Claes Mansson, Julia Ragnarsson, Matias Varela, Johan H:son Kjellgren and Albin Grenholm.
Photo: Sundance NowA story simmering with conspiracies and schemes involving a once-respected Swedish bank, “Blinded” (Thursday, July 2, Sundance Now) is so packed with plotters, frauds, fellow travelers and innocents that it’s frequently impossible to tell the swindlers from the victims. That this doesn’t in the end matter in the least is a testament to the powers of this fact-based drama (chief writer Jesper Harries).
One of the most endearing features of this subtitled series is the regular intrusion, in all eight of its episodes, of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” sung hauntingly by the Swedish singer Grant. The emphasis here is on the song’s first line—“There may be trouble ahead.”
Blinded
Thursday, July 2, Sundance Now
And there is, indeed, trouble at every turn for the family-owned ST Bank, all of it the result of illegal activities, including falsification of its financial reports. Certain of the revelations about the bank’s practices had come about thanks to one woman—the ambitious and dishy young newspaper writer Bea Farkas (Julia Ragnarsson), who habitually pursues every hint of irregularity, however minor, in the faith that every suspicion is promising. Her unyielding assurance and faith in her ability to sniff out lies has put her in a position of some importance at her paper. And, in addition, had gotten her dismissed from that job—if temporarily—by an editor-in chief who viewed her as an uncontrollable force.
In the case at hand, that obstinacy led her to conclude correctly that ST Bank had regularly misreported certain aspects of its financial losses and gains—a piece of news terrifying to the bank’s CEO, Peder Rooth. That Rooth (a masterly performance by Matias Marela) is also romantically involved with Bea Farkas—and deeply so—complicates matters in ways too obvious to require explaining. But so persuasive is Ms. Ragnarsson in the role of a reporter dedicated not only to the aims of journalism but the requirements of justice that the situation transcends the threat of triteness. You can feel her panic, her sense of the impossible, as she prepares for an interview with Rooth that will require sharp questions. Crimes were committed. How can he not have known?
Matias Varela and Julia Ragnarsson
Photo: Sundance NowTrue, nothing about this conflict proves any help in dealing with her passionate attachment to Rooth, who is married with children and returns her feelings in full. Still, the affair is just one thread in this furiously paced chronicle of scandal and menace as efforts are made to prevent the leak of incriminating records.
Crowded though the series is—mobbed, actually—it’s filled with distinctive, admirably drawn characters. Rooth, perhaps the most intriguing figure, is more than just a wily top executive however he may look—which is slick, assured and impeccably tailored; one wide shot reveals the arena-like immensity of his Master of the Universe closet with its rows of suits and shirts. But he also proves to be a man of principle, one surprisingly stern about the sort of values his young son is picking up. He’s not happy when he hears, one day, the boy’s casual story of how he and his friend had teased a beggar sitting in front of a supermarket.
The friend, Rooth’s son explained, had money with him—a big bill—that he told the beggar he could have if he did a song and dance for them. So you thought, Rooth asks his son, that it was funny—funny to see someone who was not born into privilege, as you were, humiliate himself?
The boy argues that it was his friend Victor who had the money, Victor who said that to the man. And his father sternly informs him that he is not to say that it was his friend. “You will never say ‘Victor’ again.” Then Rooth tells the boy that they will find that beggar and his son will apologize to him.
If Rooth is a man of hidden depths, his wife, Sophie (Julia Dufvenius), is another story entirely. Her deepest feelings are unhidden, written on her face. She’s certain that her husband is unfaithful—a feeling she projects with exquisite subtlety. She soon knows with whom, after a quick check of his phone. That subtle look, always on her face, is the reason Ms. Dufvenius steals so many scenes.
“Blinded” is above all meant to be a story of corruption and deception, one in which many innocents among the bank’s own employees were drawn into shoddy investments and now stood to lose everything. There’s no missing the echoes of “Wall Street” (1987) in the series—somewhere in it a voice is actually heard shouting “Greed is good!” Not from the evidence of the cataclysms that befall this once secure bank and its employees in the course of these eight hours of remarkably sustained drama.
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