Clark or how the myth of the Stockholm syndrome was born (rating 6.5) – Corriere.it

Clark, like Clark Gable, and instead Clark Olofsson, the most famous Swedish criminal, now free since 2018 after 17 escapes and endless bank robberies both in Sweden as in France and in Belgium where he now resides, constantly changing his name due to the popularity of his drop out life. Today 75 years old, the Swedish boy with a desperate childhood due to an alcoholic, violent and male chauvinist father, was convicted, over the course of the judicial time, of attempted murder, assault, robbery and drug dealing etc. and he spent more than half of his life in prison, not undeservedly (however with sexual visits of partners as Swedish law allows) and let alone violence against the female gender, therefore betrayed paternity and marriages of convenience that would ban him from any gender issue.

During a famous bank robbery on 23 August 1973 in Stockholm, locked in the vault for six days with some hostages, including an attractive girl, and an accomplice of rare stupidity, it seems he gave birth for the first time to what will be called the Stockholm Syndrome (term coined by criminologist Nils Bejerot) who makes the abductee become attached to his kidnapper in a pathological way, an apparently inexplicable affection. In reality, for all six episodes of the Netflix mini series by Jonas Akerlund, director of video clips and it shows, titled to the criminal, the protagonist is inevitably seen with sympathy because he is beautiful, he knows he is, willingly shows the B side and just has to face a wink for any woman to fall, to put it mildly, into his arms. Full ex aequo of girlfriends and policemen, all with a very low intellectual average, all are particularly stupid, naive and inept, including the pacifist anarchist, ours, posing as Tom Jones, that of Fielding, dominates by robbing banks and hearts with his sensuality .

But he exaggerates, during this folkloristic reconstruction that in the titles she immediately confesses in part true and in part, we think a large part, a liar, inspired by the autobiography written by the same “hero” therefore self-centered and celebratory. But it is true that in 76 he married a Belgian girl and had three children. In any case, the style of the film is a liar and colorful, which struts in various styles, is a bit like Godard’s 11 o’clock Bandit, changes from the black and white of childhood to color, changes the screen size, the speed, becomes cartoon , in short, he plays with the options of cinema like a video and thus constructs the character only externally, without giving him a psychological dimension or social criticism. The actor Bill Skarsgard, who comes from an art family, a non-stop hormonal storm, too bold, too smug, but finds time towards the end to quote, with a clown nose, his famous performance of Pennywise , the perfidious clown of “It”.

The sense of the series, pleasant to follow, ends up turning out to be the myth of a seductive criminal who, in an era still without social media, very popular and unfortunately a bad example, always with other bandits at his service, also ready to act as a hub when he escapes in a boat and faces a storm. Many things are clearly invented, made to amaze, for the cinema, but certainly this eventful and reckless life lends itself to a story that still becomes praiseworthy, totally lacking a moral vision of the facts, even of its darker sides, certainly induced by the unfortunate black and white family of the past. But even gross of smug inventions, there are at first enjoyable moments such as thieving visits to the prime minister’s house, the threesome seduction of a rich mother with daughter, as we start from the categorical imperative that Clark likes women in every day of his life.

If he takes them with the blink of an eye, continuing his career as a libertine even after his marriage in 76 with Marijke from whom he had three children, in addition to illegitimate ones, a team he never took care of: “They see me as a cross between Pippi Longstocking and Al Capone” says the person concerned . Who also had real contact with Swedish life, not only fashions, flared trousers and rock, but entered on a collision course with Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was later murdered at 59 in 1986, and with who had telephone negotiations for his robberies, as he recounts in his 2015 book “What the hell happened?”. A funny series especially at the beginning, then destined to repeat itself and with a question mark about the criminal who unfortunately seems to be a hero.