Linköping is a medium-sized Swedish city where a brutal double murder took place in 2004. It took sixteen years, the persistence of one police officer and a major breakthrough in science - a new method of DNA determination - to find the killer. In four episodes of about forty minutes each, 16 years were packed in which nothing happened, except simmering in a timeless hell for the people left behind by the victims, but also for Inspector John Sundin, whose life, to put it mildly, fell apart. It is, therefore, a mini-series of the crime genre - filmed according to a real event - but what the creators of the series put in those 160 minutes goes beyond the scope of the genre, or, at least, does not follow the patterns that we are used to, primarily thanks to the American school of the crime genre.
The beginning of the series suggests that the killer is a deranged individual, and that the victims are chosen at random. There's also a first-hand witness, but she's not too helpful. Inspector Sundin - a former sports star who is the pride of the city, an extremely skilful character - is at the head of the investigation from the first moment, but all his professionalism breaks down when he meets the families of the victims and the case becomes a personal matter for him. In a paradoxical twist, the inspector also becomes a victim of his own obsession, and, like the families of the victims, he pays for it with the breakdown of his private life. The case itself will, very soon, despite certain clues, reach a dead end: a crime without any connection between the victims, without the help of witnesses, without motives that can even be guessed, is doomed to be forgotten. Except for the families and Inspector Sundin himself. If we add to that the introduction of a character who, in a parallel course, corresponds to the psychological profile of the killer, we have said, roughly, everything that needs to be known. And all that fits in about fifteen minutes. The remaining two and a half hours are a thin film embroidery that refuses to stay within the confines of the genre.
The poetics of non-events is, of course, nothing new in film expression, but only great masters who did not bother with genre limitations managed to capture non-events. The crime genre has very clear rules and very clean settings that can produce masterpieces like Melville's Samurai, for example, or great French connections William Friedkin. Breach, however, covers 16 years in which there is only the pain of the other people behind the killed and the policeman's obsession. According to the rules of the Americanized genre, all attention, in the absence of action scenes, would have to be directed to those two elements. But it didn't. There is no exploitation of sadness, there are no offensive details from the policeman's broken life, and the information the viewer receives is of the same quality as the information received by the inspector himself - therefore, useless. Precisely in that place, precisely on the refusal to fulfill what the viewer expects to see, is the reason for this undertaking. One of the main elements is the close-up shots of the inspector's face, almost devoid of facial expressions: the brilliant Oskar Söderlund acts with his eyes. Eerily lit from within, the inspector looks like a shadow of himself. Like a ghost. Not only does he fail to find the killer, but with his professional failure he betrays the trust he has received from the families of the murdered. The relationship between the people who are drowning in pain and the inspector, who seems to have separated from reality, is shown precisely with an inimitable measure. Because, reasonable people who, because of some higher principle, maybe for the sake of the peace of the murdered loved ones, or simply for the safety of other people, would like the murderer to be revealed, understand very clearly why there is no progress in the investigation, and they do not blackmail the inspector with their pain, but it seems to be even worse for the policeman. At some point, the circle of pain and helplessness closes, and the ball, perhaps, will begin to unravel the randomness.
A scientist who deals with the genome enters the story. And his character is set brilliantly because the scientist is also obsessed with what he does. It is necessary that the two obsessions, at some point, first meet and then clash. We will not say how the conflict is resolved, nor will we reveal the details of the obsession that the scientist is drowning in, but we can say that there are no too strong tones there either. Simply, the creators of the series do not allow irrelevant, unmeasured, tasteless details to overwhelm the seemingly endless space of events. Everything is actually very dense. No idling.
The resolution brings some relief. But only then, in another twist, does the viewer realize that he was drawn into a multifaceted game whose rules he couldn't quite fathom until a single tear was shed. And not that heavy tear of Dostoyevsky, the tear of that child, which should atone for all the pain in the world, but a completely ordinary, completely everyday tear as a sign of re-established balance.
