracy theories involving evil men, specifically an organization called South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) referenced in documents uncovered by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee. If a sober viewer was inclined to dismiss his eccentric narrative style, the archival video of Archbishop Desmond Tutu lends credibility to his sensational subject matter. Whether you are an Occam’s Razor adherent or an amateur Oliver Stone type, this documentary will definitely keep you absorbed and demands repeat viewing to fully comprehend whether Brugger is playing a shell game or if the story is actually comprehensive and coherent in spite of the way that the story is told. I watched it twice.
I don’t think that Cold Case Hammarskjöld ever came to a theater near me. If it did, the theatrical run was very brief, or the description was so murky that it did not grab my interest. Regardless of what happened, I am sorry that I could not financially support this film because it is exactly the kind of documentary that I like: filled with information that I never knew which helps me enter a world that is completely alien to me while simultaneously being entertaining and educational. I am selfishly glad that I saw it at home because I had to actively take notes to keep all the details straight and being able to rewind and press pause did not hurt.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld is a participatory documentary. The filmmaker plays a central role in his film, which I did not mind because even though he played an active role, it never digressed into autobiography and rigorously remained focused on the subject even if it did not seem as if it was. It is also meta-cinematic in that Brugger never allows us to forget that we are watching a film, but comments on how he is constructing it, the process of making the film and how the investigation unfolded.
If viewers end up hating Cold Case Hammarskjöld, it is because of this meta-cinematic, hyper constructed narrative instead of simply telling the story in a chronological format like most documentaries that we are used to—expository documentaries like the ones that you see on PBS directed by Ken Burns. Brugger uses this style because he wants us to constantly be critical of the information that we are offered instead of just accepting it as fact. If he had chosen the expository style, it would have immediately been dismissed just like those documentaries that try to say aliens built the pyramids. By being clear about his own doubts about this story, it makes the theories offered something to consider as fact, which makes a viewer more inclined to do so.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld’s overall narrative framework consists of him dictating his script to and discussing his film with two African secretaries in two different locations, which are pivotal to the central story. These two women are the every person that the viewer relates to because they are hearing this story for the first time just as we are. On one hand, the whole scenario is a little weird that these women are stuck in a hotel room alone with an eccentric filmmaker as their employer looming behind them. It sounds like the beginning of a #metoo story. On the other hand, the filmmaker is consciously making the every man into an African black woman whom he invites criticism and feedback from because their opinion matters to him. (Unfortunately in any employer employee relationship, even if earnest frankness is desired, it can never be fully offered.) He casts himself as the villain and demands that they judge him. Then his words are illustrated by what he filmed. He tells the story in the way that he says that he lived it for over six years of investigating. He names a hero, Swedish investigator Goran Bjorkdahl, and a villain, the shadowy Commodore of SAMIR, but confesses that if he is uncertain whether or not it is a real organization or the fantasy of a madman. The film is divided into a prologue, fourteen short chapters and an epilogue divided by typed written summaries preceding each section.
It is a good thing that all the active filmmakers in this process are Scandinavian white men because if they were not, it would not even get funding, a theatrical release or home viewing distribution. A lot of the theories discussed in Cold Case Hammarskjöld have been conspiracy theories circulated within black communities for as long as I could remember. Even Bruger points out that people don’t think of black witnesses as a form of reliable testimony. The only difference is that Bruger can get primary sources, i.e. other white guys, including one who confesses to nefarious, mercenary shenanigans, to confide in him if they aren’t the Caucasian African equivalent of the fifty-two percent, i.e. the ladies who are still standing by their problematic men, who either run the other way when they see him coming or wisely remain off screen so no one knows what they look like. To be fair, all the white women who appeared as a public face related to SAMIR ended up disappeared or dead so they are not necessarily wrong.
My problem with most reviews is that they end up summarizing the entire film, which is not the same as a review of the film. A review is supposed to guide you into deciding whether or not you will like the film and help you understand it fully by providing details that were not already explicitly discussed within the film or elsewhere. I think that you should watch Cold Case Hammarskjöld and decide for yourself whether or not the theories touted in the film are credible. I think that alarmingly many of them are verified, but regardless of whether or not all of it is true, it does speak to what people believe and are/were trying to do, people with power over vulnerable people. The New York Times rushes to dismiss one theory in the film, which, hi, wasn’t Judith “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” Miller your girl, and her work helped start the Persian Gulf War? Also did you not do a profile on an American Nazi and his food preferences? I am not saying they are wrong, just maybe turn that perspicacious eye inward. Even in the best-case scenario in which only the theories with supporting documentation should be considered, it is pretty damning about what it says about global, socioeconomic, capitalist and racial dynamics in the Eastern Hemisphere. More importantly, it is not even an American story. We only play supporting, tiny roles, including providing substantiating evidence.
It is still too early to tell, but Cold Case Hammarskjöld may be the best documentary of 2019 in spite of Bruger’s self-conscious style and breaking the fourth wall digressions. On a technical note, I adore that the DVD automatically provides subtitles without having to select it as an option even though the majority of people who appear on screen speak English. You do not have to know anything coming into the film about the subject matter or the titular UN Secretary General to enjoy this film.