Mondo movie madness

They call us Misfits!
by Christer Persson (Article published in the book Addicted by Jack Stevenson)
Few non-fiction films have had as much long lasting impact on Swedish audiences as Stefan Jarl's, A Decent Life from 1979. A Decent Life was a sequel to Jarl's 1968 film, They Call Us Misfits that he made in collaboration with Jan Linqvist and which focused on the lives of a group of Stockholm teenagers brought up in broken homes by parents who were either habitual drunkards, just plain mean or both. Being in their late teens, these kids didn't care what happened to them. They didn't want to be incorporated into Swedish society and just wanted to party on beer, liquor and drugs. They Call Us Misfits was indeed a worrying film about young Swedes and their views on society, but nothing could prepare viewers for the grim follow-up that would hit screens ten years later.


Let's start at the beginning. The sixties were times of sweeping change in the Swedish film industry, all of which was aimed to restore Swedish cinema to a position of international prominence and achievement of the type it had enjoyed in the twenties. As the sixties began, the only Swedish export worth mentioning was Ingmar Bergman, so things really had to be changed. Several other Swedish films found international success, but in most cases they were those selling "Swedish sin" by exposing more naked flesh than other countries allowed at the time in their own films, and they cannot be termed either masterpieces or entertainment. A good example of this is Vilgot Sjöman's I Am Curious Yellow which was a blend of political left-wing message, love story and experimental semi-improvisation. Needless to say, no one remembers the political nonsense, but everyone remembers the explicit (for the day) sex scenes. None of that was what the powers-that-be had in mind for "the new Swedish cinema" and things were bound to change. The only question was how.



A GENERATION BEYOND SALVATION?

While making a segment for a youth program called STÄNK ("SPLASH"), Jan Lindqvist and Stefan Jarl came in contact with some Swedish teens that were experimenting with drugs. Jarl, a former protege of Sweden's most famous non-fiction director, Arne Sucksdorff, was tipped as one of the hot young directors that were supposed to give new life to Swedish film.

Jarl and Lindqvist soon realized that some of the kids they met could be interesting subjects for a non-fiction film. Hence, with a budget of practically nothing, they started filming. Combining interviews with loose cinema vŽritŽ portraits, they ended up with They Call Us Misfits - a harrowing look into the minds of these kids which nonetheless captures them in a positive way, despite the grim reality of their lives. The kids are aware that the future looks bleak, and several participants in the films know full well that they're going to remain at the bottom of society, and perhaps even die at a young age due to drug abuse. Their parents have been anything but good role models, and now, in search of a family, the kids live together on the streets. They know they have little chance to succeed and live in harmony with the rest of Swedish society. Many of them are juvenile delinquents who've already spent time in different institutions or have been dragged from one foster home to another. Filmed in close relationship to its subjects, the directors create an honest picture of these kids. Although only exposing the darker sides of their lives, the film never feels false. Even though some of the scenes were suggested by the participants (which was also the cases in the two sequels), it captures a Sweden gone by when things were a bit simpler and more carefree. In a memorable sequence, the two main characters, Kenneth "Kenta" Gustavsson and Gustav "Stoffe" Svensson, are sitting in the Grand Central Station in Stockholm and mocking the ordinary working-class people on their way to jobs. Although they make fun of these people who are, in their eyes, pathetic human beings, one can vaguely discern in the interviews that they would also like to have a decent life. Yet, by the means with which they try to obtain it, it's bound to go wrong.

Kenta and Stoffe come across as very colorful and likable characters. The viewer comes to identify with them and they become the driving forces in the film. They live in the same neighborhood, play in the same band and share most things in life. Both come from broken homes and they seem destined for the same fate: drinking a lot and smoking pot. The viewer is invited to follow Kenta, Stoffe and their friends as they party, as they sit around doing nothing in particular, and even, in the privacy of their own homes, as they have sex (which incidentally is the first authentic sex-scene in a commercial film). The sex scene where Kenta has sex with one of his girlfriends was initially cut by the Swedish censors but put back into the film prior to its release. The film ends with Kenta and Stoffe in a fight over Stoffe's girlfriend. Kenta takes shelter in a staircase where he reads a comic book, while Stoffe is taken away by the police. Its not the happiest of endings, and the two misfits appear doomed to remain at the bottom of society.

Jarl and Lindqvist also had a fight of their own - with the chief of the Swedish Film Institute, Harry Schein, who objected to this use of the media. Jarl and Lindqvist thought that films ought to be used as a means of communication between the participants of the film and the public, while Schein though film ought to be used as a work of authors - to embody and project their thoughts and dreams. Their disagreements couldn't have been more clear cut. Yet the film became a success, and provoked discussion about Swedish society's responsibility for these young dissidents. The film-maker's achievement is considerable. They treat the boys without illusions, and yet, despite the harrowing and controversial subject matter, also with respect and humor. They Call Us Misfits may very well be the most authentic portrait of Swedish youth in the sixties. Not a very nice one - but an honest one.

LIFE ON THE STREETS
Ten years later, Stefan Jarl once again ventured into the lives of Kenta and Stoffe, and made a sequel, A Decent Life, in 1979. Jarl invites us to see what happened to the kids of the sixties. Did their dreams work out or were they shattered? Had they entered into society or were they still adrift in the margins? Kenta has tried in some fashion to enter society. He's got a job and lives with his girlfriend, Eva. They have a son, Patrik, who is eight years old. Although Kenta still drinks and smokes pot now and then, he's got a decent life, and his biggest problem nowadays seems to be his mother who got into a fight with her boyfriend and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. Stoffe, on the other hand, has gone from bad to worse. He has a young son, Jan. He also has a hard-core drug habit that has brought him to the brink of physical collapse on several occasions. Kenta and Stoffe don't socialize anymore, but director Jarl sets up a meeting. At first they have a good time, drink some liquor and visit the grave of Stoffe's father. But at a bowling alley they once again get into a quarrel. Kenta, being somewhat street-wise, tries to make Stoffe realize that he's going to die soon if he doesn't stop what he's doing to himself, but Stoffe doesn't think he has a problem. Once again they separate. Some weeks later, Stoffe dies of a drug overdose.

But A Decent Life contains much more that just the story of Kenta and Stoffe. Jarl seems to have vacuumed the underground in Stockholm and shows with an unflinching gaze the hell that junkies and prostitutes endure every day. We're invited to witness some extremely disturbing scenes at the toilets of Stockholm's Grand Central Station where the junkies are stuffing themselves full of drugs with needles. Many of the junkies look like old people already, even though most are still well under thirty. Their bodies have been pushed to the limits. They are seen fighting over nothing, or, high on drugs and low on human dignity, lying seemingly lifeless in public stairways as commuters step over their bodies. A prostitute, Bettan, tells the sad story of her life which has been filled with rape, humiliation and drug abuse. Against this backdrop, Stoffe's tragic death is grimly prescient and gives the film the power of immutable finality. Another powerful scene involves Kenta, on his knees trying to wash away a big pool of blood on his mother's living room floor which her dead boyfriend left behind. Another reminder of the undignified lives these misfits live.

A Decent Life, as with its predecessor, received critical acclaim. High schools in Sweden showed it to students in the same manner that "drug scare" films were shown to American high school students in the sixties and seventies, but few of the American made productions could match the brutal realism of A Decent Life. Some critics of the film claimed that Jarl tampered a bit too much with his subjects and ends up with a somewhat manipulated, or semi-fictional, finished film instead of the purely realistic document that viewers assume they are getting. Jarl was the first to admit that the film contained some arranged scenes, but the camera couldn't always be in place, he argued, and therefore some re-enactment was necessary. The previously mentioned quarrel between Stoffe and Kenta at the bowling alley is a good example of a re-enacted scene. And while Kenta's feelings about Stoffe's drug abuse are authentic, his acting ability is hardly of Oscar-winning caliber.

While the fashions are a bit over the top, the message it sends out, and the appearances of several junkies who seem unwilling to blame their misfortune on anyone but themselves, adds up to a film that is unsentimental yet not unsympathetic, unflinching yet even-handed. In the twenty years since its release, A Decent Life has lost none of its vitality or sting and ranks as one of the most effective and compelling European produced non-fiction films ever.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Between 1987 and 1992, Jarl shot a third installment called The Social Contract. It was originally conceived to involve Kenta and Stoffe's two sons, Patrik and Jan, at the same age that Kenta and Stoffe were when they appeared in They Call Us Misfits. However Stoffe's widow, Carina, also heavily scarred by drug abuse, didn't like the idea of using her son in another film to say the least, and felt that Jarl was way out of line. Sad and confused by her reaction, Jarl concludes that the film cannot be made. In spite of Carina's wishes, Jarl, together with Kenta, drives to the garage where Jan works as a car mechanic. Outside the garage, Jarl comes to the conclusion that in fact he does intend to make the film, but that he must respect Carina's wishes. He never makes contact with Jan and instead decides to focus on Kenta's family. Kenta once again steps into the picture. He looks old and worn and is still hostile towards Swedish society. Ironically his son, Patrik, has adopted the Yuppie lifestyle of the eighties. Perhaps it is difficult - or not so difficult - to understand that he has chosen to make a life very different from his father's. That Jarl despises the Yuppie lifestyle is obvious. His sympathies still lie with the misfits, those who live in the gutter. But in a turn of events that no one could have predicted, Jan and Patrik have both avoid the self-destructive traps that dragged their fathers down and have both got themselves "the decent life" their fathers tried to obtain. The Social Contract has a joie de vivre that is unequaled by the two earlier films but ultimately lacks the same impact.

The Misfit trilogy, chronicling as it does Sweden's lost generation of the sixties as they struggle for survival in the seventies and finally make a truce with the status quo at the dawn of the nineties, is a remarkable living, changing panorama of the Society and its social outcasts. Its an important work of film art, and maybe even Harry Schein would now agree that the Trilogy is the work of an Author, a manifestation of his vision. The vision of a fair society where all people are equal, and how this can be made to work in an everyday and often bleak reality. The Swedish film Industry never did make its international comeback. Even though Swedish cinemas did show some outstanding domestically produced films, the weight of Ingmar Bergman's legacy eclipsed and frustrates, and continues to eclipse and frustrate, the creative potential of Swedish film-makers to this day.

As to the question of whether misfits can have a decent life, the answer must be that they can, but that trying to obtain it while hooked on hard drugs leads nowhere. Kenta is, despite the hard times he's endured, living proof that misfits can have a decent life. Or, as he says in The Social Contract: »When I was twenty I gave society the finger. Now I'm about to turn fifty and I still do it - but behind their backs.«