By Travis Johnson
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson is no stranger to darkness. He first came to wide attention with the excellent, albeit controversial, vampire film Let the Right One In, before making his English language directorial debut with the acclaimed, oblique John Le Carre adaptation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in 2011. So it’s funny, in a way to hear him say he’s “…not really a crime guy.”
And yet here we are, speaking about his sixth film – and first since Tinker Tailor – which is incontrovertibly a crime story. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Jo Nesbo, The Snowman focuses on eccentric Norwegian homicide cop Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) as he investigates a series of murders by the titular killer.
It’s a text firmly grounded in the now familiar “Nordic noir” or “Scandi crime” genre that rose to prominence in the wake of the international success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, and the character of Hole, the protagonist of 11 of Nesbo’s novels, is a leading light in the field, often called Norway’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, he’s a complex figure, given to melancholy that he drowns in booze. Indeed, when met meet Harry in the film, he’s sleeping off a bender in a bus shelter.
“Some alcoholics drink to make the world brighter,” Alfredson muses. “Harry isn’t like that. When we meet him, he’s very much a broken man, and this case kind of redeems him.”
Hole is also a very old-fashioned figure in his way, eschewing the high tech trappings and toys of modern investigation in favour of old school shoe leather and on-the-ground detective work.
“I made him a very analogue kind of guy,” Alfredson explains. “He doesn’t like to use phones. You see in the movie he makes his assistants make phone calls. He doesn’t drive. He would rather take the bus to a crime scene and look at things.”
Just as Hole the man likes to get his feet on the ground, so too is The Snowman the film deeply connected to its setting, focusing more on place and the impact of the crimes on the community than your average thriller. “We spend a lot more time with the families of the victims than you normally do in serial killer movies.”
It’s easy for Anglophone audiences to roll all the Scandinavian countries into one wintry, happily socialist whole but they are, of course, distinct national entities (note that Alfredson is Swedish, while The Snowman takes place in Norway). Calling the shots on the film, which is shot in English, Alfredson had to walk a fine line between fidelity to Norwegian geography and culture, and the universality that would allow the story to transcend borders.
“You have to be careful,” he says. “Because even between European countries there are differences that can take an audience out of a film. You’ll see in the film we don’t really look at signs, street signs or anything like that.”
One example he gives is that we never see a “Politsis” sign – Norwegian for “Police” in the entire film except for right at the end. “And that was a reshoot!” he exclaims.
And given that The Snowman is the seventh of 11 Harry Hole adventures, what are the odds of the downbeat detective returning to our screens, should audiences and critics prove favourable?
“There are definite plans for a franchise,” Alfredson says.
The Snowman is in cinemas now. Read our review here.
