Like the movie that launched screenwriter-director Robert Budreau to fame, called Born to Be Blue, Stockholm also stars Ethan Hawke and could just as easily be described as “semi-factual, semi-fictional.” Indeed. Hawke as Kaj Hansson (though at no point does he seem to have a Swedish accent–his character being born in Helsingborg and growing up in the States) is intended to be Jan-Erik Olsson, the man responsible for creating the first crime ever live broadcast on Swedish television in August of 1973. Because when fucked up shit happens in Sweden, it has to be really fucked up in order to make up for all the lost time of being tranquil.
Like Olsson, Hansson seems to have an affinity for American pop culture, walking into the Kreditbanken in Norrmalmstorg Square dressed like a Texan cowboy (“Are you headed to a rock festival?” his cab driver asks) and forcing one of the law enforcement officers to sing something. In the movie, it’s a Dylan song (for his love of Bobby D is established from the moment we’re introduced to him sitting on a boat to the tune of “New Morning”). Specifically, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You.” Kaj demands of the police officer he’s shot in the hand, “What kinda cop doesn’t like Dylan? What kinda person doesn’t like Dylan? Sing!” The lyrics are tailored to the nature of Stockholm Syndrome, with Dylan crooning, “Is it really any wonder/The love that a stranger might receive/You cast your spell and I went under/I find it so difficult to leave.”
In real life, the officer sang “Lonesome Cowboy” by Elvis Presley. That Western pop music is such an influence throughout the robbery (both in the film and when it happened–with Olsson having belted out “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack while in the vault) seems almost a dichotomy in a country so well-known for churning out their own perfect pop songs. Thus, it’s in keeping with Olsson’s character that he would turn the radio on, playing The Steam Machine’s telling “Get Back to the Westside,” and declare, “The party has begun” after giving a whooping cry as he shoots at the ceiling. Bianca Lind (Noomi Rapace), presumably the basis for Kristin Enmark, a banker with an authoritative presence, is the one to immediately hit the police call button, upsetting Kaj (whose name we later learn is Lars Nystrom) at first until he decides he can use it to his advantage, ordering Bianca, “Call the Chief of Police.”
While they wait, allusions to the political climate of the time are made, with a radio snippet briefly declaring that Prime Minister Olof Palme was vehemently against Nixon and his escalation of the Vietnam War. In the meantime, Kaj is presumed to be American, described by Bianca as “an American with a big gun” (is there any other kind?). In point of fact, Swedish-American tensions are underscored in such particular ways throughout the narrative, especially at one point when Chief Mattsson (Christopher Heyerdahl) vents, “Bloody Americans. Why can’t they just stay home?” It’s an all too relevant demand when put in the context of a recent series of events in Europe wrought by Americans, particularly A$AP Rocky’s debacle in, where else, Sweden.
As Kaj’s demands quickly become outlandish, including the request for the release of Gunnar Sorensson (Mark Strong) from prison (based on Olsson’s request for the release of his friend Clark Olofsson), his bombast and bravado seem to be a means for concealing something else about himself. Other than the fact that he has no intention of killing anyone. He even allows Bianca to go to the bathroom alone, untying her hands in one of many instances of kink that perhaps gives insight into why she starts falling for him. All that visceral touching, coming up from behind her to grab her by the neck, being tied up–it’s all very erotic, and Bianca clearly isn’t getting much spice from her sex life out of her husband, Christopher (Thorbjørn Harr). While, sure, there’s a tender moment between them when he comes to the bank and she tells him how to prepare fish for her two children (which the asshole ultimately doesn’t–real fuckin’ telling), it’s evident she’s never experienced sexual heat like the kind she does with Lars.
Lars who has the gall to insist upon a Mustang “like the one Steve McQueen had in Bullitt.” So it is that more reference is made to the brain damaging effects of pop culture in terms of what it makes you believe you 1) deserve and 2) are capable of getting. To heighten our sense of his false self-perception as some kind of admirable rogue outlaw, Kaj joyfully greets Gunnar and tells him they’re like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid now. Gunnar appears doubtful, ultimately in this to get out of it even if it means selling Kaj/Lars down the Stockholms ström. In their moments of solidarity, however, the three hostages, the other two including Klara (Bea Santos) and Elov (Mark Rendall), seem as though they’ll do anything for their captor. During the actual event, the two men had four captives, not three. But one supposes an additional character in the film version would have detracted from the sense of intimacy.
As the tensions between police and Lars and Gunnar mount, the measures Chief Mattsson are willing to take veer on the maniacal–more concerned with saving face with regard to the police’s ability to handle these aggressors than they are with the safety of the hostages. This, too, only further cements the bond forged by captor and captive. At one point a journalist asks while on the phone with her in front of a TV camera, “You trust them?” Bianca replies, “More than the police.” The journalist adds, “You think this is political?” Bianca confirms, “Everything’s political.”
When the event happened in 1973, hostage Elisabet Oldgren was claustrophobic so Olsson and Olofsson let her walk around outside attached to a thirty-foot rope. She found this gesture tender. Furthermore, Kristin Enmark told the Prime Minister, “What I am scared of is the police will attack us.” A male hostage, Sven Safstrom, remarked, “How kind I thought [Olsson] was for saying it was just my leg he would shoot.” This means of painting the captors as empathetic–particularly Olsson–also occurs in the movie when Bianca recalls seeing a newspaper article from Helsingborg about six years ago that spoke of Lars saving the elderly man he was robbing by giving him his heart medicine. One supposes, in this way, Stockholm Syndrome amounts to being like a dog arbitrarily kicked by his master–but the dog still at least gets two guaranteed meals a day.
The intensity of the situation, paired with the us v. them nature of the dynamic was rife to be coined as a psychological term. And just in time for Patty Hearst’s kidnapping in 1974. While the stylization of the botched robbery makes things between Lars and Bianca more romantic (therefore more interesting), it was only friendship that came out of Sweden’s first hostage crisis, the victims remaining friends with their captors and even visiting them in prison. In the end, the scenario gave a name to something that already existed (just look at the Manson Family), as well as some people’s wildest sexual fantasies. To think it could have happened somewhere where nothing is ever supposed to happen.
