Nathalie Rothschild
posted 10 June 2005

Evil is based on a 1981 autobiographical novel by acclaimed Swedish author Jan Guillou. It was nominated in the Best Foreign Film category in the 2004 Oscars. The main character, Erik Ponti, is Guillou's alter ego, and he reappears in later novels by the author. Evil tells the story of 16-year-old Erik and his experience in an elitist boarding school in the 1950s.

If an author's approval is a sign of a successful film adaptation, Håfström has indeed done a good job. In an interview with his publishing company Piratförlaget, Guillou praises both the script and the lead actor Andreas Wilson. He also reveals that after having seen the film six times, he can still not watch it without crying. He goes on to say that although the film does the novel justice, it depicts Erik as a better person than the book does. The film clearly presents Erik as a hero.

Indeed, the allusions to good and evil are both the strengths and weaknesses of the film. The distinction is too clear-cut and the main characters are not ambiguous enough. At the beginning of the film, Erik's violent outbursts at school are rather crudely depicted as directly resulting from the regular beatings he gets from his stepfather. And later on in the story, Erik is able to challenge every instance of injustice he encounters with precision and pride, as if his retaliations were planned in advance. Still, the fact that the film does not dwell on the socio-emotional causes of what today would be called 'antisocial behaviour' works in its favour. The film shocks rather than preaches.

Erik is expelled from school after a violent fight in the playground. His headmaster promises that he will never again be accepted to a state school and tells him that he is evil personified. When Erik returns home that day, his mother, who plays Chopin on her piano every evening after dinner while her husband beats Erik with his belt, is already selling off her inherited furniture to pay for tuition fees at Stjärnsberg, a posh boarding school for boys.

At Stjärnsberg, students swear on their honour as noblemen, scorn at children whose fathers are social democrats and are threatened with expulsion if they have any kinds of relations with the Finnish kitchen staff. The teachers look the other way as the older students implement their reign of terror, creating a hierarchical society based on class and age. Erik instantly bonds with his roommate Pierre who is mostly left alone by the older students since he is cowardly and intellectual. He predicts that Erik, who is into sports and is not afraid to speak up for himself, will have a rougher time. It is better not to stand out, warns Pierre.

In the evening, Erik and Pierre discuss their favourite scenes from Rebel Without a Cause. Erik, unsurprisingly, prefers the scene by the observatory, when Jim (James Dean), on his first day in a new school, unwillingly gets into trouble when he is challenged to a knife fight. Jim finds himself in a dilemma: he wants to defend his honour but has sworn to stay out of trouble for once and get through the year. In 1950s America, the institution of the family and gender roles are crumbling under their clean-cut façades and the youth no longer know where to look for role models. Their violent acts gradually reveal themselves to be caused by deep-rooted societal issues.

These issues are, in fact, the reasons behind the rebellion of James Dean’s character Jim Stark. Likewise, Guillou’s Erik does have a cause and the purpose of his rebellion is to destroy evil as personified by the likes of his stepfather and of Silverhjelm and Dahlén, the biggest bullies at Stjärnsberg. Those who abuse their positions of authority to torture and intimidate the disempowered must be eliminated and the individual must have the right to achieve freedom.

Indeed, in reality, Jan Guillou went on to challenge the world's injustices, most famously through his disclosure of the IB-affair in 1973. Together with the journalist Peter Bratt, Guillou revealed that the Swedish government deployed a CIA-like information bureau to send agents to Eastern Europe and third world countries that were 'hostile to the West'. Guillou and Bratt were sentenced to 10 months in prison for espionage.

Evil is a personal story, but it reveals deep-seated tensions in a society in which traces of Nazism have not yet been erased and where expressions of individualism are suppressed. You can stand out, but only in the right way, for instance if your family name has an air of nobility or your physique is northern rather than southern. The film is successful in portraying this historical period with a graphic realism. It is uncomfortable, yet revealing, to watch.