Ondskan

Evil received a good deal of attention when it opened in Danish cinemas. Not least because it is based on Jan Guillou's memories of his own youth at an elite Swedish boarding school in the 1950s.

Guillou's alter ego is the maladjusted teenager Erik Ponti, whose rebellious and violent behaviour results in his being expelled from school. Erik's downtrodden mother sells off her furniture to be able to afford to send her son to a respectable boarding school, where he can get his leaving certificate and a ticket to upper secondary school. For Erik it is a liberation to get away from his violent stepfather, so he wants more than anything to fit in at his new school, which also challenges him academically. Besides being a rebel and a bookworm, Erik is also a competitive swimmer, and the school's PE teacher quickly sees his potential.

At the boarding school the teachers do not interfere in the pupils' socialisation and upbringing. That is left to the oldest pupils. It has developed into a tyrannical regime to which Erik, of course, cannot bring himself to submit. A regular power struggle unfolds between Erik and the fourth-year pupil and aristocrat Otto Silverhielm and his loyal minions. Erik has a good friend in the intellectual Pierre, but when Silverhielm and his cronies try to get at Erik through Pierre, he is suddenly alone. Erik is not afraid of a beating, for he can throw a decent punch himself. His greatest fear is expulsion.

Evil is a gripping drama about how violence breeds violence. Presumably the film's message is also that violence does not solve problems, quite the contrary, but here the film becomes a little unclear. Erik ultimately resorts to violence, and although it does not become the decisive solution to his problems, it still works in his favour. As a viewer you identify so strongly with Erik that you practically find yourself cheering him on to give his tormentors a thrashing.