Ondskan is the film adaptation of Jan Guillou’s autobiographical fictional piece. From what I understand, Guillou’s work is considered classical reading in Sweden and is bother praised and slated for being either great, or nonsense.

The film stars Andreas Wilson as Erik Ponti, a rebellious teenager trying to manage school life with home beatings from his step father. Expelled from school, his mother takes drastic measures by selling her things in order to get him into a boarding school. On first impressions, the school seems pleasant enough, and he even befriends his room mate, Taguy in the process. Sadly, not is all as it seems, as the violence that Erik has tried to escape from home is all the greater in the new school.

Swedes who hate this film say it has a lot of bad acting; that Sweden is the capital of crap films. There was the golden era of Ingmar Bergman, who created some of the most gripping and poignant pieces in cinematic history. Without question, one of the greatest directors that ever lived, and a wonderful director to study if you have an interest in exceptional cinematography and direction.

It could be a case of harsh criticism or simply a case of being so used to crap Swedish films that everything is painted with the same brush. Whatever the case, the acting I felt was not bad, if unconvincing. At times it felt forced, almost cardboard like, with no real emotion, not serious conviction in their roles.

Wilson behaves rather wooden, expressing the occasional squirmed face. Gustaf Skarsgård who plays the fascist tyrant, Otto Silverhielm, is not that bad but sometimes managing to force a laugh, when in fact you should be disgusted with his behaviour. The laugh is not sadistic, but more a case of what you see on screen is unintentionally humourous.

I think, however, that the film is unjustly criticised. The only real experience I have of Swedish film is Bergman, and I am fortunate enough to have his work on DVD. Having not grown up in Sweden, or being Swedish, provides a more objective view. I have been contaminated with Swedish bad acting for 20 years of my life!

The story is perhaps a little too simplistic. None of the characters have any complexity to them. They are either this or that, and nothing inbetween. Wilson is interesting to watch as Ponti, but I wish he would display a bigger range of emotion. The lack of expression and the rather loose nature of the story allows no realistic development of the character.

Time flies by, and the characters just seem stagnant in their roles. Ponti’s progression to rebel against the system is interesting at best. Too many areas of the film defy plausibility, turning some of the scenes into something more farcical. I understand the disciplines of boarding school, and during the time it was set (the 1950/60s I believe) that things would still be rather dictatorial, with the hierarchy and rich stepping on the poor and the physically weak.

Ondskan starts well enough, with a mental narration by the character. We see him receive punishment from his tyrannical step father, and then dish out the same punishment in a fight. I think more narration, and more background as to why the characters are the way they are, with more conviction in the acting, and some build up for scenes, it would provide a much greater experience than the one that is shown on screen.

I felt the relationship between Ponti and his friend Taguy (Henrik Lundström) just doesn’t develop well enough to provide any belief that these two have become such good friends. In terms of film time, it’s about 20 minutes, and suddenly they’re best friends. Where’s the story? Where’s the reasoning? They have some things in common, but 20 minutes and best friends? That’s difficult to accept.

Ondskan has a desire to present itself as allegory of life in boarding school; that it has some need to express how bad things used to be, and how the autocratic school system actually turned people into monsters. For that to work, however, you need a convincing lead, and Wilson is only just above average.

The James Dean representation becomes tiring, rather quickly – and the immediate switch to disciplined pupil, and then following that a Gandhi-like mantra of non-violence, back to beating the crap out of people to make a point, and then finally using his brain. It’s all too convenient, and unbelievable.

There are many things I liked about this film, but there are also many things I didn’t like about it. The music was also rather terrible, and inappropriately placed. In particular at the beginning, Ponti is swimming, there’s an epic classic piece. It’s really quite strange as to why they chose to include it at this point. It just doesn’t work, and I tried to understand why such a dramatic piece of music was required for a swimming scene which involved no tension or drama. Very odd.

With more refinement and more care, I think the film had a lot of potential to be good. As it stands, I believe it has been overly criticised (there are films much worse than this) and overly praised (there are certainly better examples of film, where the system creates monsters). Ondskan sits somewhere above the middle for me. I enjoyed watching it, from start to finish, but the negative aspects of the production ruined much of the film. By the end of the film, as the credits rolled, the whole experience felt rather average and below par.

It wasn’t the extraordinary film it suggested to be, but came across as ordinary instead. The BBC film Scum starring a very young Ray Winstone, is perhaps a more aggressive example of the system creating a monster. Dead Poets Society manages to inspire the dreamer with the hope that anything is achievable if you put your heart and mind to it. Ondskan tries to put two of those themes together, and turns out rather confused.

Verdict: The Swedish take on a system gone bad, and the rebel against the system. Entertaining for a while, but quickly becomes bland