It’s a cliché, but “more than you bargained for” documentaries are typically the best ones. Those films that feature a filmmaker on an odyssey quest for one piece of truth, but discovers something richer and more profound along the journey. Such is the case with what Mads Brügger‘s astonishing “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” about an investigation into a mysterious murder that strikes a vein and the blood of discovery comes gushing. What begins as a look into a plane crash, and the consequent death of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld in the early 1960s, quickly turns into something much more transfixing: the confirmation of a conspiracy theory that has existed for more than five decades.
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After a brief rundown into the enigmatic circumstances of a plane crash Africa, in 1961, killing Hammarskjöld and everyone on board, the doc quickly makes its case. Brügger, in his extensive research, finds enough evidence to suggest the crash was really just an assassination and he lays out a convincing claim. Talking heads, insinuate (some “confirm”) that because Hammarskjöld was a major advocate for the independence of Congo, among many other colonialized countries, he posed a threat to the global order, including European mining companies, which couldn’t afford for the African nation to be independent.
Most of the witnesses of the crash assert that they saw a second plane and heard gunfire followed by the plane going down and this intel is corroborated by a former top NSA official who adds more damning evidence. Even creepier, a photograph of Hammarskjöld’s body at the crash site shows an ace of spades card slyly tucked into his collar, an apparent “mark of territory” used by British and American intelligence agencies.
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Any other film and it’s resounding success, case solved, c’est fini. However, what comes next is a haunting dive into even darker, deeper rabbit holes. In thrilling real-time, Brügger discovers that an organization called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) has, a manifesto which is described as “the manuscript for killing Dag Hammarskjöld.” Another sub-division becomes part of the narrative: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose leader was a white supremacist who was in charge of allegedly spreading the AIDS virus in South Africa to create a genocide of the ever-growing black majority.
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It’s a fantastic story, maybe too fantastic. You can either believe the intricate and serious claims that Brügger is making in “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” or you can remain skeptical, but it’s full of condemning testimonies. “We were at war, black people in South Africa were the enemy,” one former militia member admits chillingly. Much like Michael Moore, Brügger is a master at attention-seeking with the camera which is perhaps where the disbelief rises, but the doc is convincing and it’s miraculous that the filmmaker manages to seemingly solve a 50-plus year mystery. What’s most fascinating is that in the end, we are still left with more mysteries than answers.
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Many of the jaw-dropping allegations that Brügger unearths— mercenaries claiming there was a plot to spread AIDS in South Africa—is shocking and disturbing and the documentarian manages to craft an experience that feels so singular and deeply engrossing. What Brügger uncovers here will no doubt make major waves around world news once word gets out (it already has in some circles). The filmmaker, whose reputation in his homeland of Sweden is more entertainer than it is of a documentarian, may just be playing us along with the facts, but the matter in which he goes about it is nothing short of fascinating.
Sometimes this documentary even provokes laughter, because we are just so insanely disturbed by how evil much of it sounds. Many filmmakers may have found this evidence, but it’s doubtful if they’d have the tenacity and curiosity to dig as Brügger does. His relentless truth-seeking is dogged and the way he finds someone and is able to make them crack down on-camera is a remarkable feat. Brügger’s movie plays mostly like a real-time thriller, to be honest, but whatever hybrid of non-fiction you want to categorize “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” it’s nothing short of groundbreaking. [A]
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