Robert Bogerud (Svein André Hofsø Myhne) is a private detective in Humphrey Bogart gumshoe mode. Dressed in a brown trench coat and fedora, he sits in his office, dark except for the feeble light of a table lamp, as a smoky jazz soundtrack plays quietly in the background.
We are in classic Raymond Chandler 1940s detective film noir territory. Except we are nowhere of the sort. There is a knock on the door, the lights come on and in comes Robert Bogerud’s care worker, offering to make him pancakes if he agrees to venture downstairs.
Bogerud has Down syndrome, lives in a Norwegian residential home called Marihøne (Ladybird) and has kitted out one part of the room and himself to reflect the detective he longs to be. “Turn the light off,” says Bogerud to the care worker who has intruded on his dream, and gestures for him to leave.
The reasons for all this soon become clear. Bogerud is desperate to emulate his detective father Eddy (Martin L Lotherington). His mother died a few years ago. Father has not coped (nor solved a case) since, and Bogerud has had to move into the home, much to his disgust.
Our detective waits for the phone to ring, which it rarely does. If he gets as far as seeing someone about a possible case, they reject him instantly on meeting him.
Until one day he gets a case. A woman appears in his room and reports that her husband Olav Starr, the legendary Norwegian speed skater, has disappeared. She feels that Bogerud is “just the man we’re looking for” to take on the case.
And from here the comedy crime plot unfolds as Bogerud encounters Olav Starr’s bizarre and dangerous family. Why have they hired Bogerud? Because they do not want Starr to be found – and they are sure Bogerud will not find him.
Why do they not want him to be found? You’ll have to watch the film.
I approached Detective Downs with some trepidation, not least because of its title. I left it with fewer anxieties, some admiration for parts of it but also lingering questions.
First, Svein Myhne is a superb actor, with a hangdog, downtrodden but quietly defiant look as he stylishly strolls around sticking to his method of finding missing people by following the love (or lack of it) in their lives. The recreation of the film noir style is well done, particularly the scenes where Bogerud slugs whisky in sleazy strip joints.
And the film does not shy away from addressing discriminatory attitudes. A stripper stops her performance because “I can’t concentrate when that mongo is looking at me”. His father’s colleagues ridicule him, the “mongoloid detective”, cruelly behind his back. (I have come across mongol-type abusive terms in several Scandinavian films and programmes – it is disturbing that think they still seem to be current.)
Even his own father is embarrassed when Bogerud turns up at the police station in full Humphrey Bogart mode, although he is then riddled with guilt and later works to develop the relationship he should have with his son.
All good. However, there is something that doesn’t quite work for me. It tries to be several things – stylish, tongue-in-cheek and a noirish thriller, comedy crime caper, anti-discrimination commentary and portrayal of the stubborn realisation of dreams by a young man belittled and infantilised by society.
It manages each of these at times, but never quite manages to mesh them together so the strands can clash. The comedy at times can feel quite uncomfortable when it meets the discrimination. The film-noir style comes and goes. The character of Bogerud is a mix of stereotypical and quite profound.
Luckily for the makers of this film, they found a very fine actor to plough his way through these contradictions and hold their film together.
