Clark: A life as strange as fiction

The life of Sweden’s notorious ‘celebrity’ criminal Clark Olofsson is as bizarrely astonishing as the true crime series focusing on his story.

True crime continues to have a big moment, especially with Netflix seemingly dropping series after series, often without any promotion, knowing there’s an insatiable audience for these true tales of murder, cruelty, larceny, deceit, pretence and obsession. It’s more than obvious that we remain fascinated by the dark potential of our neighbours, by conflict and resolution, by the creation of disorder and its eventual reversal. There is certainly a deep uncertainty about the adequacy of our traditional social institutions to meet our needs for justice and a sense of significance.

Many though are concerned by the way so much crime has been turned into entertainment, especially when the truth is distorted or a lack of empathy is shown to victims and their families. Some creators are playing loose and fast with recent crimes.

There is especially some controversy when it comes to fictionalising real events in the pursuit of true crime stories that express the truth of the experiences imaginatively. “As a writer, how can you entice and compel readers on such sensitive topics without manipulating or offending them?” the author Katrin Schmann recently suggested. “How much detail makes the story feel vivid and visceral, and how much is simply too much, making it seem lurid? And, anyway – do writers even have the right to fictionalise painful stories that we ourselves did not experience directly, or are we co-opting someone else’s suffering for our own selfish pursuit of publication and success?”

This is a criticism aimed by a number of reviewers at the remarkable true crime series Clark which, for all its excesses, is nevertheless a vibrant piece of filmmaking and astonishingly entertaining. It’s the fantastical story of Clark Olofsson, Sweden’s notorious “celebrity” criminal, and follows a twisty, adrenaline-fuelled narrative that chronicles his many crime sprees and love affairs in an almost absurdist comic style.

The opening episode is gloriously over the top and much of it seems to be obviously fictionalised and exaggerated. And often it’s laugh out loud funny.

Yet maybe Clark’s story is not so exaggerated, as a little research shows. He did, it seems, live a life so bizarrely astonishing, so ridiculously out of the ordinary, that it might be read like fiction.

He was a bank robber who became a national hero, received sentences for attempted murder, assault, robbery and dealing narcotics and has spent more than half of his life in correctional institutions in Sweden. He mocked the Swedish authorities for decades, became a case study for criminologists and was even responsible for what’s become known as “the Stockholm Syndrome”, a shorthand way of explaining a highly complex situation that can develop between people held hostage and those that control, even abuse them.

This is only alluded to in the opening episode with fleeting footage of what seems to be the original bank robbery at Kreditbanken Bank in Norrmalmstorg, a town in central Sweden, which gave rise to the term.

Clark was involved in an attempted robbery with an acquaintance called Janne Olsson (Christoffer Nordenrot), who took four people hostage in a bank and demanded three million Swedish kronor, a Mustang, and for Clark, whom he had met in prison and was still incarcerated, to be brought to the bank.

But instead, the hostages were kept trapped in a vault for more than five days and when the captives were rescued they seemed to have become rather enamoured of the smooth-talking Clark and Janne. They even testified and defended Clark in court and to Sweden’s Prime Minister. Criminologist Nils Bejerot later popularised the term “the Stockholm Syndrome”, where the victims develop empathetic relationships with their captor or abusers.

The series, almost completely subjectively shown from the point of view of the infamous Clark, is based on his autobiography released in 2015, Vafan var det som hände? (What the hell happened?), and we are encouraged to take nothing at face value by the subtitle of each episode: “Based on the truth and lies”. The series is co-written and directed by acclaimed Grammy award-winning music video and film director Jonas Akerlund, a legend in pop culture circles for his pioneering music video productions such as Madonna’s Ray of Light in 1998, and collaborations with U2, the Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, Rihanna and Coldplay. It’s often said Akerlund’s motto is, “go big or go home”; he’s also behind the Netflix movie Polar and Prime’s music biopic Lords of Chaos.

The charismatic actor Bill Skarsgard stars as Clark and is also a producer on the series, a role he exercises with undisguised delicious relish. He’s an actor with an obvious elastic range; he is mercurial and volatile but also oddly sweet at times. And he sure knows how to milk a physical gag. As he says of the style of presentation, “It’s just one thing over the next, over the next, over the next”.

Akerlund is fond of fast moving montages where he gathers dozens of shots and edits between them at a mesmerising pace in the style of a high-end music video.

“I knew from Jonas’s previous works that he’s very extravagant and flamboyant. There’s so much flair in everything that he does,” Skarsgård says. “Which is funny, because it’s very anti-Swedish almost. We’re known for being subtle, timid, minimalistic, and we’re great at that, just look at our cars or look at our interior design. Everything is understated. And Jonas is overstated. It’s so unique and refreshing in television today, it’s just not like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

The opening certainly sets the tone. The first episode is called “Being The Best At Being The Best Was Not My Thing. So I Decided To Be The Best At Being The Worst.” It’s Trollhattan in 1947 and, in black and white, we watch as Clark is born, actually inside his mother’s womb, with Skarsgard’s head somewhat comically attached to the baby as it emerges. His voice-over narration is rough and a little frenzied.

“They yelled and screamed at me to come out and I can’t stand being told what to do,” he exclaims. “So I stayed in there as long as I could but I guess it was time – and I couldn’t stand being locked up, the whole damn world was out there; parties, banks, girls and all sorts of fun.” His parents are alcoholics but he’s soon the centre of attention, with older ladies especially. Money comes easily at a young age through scams and all kinds of shenanigans.

“Money provided me with the only thing I cared about – freedom, the right to speak and think and act however one likes,” he says.

He’s soon in correctional homes, when he’s not having if off with dozens of women. When he’s free the adventures continue. Clark gains headlines when as an 18-year-old he breaks into the country estate of the shotgun-wielding Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander, who is portrayed in a fleetingly amusing performance from the stout Claes Maimberg.

He loves being on the run and the courts are sick of him. He comes back from the dead after a stolen car accident but in planning a big heist with his buddy Gunnar (Emil Algpeus) it all goes wrong when Gunnar shoots and kills a cop. Now Clark is known in the media as “the police murderer”. And soon ace investigator Tommy Lindstrom (Vilhelm Blomgren) enters the scene and is about to make Clark Olofsson his life-long obsession.

“I think he’s one of these eccentric characters that a lot of people have in their families,” Skarsgard says. “This kind of super eccentric crazy guy who’s doing everything wrong but somehow you can’t help but forgive him, because of how he twists reality. You go, ‘I’m going to sit down with my uncle and I’m going to tell him that he screwed up’ and then you sit down with him and you leave afterwards going, ‘now I’m the bad guy’. And you’re like, ‘how did he do that?’ ”

It’s obvious that even in the first episode we are being edged by Åkerlund into a kind of TV version of Stockholm Syndrome itself. His utterly captivating storytelling holds us captive as we form a sympathetic psychological connection with Clark and his cheerful depravity and fatuous self-aggrandisement.

He fooled the Swedish people in falling for his charisma and cheek and Åkerlund succeeds in getting us to become fascinated by him too, though the style is too outrageous for it to continue in this fashion. It’s clear he’s heading for some kind of fall as the series develops.

There’s more to this narrative than the continual rise of a goofy, rather deranged gangster — a man totally in love with himself and his existential ways — to look forward to.

But it’s certainly some ride.

Clark streaming on Netflix.