august 5–18, 2019 | new york 69
PHOTOGRAPHS:OMA/BLOOMIMAGES.DE
(NEW
MUSEUM);
TORE
VOLLAN
(COLD
CASE
HAMMARSKJÖLD)
Deep Dive
A conspiratorial investigation
into the mysterious African plane-crash
death of Dag Hammarskjöld.
MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEIN
From left,
Göran
Björkdahl
and Mads
Brügger.they’d have gotten with shovels, but Zam-
bian authorities get wind and put the kibosh
on their digging.
The juxtaposition of gonzo high jinks and
gruesome photos of Hammarskjöld’s body
is awkward. To love Cold Case Hammar-
skjöld as much as I do, you have to get past
what a friend calls the director’s “douchi-
ness.” Brügger leads with his meta, admit-
ting midway through that he doesn’t entirely
trust his story and has had to resort to a
framing device and cartoon inserts. The
inserts are useful, the framing device not so.
His gimmick is to film himself in a Congo-
lese hotel room, dictating the story of his
and Björkdahl’s search to two black women
typists employed singly but with their foot-
age intercut. At various junctures, each
turns from her manual typewriter and asks
Brügger for clarification or offers an opin-
ion. When the story veers in another
direction—toward a conspiracy fueled in
part by white-supremacist goals—the direc-
tor holds on their shocked faces.
I’d have deep-sixed those scenes, not just
because they’re weirdly patronizing but
because the story itself—the twisty investi-
gation that takes Brügger and Björkdahl all
over Africa and Europe—turns out to be so
blood-freezing, and Brügger doesn’t need
African women to validate the horror. Evi-
dence of the conspiracy builds and branches
out, finally settling at the doorstep of a para-
military organization staffed with white
mercenaries who allegedly committed
crimes even more grotesque and far-
reaching than the murder of Hammar-
skjöld. The shadow militia goes by the name
of the South African Institute for Maritime
Research (saimr), and footage of DesmondTutu and his colleagues noting its existence
during South Africa’s Truth and Reconcilia-
tion Commission in the late ’90s proves it’s
not just the province of tinfoil-hatters.
A lot of acronyms get thrown in the air,
among them MI6 and CIA. That both orga-
nizations had connections to plots to desta-
bilize newly independent African countries
is by now beyond dispute, but the individu-
als and organizations that were tasked with
carrying out the agenda have largely
remained hidden—or been refracted
through the lenses of John Le Carré, Freder-
ick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, et al. Now
Brügger gives us a name: Keith Maxwell,
who dresses only in white and attends
formal dinners in 18th-century naval-
commodore outfits with tricornered hats.
He is by all reports a lively and companion-
able fellow with plenty of stories about oper-
ations like the one that finished off Ham-
marskjöld, and he will kill you without
hesitation if he perceives you as a threat. A
rising young saimr employee named Dag-
mar Feil learned this the hard way in the
’90s when she tried to bring some of the
organization’s practices to light. But Feil’s
unsolved stabbing death might also have
driven the increasingly mad Maxwell to
share his story in the form of a wild, semi-
coherent memoir.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld finally comes
down to an ex-saimr employee named Alex-
ander Jones, who holds the screen for much
of the last act. If Jones is lying about himself,
Maxwell, Feil, and a genocidal agenda that
was run (he believes) from England, then
he’s the most credible liar I’ve ever seen.
“I need personal closure,” he says, but this is
not a dramatic monologue. He answers
questions simply, evenly, without histrion-
ics. His testimony marks the close of Cold
Case Hammarskjöld but might well be the
beginning of the next cold case, which will
encompass the history of postcolonial Africa
and even—this is the film’s most jaw-
dropping charge—the spread of aids via so-
called philanthropic clinics. Was the poten-
tial for increased control by black Africans
over their own resources the impetus for
Hammarskjöld’s killing way back in 1961?
If, like so many conspiracy-mongers,
Brügger is in this to make his name, what-
ever the social consequences, his comeup-
pance should be swift. But I want to believe
that this isn’t a stunt and that his first- person
meta nonsense—his desire to call attention
to his floundering—is a sign of honesty, not
obscurantism. He wants to share his process
with us to remind us that, nowadays, we’re
all engaged in the work of separating false
conspiracies from true ones. Maybe that
jokey shovel sequence can be taken as a
metaphor: I have done my modest digging;
now it’s time to bring in the earthmovers. ■a tricked-up documentary like
Cold Case Hammarskjöld reminds
you that conspiracy theories make for great
yarns. They have beginnings, middles, and
ends. They give multi-determined tragedies
a clean historical arc. They cater to the idea
that, as often as not, We Want to Believe.
I can’t entirely vouch for the Danish direc-
tor and TV host Mads Brügger’s new film,
but I’m thrilled that it’s out there. People
have died trying to tell this story, or appear
to have died. There are photos and testimo-
nies, and the trajectory as a whole makes
terrible sense. I want to believe.
The film chronicles Brügger’s six-year
journey alongside Swedish private investiga-
tor Göran Björkdahl to get to the bottom of
the suspicious 1961 plane crash in Zambia
(then Northern Rhodesia) that killed United
Nations secretary-general (and human-
rights activist) Dag Hammarskjöld. The
crash was initially blamed on pilot error dur-
ing the plane’s descent, but the pilot’s chief
error, Brügger and Björkdahl suggest, was
taking off with a bomb onboard. His other
error was failing to dodge bullets from a sec-
ond plane (flown by an ex–Royal Air Force
pilot) when said bomb didn’t explode. The
bomb might ultimately have exploded, but
eyewitnesses—being black—weren’t given
credence by white authorities and the plane
was buried more or less where it crashed.
Brügger—who is on camera for much of
the film—presents his
bemused Swedish part-
ner with a pair of shov-
els, pith helmets, and
Cuban cigars and heads
to recover the wreckage.
I’m not sure how farCOLD CASE
HAMMARSKJÖLD
DIRECTED BY
MADS BRÜGGER.
MAGNOLIA
PICTURES. NR.Y ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICADVANCED FORM
TRANSMITTED
________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC1619CR_critics_lay [Print]_35566550.indd 69 8/1/19 6:05 PMaugust5–18, 2019 | newyork 69PHOTOGRAPHS:
OMA/BLOOMIMAGES.DE
(NEW
MUSEUM);
TORE
VOLLAN
(COLD
CASE
HAMMARSKJÖLD)
DeepDiveA conspiratorialinvestigationintothemysteriousAfricanplane-crashdeathofDagHammarskjöld.MOVIES/ DAVIDEDELSTEINFrom left,
Göran
Björkdahl
and Mads
Brügger.they’d have gotten with shovels, but Zam-
bian authorities get wind and put the kibosh
on their digging.
The juxtaposition of gonzo high jinks and
gruesome photos of Hammarskjöld’s body
is awkward. To love Cold Case Hammar-
skjöld as much as I do, you have to get past
what a friend calls the director’s “douchi-
ness.” Brügger leads with his meta, admit-
ting midway through that he doesn’t entirely
trust his story and has had to resort to a
framing device and cartoon inserts. The
inserts are useful, the framing device not so.
His gimmick is to film himself in a Congo-
lese hotel room, dictating the story of his
and Björkdahl’s search to two black women
typists employed singly but with their foot-
age intercut. At various junctures, each
turns from her manual typewriter and asks
Brügger for clarification or offers an opin-
ion. When the story veers in another
direction—toward a conspiracy fueled in
part by white-supremacist goals—the direc-
tor holds on their shocked faces.
I’d have deep-sixed those scenes, not just
because they’re weirdly patronizing but
because the story itself—the twisty investi-
gation that takes Brügger and Björkdahl all
over Africa and Europe—turns out to be so
blood-freezing, and Brügger doesn’t need
African women to validate the horror. Evi-
dence of the conspiracy builds and branches
out, finally settling at the doorstep of a para-
military organization staffed with white
mercenaries who allegedly committed
crimes even more grotesque and far-
reaching than the murder of Hammar-
skjöld. The shadow militia goes by the name
of the South African Institute for Maritime
Research (saimr), and footage of DesmondTutu and his colleagues noting its existence
during South Africa’s Truth and Reconcilia-
tion Commission in the late ’90s proves it’s
not just the province of tinfoil-hatters.
A lot of acronyms get thrown in the air,
among them MI6 and CIA. That both orga-
nizations had connections to plots to desta-
bilize newly independent African countries
is by now beyond dispute, but the individu-
als and organizations that were tasked with
carrying out the agenda have largely
remained hidden—or been refracted
through the lenses of John Le Carré, Freder-
ick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, et al. Now
Brügger gives us a name: Keith Maxwell,
who dresses only in white and attends
formal dinners in 18th-century naval-
commodore outfits with tricornered hats.
He is by all reports a lively and companion-
able fellow with plenty of stories about oper-
ations like the one that finished off Ham-
marskjöld, and he will kill you without
hesitation if he perceives you as a threat. A
rising young saimr employee named Dag-
mar Feil learned this the hard way in the
’90s when she tried to bring some of the
organization’s practices to light. But Feil’s
unsolved stabbing death might also have
driven the increasingly mad Maxwell to
share his story in the form of a wild, semi-
coherent memoir.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld finally comes
down to an ex-saimr employee named Alex-
ander Jones, who holds the screen for much
of the last act. If Jones is lying about himself,
Maxwell, Feil, and a genocidal agenda that
was run (he believes) from England, then
he’s the most credible liar I’ve ever seen.
“I need personal closure,” he says, but this is
not a dramatic monologue. He answers
questions simply, evenly, without histrion-
ics. His testimony marks the close of Cold
Case Hammarskjöld but might well be the
beginning of the next cold case, which will
encompass the history of postcolonial Africa
and even—this is the film’s most jaw-
dropping charge—the spread of aids via so-
called philanthropic clinics. Was the poten-
tial for increased control by black Africans
over their own resources the impetus for
Hammarskjöld’s killing way back in 1961?
If, like so many conspiracy-mongers,
Brügger is in this to make his name, what-
ever the social consequences, his comeup-
pance should be swift. But I want to believe
that this isn’t a stunt and that his first- person
meta nonsense—his desire to call attention
to his floundering—is a sign of honesty, not
obscurantism. He wants to share his process
with us to remind us that, nowadays, we’re
all engaged in the work of separating false
conspiracies from true ones. Maybe that
jokey shovel sequence can be taken as a
metaphor: I have done my modest digging;
now it’s time to bring in the earthmovers. ■a tricked-up documentary like
Cold Case Hammarskjöld reminds
you that conspiracy theories make for great
yarns. They have beginnings, middles, and
ends. They give multi-determined tragedies
a clean historical arc. They cater to the idea
that, as often as not, We Want to Believe.
I can’t entirely vouch for the Danish direc-
tor and TV host Mads Brügger’s new film,
but I’m thrilled that it’s out there. People
have died trying to tell this story, or appear
to have died. There are photos and testimo-
nies, and the trajectory as a whole makes
terrible sense. I want to believe.
The film chronicles Brügger’s six-year
journey alongside Swedish private investiga-
tor Göran Björkdahl to get to the bottom of
the suspicious 1961 plane crash in Zambia
(then Northern Rhodesia) that killed United
Nations secretary-general (and human-
rights activist) Dag Hammarskjöld. The
crash was initially blamed on pilot error dur-
ing the plane’s descent, but the pilot’s chief
error, Brügger and Björkdahl suggest, was
taking off with a bomb onboard. His other
error was failing to dodge bullets from a sec-
ond plane (flown by an ex–Royal Air Force
pilot) when said bomb didn’t explode. The
bomb might ultimately have exploded, but
eyewitnesses—being black—weren’t given
credence by white authorities and the plane
was buried more or less where it crashed.
Brügger—who is on camera for much of
the film—presentshis
bemused Swedishpart-
ner with a pairofshov-
els, pith helmets,and
Cuban cigars andheads
to recover the wreckage.
I’m not surehowfarH
.