Mads Brügger’s Cold Case Hammarskjöld, which debuted at Park City back in January, is a cinematic reinvestigation of the mysterious 1961 plane crash that took the life of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. But such a grave synopsis doesn’t even begin to describe this addictively gonzo (unsurprisingly, as Brügger is the Danish provocateur behind The Red Chapel and The Ambassador) doc, its every frame pulsing with sprawling ambition.
On his quest for the truth – tragic accident or assassination to prevent Congo from achieving independence? – the director/protagonist and his Swedish sidekick, private investigator Göran Björkdahl, decide to dig up the past. Literally. Armed with only the bare basics – two shovels, “two pith helmets to protect our Scandinavian skin,” and two Cuban cigars (to celebrate!) – they set off to find the now buried plane that Hammarskjöld along with most of the crew died in.
And because this is a Mads Brügger flick, of course things only get weirder – and delightfully comic – from there. In an attempt to gain access to the burial site, Brügger gamely explains to a perplexed African airport employee that they wish to reexamine the plane due to “new technology.” To which the guy sensibly responds, “But you only have two shovels.” A now deceased Belgian mercenary is described as a gentle and soft-spoken man by his nephew. True, he carried a gun. And also a hand grenade in his car, the relative nonchalantly adds. (To which Brügger sensibly responds, “Why?”)
Hot on the trail of the Colonel Kurtz-like Commodore Maxwell, the film’s potential Rosetta Stone who seems to have taken his secrets to the grave, the intrepid sleuths finally manage to track down the secretive man’s lieutenant – who claims he can barely remember the guy. Though he then recollects that they once took acting classes together. Alas, it appears to be yet another dead end for the duo. Which prompts Brügger to rue that he’s talked with many “elderly, white liver-spotted” men, managing to gain only bread crumbs.
This in turn unearths the director’s own deep-seated fear that the film itself has gone off the rails. In exasperated voiceover Brügger makes the surprising admission that he never really cared about investigating the possible conspiracy in the first place – though, “one thing I do care about is my own legacy.” Reflecting on his use of fictional techniques – such as casting two African women as secretaries he dictates to in a hotel room (in an ingenious racist/colonial setup that ends up dismantling racism/colonialism) – he sighs, “In truth I was hoping this charade would cover up my failings as a journalist.”
Ultimately, however, the self-deprecating Sherlock Holmes and his patient Watson (by way of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza) are fortunate enough to fall down one last rabbit hole – one so deep and astonishing that it can’t be contained in a two-hour film. Let alone a mere review. Which is another way of saying that by the end of Cold Case Hammarskjöld we’re left far less interested in what actually happened to one aristocratic bureaucrat nearly six decades ago than whether a TV series (or perhaps audio documentary) is in the works.