‘Black Crab’ Scribe Pelle R?dstr?m Talks ‘Pressure Point,’ How ‘The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions’
What are the limits of art, of freedom of expression in the case of neo-Nazis expressing anti-democratic views? Can rehabilitation programs reduce crime?
Those are some of the pressing and relevant questions raised by the limited series “Pressure Point” (“Sm?rtpunkten”), for which Swedish scribe and creator Pelle R?dstr?m is in the running for the Nordic region’s biggest screenwriter award – the Nordic Series Script Award. The three-part SVT series toplining David Dencik (“No Time to Die,” “The Chestnut Man”), Maria Sid (“All the Sins”), Martin Nick Alexandersson, Einar-Hugo Str?mberg and Linus Gustafsson, is helmed by double Berlin Crystal Bear winner Sanna Lenken. Art & Bob produces with REinvent handling sales.
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Famed for the Netflix thriller “Black Crab,” R?dstr?m goes back in his series to true events that shook Sweden 26 years ago, when its legendary playwright Lars Norén and his producer Isa Stenberg staged the controversial play “7:3” in which the main characters were three long-term convicts, including two neo-Nazis.
The play was a chance for the prison board to approach art as a form of rehabilitation. But one of the convicts used the slack security measures during rehearsals to plan a bank robbery, which ended up in the murder of two police officers, known as the infamous Malexander shootings of 1999.
The tense and thought-provoking series, filmed by Lenken with a semi-documentary style, collected rave reviews in the Swedish press when it first aired on SVT last April. It went on winning best international series at Barcelona’s Serielizados festival.
We spoke to R?dstr?m ahead of G?teborg’s Nordic Script Series Award, to be handed out Jan. 28.
How did you get involved in the series and what knowledge did you have of the Lars Norén play ‘7:3’ and the ‘Malexander’ robbery that shook Swedish society 26 years ago?
Pelle R?dstr?m: I read Elisabeth ?sbrink’s book ‘Sm?rtpunkten’, which the series is basedon, about 15 years ago, and since then, I’ve had the story of Norén, ‘7:3’ and Malexander as a sort of dream project to write someday. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I, as a writer, felt ready to tackle this complicated story. I then reached out to two colleagues that I admire, Wilhelm Behrman [“Before We Die”] and Niklas Rockstr?m [“The Unlikely Murderer”], in hope that maybe we could do a co-writing effort on the idea. The response I received was quite unexpected: they had already written a storyline about the events concerning 7:3, but due to scheduling conflicts, they would be forced to hand over the project to someone else. So, after talking to the producers at Art & Bob, they asked if I was interested in stepping in as the head writer. Which of course I was!
How much research did you do to enrich your material and flesh out your characters and plot?
Elisabeth’s book forms the foundation of the research for the series. Her book is very impressive, with its thorough research and the in-depth interviews with all the key persons involved. In addition to the book, I’ve watched as much moving images from the play and the rehearsals that I could find (e.g. Michal Leszczylowski’s excellent doc “Rehearsals”), read books that deals with ‘7:3’ and Malexander in different ways, and went through the police investigation and the court rulings. If you want to stay as true as possible to the real events as we’ve tried to with “Pressure Point”, the script becomes a massive puzzle consisting of countless small pieces of reality to fit together.
What were the biggest challenges in the writing process and your main concerns? Squeezing the dense topic (the play from the prison administration, Lars Norén/his producer and the three inmates’ perspectives, the robbery) into a three-part series? Making the show engaging to viewers not familiar with the events?
I think some people might believe that scriptwriting based on true events is easier than fiction writing. And, of course, in some ways it is: you constantly have a rich source to draw from for inspiration. But it also creates significant challenges. If you don’t want to fall into unfounded speculation about what happened, you, as a writer, are left with a map full of blank spots. There’s so much in a story like the one about ‘7:3’ and Malexander that you just can’t access or get answers to. Moreover, reality is incredibly illogical and multi-faceted, and people are so inconsistent and full of contradictions. Film dramaturgy, on the other hand, strives for a kind of purity and clarity. The characters should have one thing that drives them, one main goal. These sorts of conflicts between a complicated reality on one side and conventions of storytelling on the other, can create major challenges when writing a script based on true events. I think a lot of screenwriters go astray there by letting the dramaturgy rather than reality take the lead. As for “Pressure Point”, we have, to the greatest extent possible, tried to do the opposite.
The rehearsal scenes are extremely realistic, often with compelling dialogues where Lars Norén challenges the two inmates’ pro-Nazi views. What was the share of written text and improvisation, and how much work went into those scenes with Sanna Lenken?
Sanna has a black belt in creating film authenticity. Together with her masterful cinematographer Jonas Alarik and her fantastic actors, she makes the scenes feel documentary-like, whether they follow the script word by word or if they, at times, step away from the script and improvise. As for scenes with more controversial content, such as those scenes where Norén challenges the inmates on their neo-Nazi views, we had to be very precise to avoid the risks of stepping over the lines for defamation. Therefore, we agreed that those scenes had to follow the script verbatim, with basically no room for improvisation at all.
Do you feel that real-life producer Isa Stenberg who chaperoned the three convicts/actors, taking immense risks, is one of the most humane and touching characters, ‘sacrificed’ on the altar of Lars Norén’s artistic endeavour?
What is fascinating about the story of ‘7:3’ for me is that it fills me with such great ambivalence. I feel several things about basically all of the characters at the same time. Regarding the representatives from the correctional services, I admire them for their warm, humanistic belief in everyone’s ability to change, a perspective on criminals that I really miss in our time. At the same time of course, I think they made a series of naive and irresponsible decisions when ‘7:3’ was to be performed outside the prison walls. The same sort of ambivalence goes for the relationship between Lars Norén and Isa Stenberg. I strongly sympathize with Isa’s hope that the inmates would rehabilitate and change through the theatre work. But maybe at the same time Lars’ position – one that Isa only comes to understand he has very late in the process – is the most reasonable one, which is of course, that you can’t change a person, or rehabilitate a criminal, just by having them participate in a play. And what then remains as the project’s main purpose? Maybe, as Norén seems to have reasoned: a play that offers a unique insight into a world that most people have no access to. A play that could have been meaningful for society at large.
Lars Norén conceived theatre as a space to influence society and social issues affecting us all. In an interview with the Swedish newspaper ‘’DN’, David Dencik said he wouldn’t have put up a play with two neo-Nazis telling their story, unlike Norén. Would you have done it?
I actually believe that by putting the Nazis on stage, Lars Norén fundamentally undermines his own play. He reduces a play that has something important to say to the question of whether it’s right or not to let Nazis stand on stage and express Nazi views. It gets in the way of everything else that the play contains.
The show is very relevant for Swedish – and global – viewers, as it raises questions such as what are the limits of art, of freedom of expression in the case of anti-democratic voices? Can rehabilitation programs reduce crime…
I think that the story both reflects our present time, even though it actually takes place 25 years ago, but also has a sort of timeless, almost archaic, tragic structure at its core. It’s a story about how people with the best of intentions ended up creating a disaster. There is a saying that I made into some sort of an epigraph for the series while writing that was “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That’s basically, what this series is about.
Do you feel this is a fine example of public service TV drama and what makes it so unique?
Yes, I definitely think so. I don’t believe this series could have been made for any other Swedish platform than the public service channel SVT. Public funding for culture and public service TV is absolutely essential if a small country like Sweden is to maintain a serious domestic film and TV industry. In terms of such funding, Sweden was a pioneering country for many years. But unfortunately, the trend is now moving in the wrong direction, with less public funds for culture. The governing alliance between the far-right, who wage culture wars, and neoliberals, who believe the only legitimate culture is the one that survives in the market, threatens to drain Swedish cultural life of its diversity. Unfortunately, the Social Democrats as well – who created the publicly funded cultural policy in Sweden – haven’t shown any real interest in cultural issues for many years.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on several new projects, both for TV and film. One of them, a spy thriller that I’m developing with director Lone Scherfig and “Pressure Point” producer Rebecka Hamberger, will be part of the pitching sessions in the Discovery section here at the festival. I also have a feature film that I wrote which world premieres in the festival’s Nordic Competition “Kevlar Soul” and it’s directed by my girlfriend, Maria Eriksson-Hecht.
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