Based on a contentious best-selling book with meaty themes concerning male violence and chilling conformity, director Hafstrom’s elegant production is now one of the highest grossing Swedish movies of all time, while Andreas Wilson, Evil’s charismatic young star, has been catapulted into the lofty sphere of international hyper-mega-modelling deals. I’m sure it’s very nice and spacious out there.
An unknown before the movie, Wilson’s performance is such a spooky channelling of James Dean – the pout, the brooding, the come-hither sneer – it almost redeems the term model-turned-actor.
If his quiffed appearance and mannerisms weren’t enough to seal the deal, the texture of the script in turn recalls the showboating naturalism of Elia Kazan before all the unpleasantness.
With a ‘50s boy’s boarding school acting as a microcosm of a much larger world, Evil concerns angry young man Eric (Wilson) and his feisty battles against oppression. At the prestigious educational institute of Stjarnsberg, the smart blazers and grand halls belie a vicious system of officially sanctioned fraternal bullying.
Despite the terrified protestations of his Lord Of The Flies’ Piggy-clone roommate, Eric decides against receiving beatings with a knife-handle with good grace. When the bigger boys take to throwing buckets of shit in his dorm, he responds in kind. When he’s ordered to lose the swim meet, he wins by a mile. When he’s ordered to stop seeing the foxy school domestic, they just find better hiding places.
Meanwhile, home provides no relief from the jackboot. Eric’s strap-happy stepfather coldly administers beatings for the merest whiff of descent as his mother trembles nearby.
Textured and engaging, if not quite up there with, well, If…, Hafstrom maintains a steady vibe of masculine menace. And yet, for all the mounting tension there’s never any real sense of personal jeopardy. Eric, throughout, is too cool, too emboldened, too teenaged to ever fall down before a cycle of violence or the contents of a chamber-pot.
It’s left to the nasty historical fascist aftertaste (as heavily underlined by the presence of a still loyal Nazi schoolteacher) of world to hint at much darker matters than those depicted onscreen.
Still, I’m a sucker for snooty boy’s boarding school movies. Mmmm. Chips.