Dan Slevin reviews a two-part documentary about one of the most shocking crimes of the last ten years.
Swedish journalist Kim Wall on location long before her tragic death in Copenhagen Sound in 2017. Photo: Neon
I’m not normally one for true crime television. The treatments these days too often depend on the salacious and the morbid and the need to keep those binge-watchers satisfied mean that seasons are too long – and don’t often even need to be TV ‘seasons’ at all. I don’t want to be ‘hooked’ thank you very much. I want to be informed.
But when I caught a glimpse of the synopsis for Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, I was intrigued and I knew that this time I would have to go further and dive deeper. (It is only two episodes for a start, rather than another epic streaming commitment.)
Also, the terrible incident and the following investigation took place in Copenhagen and Malmö, two places I have actually visited and like a great deal. For many people, that ‘terrible incident’ did not mesh with what we knew of Scandinavian society, despite the success of all that fictional Scandi Noir.
The ‘terrible incident’ is truly terrible and I was vaguely aware of it from some headlines five or so years ago, but I wasn’t aware of how the case had been resolved – or even that it had been. In 2017, a well-known Danish inventor and entrepreneur (Peter Madsen) invited a young journalist, Kim Wall, on to his home-built submarine (the Nautilus) for a trip out into the Oresund, the Copenhagen Sound, beyond the famous bridge between the Danish capital and the Swedish city of Malmo. She’s writing a profile of this charismatic tech tycoon who has crashed and burnt two rocket businesses and now has his sights focused on the lower depths.
Peter Madsen showing off his home-made submarine, Nautilus. Photo: Neon
When she doesn’t return home as expected, her partner raises the alarm but the Nautilus is nowhere to be seen. The next morning it emerges – way off course – and then sinks with only one survivor. Madsen is rescued but tells authorities that he dropped the young woman off the previous evening. “Nothing to see here, folks.”
But there seems to be traces of blood on his face and no sign of Wall. Eventually, police and navy divers make it to the wrecked submarine and find plenty of Wall’s possessions but no body. As the investigation accelerates, the cocky Madsen’s story changes but not his demeanour. There’s an explanation for everything, apparently.
Until that explanation becomes utterly unthinkable.
Lt. Commander Ditte Dyreborg, chief engineering officer in the Danish Submarine Unit, is the unsung star of Undercurrent. Photo: Neon
Erin Lee Carr’s documentary is right to split the story into two parts – the investigation and the trial. The investigation centres some of the brilliant supporting cast, including serious and lantern-jawed Deputy Chief of Malmö Police, Mattias Sigfridsson, but especially Lt. Commander Ditte Dyreborg, chief engineering officer in the Danish Submarine Unit, who is such a great character that surely they should inspire a series of their own.
The second half focuses on the trial and the unravelling of all Madsen’s techno-scuses. It also tiptoes into his personal history and circumstances and – as these films so often do – paints a picture of the psychopath as a young man, all the contributing factors that might explain (or even excuse) such aberrant behaviour.
But then it stops doing that and returns to the character of Kim, the victim. The brave journalist with her whole life ahead of her, the woman who went to work one day and didn’t come back. Like so many others. Men like Madsen have egos that want, in fact demand, that they have documentaries made abut them. There’s nothing that he wants more than to be the centre of attention once again, no matter what he has to do get it.
And we, the audience, become a little culpable when we feel like, “Hey! He’s interesting, he’s charismatic. Why are we talking about her again?” I’m sure a different film would have treated Madsen as good screen talent and centred him accordingly, but Wall was great screen talent, too, but she never got the chance to show it. This film tries to restore that balance a bit.
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If I have a criticism, it’s that, visually, Undercurrent relies a bit too much on the same few drone shots of Copenhangen, Malmö and that famous bridge in the mist, making it a little repetitive and while there’s some fascinating contemporary footage – some of it shot by the navy and the police themselves during the investigation, it can wear a bit thin by the end.
But as an effort to redress the true crime balance by highlighting the victim and society’s structural misogyny, Undercurrent does an excellent job.
Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall is rated 16 for violence, language and sexual content and is streaming on Neon.
