The man who played with fire

"Stieg Larsson: Mannen som lekte med elden" (Stieg Larsson: The man who played with fire) is a Swedish documentary about the author of the so-called Millennium trilogy. Or perhaps pseudo-documentary, since the American Wiki page on Larsson contains a lot of (potentially controversial) information about the man not included in this production! Perhaps "Mannen som lekte med elden" is mostly intended as a kind of meditation on the darker underbellies of Sweden during the 1990´s? 

The Millennium trilogy, a series of three crime novels, was published posthumously after Larsson´s untimely death of a heart attack in 2004. A number of adaptations for the movie screen exist, most notably "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" from 2011, featuring Rooney Mara as the feminist vigilante Lisbeth Salander. However, "Stieg Larsson: Mannen som lekte med elden" says relatively little about Millennium, although we do learn that the unlikely superhero Salander is probably based on Larsson himself! 

Instead, the docu concentrates on Larsson´s anti-fascist activism. Larsson worked for the British anti-fascist magazine "Searchlight" before starting a similar publication in Sweden, "Expo". We get to see a lot of footage from various Nazi marches, riots and concerts. The Sweden Democrats (which started out as a fascist front party) are featured. If you think Sweden was perennially peaceful, you might get shocked seeing all the violent skinheads, large White Power music concerts, and far left counter-protesters. An Expo writer was seriously wounded by a car bomb, presumably planted by Nazis. Somewhat curiously, "Mannen som lekte med elden" never mentions the Malexander murders, when a group of neo-Nazis shot two police officers. Is it because the lead Nazi in those attacks was Black? (Yes, you heard me.) I suppose that complicates tha narrative. So does the fact that Larsson was a long time Trotskyist, and a member of the "Socialist Party", the Swedish section of the Fourth International. In the docu, he is rather presented as a liberal democrat! (Incidentally, Larsson is often portrayed by an actor.) 

I was somewhat fascinated by Larsson´s personality, which seems to have been somewhat peculiar. He surveilled and mapped right-wing radicals with the energy of a monomaniac, doing essentially nothing else. Larsson practically lived on fast food and coffee, and was a chain smoker (this may have contributed to the heart attack that eventually killed him). He had a mercurial mind, which could jump from topic to topic in a bewildering fashion, and one of his friends describe him as "high strung". Getting Larsson to write something was a challenge, as he would usually write something completely else than agreed upon! I can´t help wondering if he was hyper-active in the more clinical sense. It´s interesting to note that Larsson´s novel character Lisbeth Salander is something of a "weaponized autist". She is depicted as having photographic memory, suffers from Asperger´s syndrome, and is a master-sleuth with few personal needs. 

Although "Stieg Larsson: Mannen som lekte med elden" is somewhat problematic, it´s nevertheless worth watching (at least if you understand Swedish - I´m not sure if a version with English titles even exists). It´s almost a kind of Swedish-noir production in its own right. Indeed, Sweden is probably even worse today than it was when Larsson was alive. How ironic that it´s the "liberal democrats" who want to claim Larsson´s posthumous mantle who took us here...